Last night I had the pleasure of attending an interview with Jack White, guitarist form the White Stripes in Trinity College. A rock star in every sense of the word, he arrived exactly as one might expect him to, all black clothes, white rockstar boots and top hat. Some (I think!) white make up and Dylan-esque pencil moustache topped off the look.
He gave a superb insight into his apprenticeship as an upholsterer in Detroit, lessons learned and how he always believed his calling was in art / music (stitching poetry and putting vinyl discs inside couches, writing receipts in crayon!). Current muses and thoughts on his marriage / family were also interesting. Jack fielding some questions from the audience about finding the “lost” America and comparing Britney Spears to Dylan, Bowie and himself – apparantly in some ways he feels she is being truer to herself than they are!
When asked what advice he would give to up and coming musicians, he tied the interview together nicely with the theme of night – authenticity. New musicians need to love what they’re doing, if they don’t love their work then how can anyone else? I think this is a concept that can be applied different areas in life. He advised to stay away from sites like myspace to promote themselves, instead to focus on creativity and getting out to the fans.
As a company focussed on Web 2.0, of course we will not take his advice literally! However, I think the substance is relevant – love what you do, be authentic, differentiate and people will naturally be attracted to you. Stretching this out somewhat and applying it to canddiates on the job hunt, I would suggest it means getting “out there” more, don’t just send out 10s of CVs out to various recruiters and potential employers, focus on quality. Pick up the phone, get to the right people and project your value and personality upon them.
Note: this postwould like to doff its cap to a couple of other business / ideas blogs: Robin @ Bytesurgery, the guys @ Contrast and to a lesser extent, the 37signals signal v. noise blog, all of which are superb.
-Brian (brian dot c at lifescience dot ie)