Uncategorized

One foot in the grave: a soliloquy on aging and the need for parties

To mark my 40th birthday, we recently threw a party at 902 Brewing Company. Since the milestone often feels like the “death of youth,” we leaned into a tongue-in-cheek “funeral” theme. Below is the transcript of my remarks on this day (cue the soundtrack here)

How many people get to attend their own funeral? I want to thank my Mom, who helped bring me here, and Lauren, who helped organize this party, as well as everyone who traveled from far and wide to be here.

While you are here, I thought I might share a bit of “wisdom” from my old age. For the kids in the room, always remember: Beware the Ides of March!

For the grown-ups: We need to throw more parties. When I was growing up, we had parties all the time: big parties for 30th birthdays, U.S. holidays, pool parties, 40th birthdays, random tiki parties, Tupperware parties, or really any damn reason at all. We would all bring food, drinks, things to throw on the grill, and endless snacks or hors d’oeuvres.

Parties were a way to bring us all together, mix it up, and connect us as a community. They were essential for helping us meet new people and building social bonds. In fact, I met my future wife at a house party, and I found a good share of my friends through similar gatherings, and more recently, I’ve even made new friends through kids’ birthday parties.

We have celebrated engagement parties, wedding parties, and baby showers – my theory is that Lauren and I need to throw a big party every five years – coincidentally these have all been at breweries so we were certainly overdue. If you have perfect attendance at our milestones, please raise your hands! [Lauren hands out awards.]

It has been said that we are in the midst of a national loneliness epidemic, and the only cure is to bring more people together. In a world which seeks to algorithmically divide us and makes us feel more isolated, we need to reconnect IRL and grow our social networks. I challenge you to introduce yourself to someone new today.

Today, I ask each of you to throw a party and “be the change” we seek. In these troubled times, it is more important than ever to come together.

40

Playlist · Matthew Hurst · 50 items

Strategy

New Recruitics blog post: Programmatic Job Advertising and the Candidate Experience

Programmatic Job Advertising and the Candidate Experience

Dig into how programmatic job advertising can enhance the candidate experience and provide benefits to both companies and job seekers.

“Programmatic advertising platforms provide insights into candidate behavior and engagement. Employers can use this data to continually refine their job listings and application processes, ensuring they align with candidate preferences and expectations.

This data-driven decision-making provides the facility for continuous improvement and helps to ensure companies have a candidate-centric approach. When it all comes together, this can raise recruiting efficiency, significantly improving the candidate experience. “

To learn more about the benefits of programmatic advertising on the recruiting and hiring process, read the full post on Recruitics’ blog.
Measurement, Strategy, Work

New Recruitics blog post: How to Improve Recruiting Efficiency

Link

How to Improve Recruiting Efficiency

As the recruiting landscape rapidly evolves, it’s become essential for companies to continually scout for new ways to revamp recruitment strategies.

“A carefully-crafted, well-maintained recruitment marketing process casts a wide net to reach candidates within the talent pool. Then, a company can utilize technology to funnel candidates with the right skills and qualifications to support the hiring process. This helps enhance efficiency – which is essential if companies wish to remain competitive.”

Uncategorized

Spreading holiday cheer with The Nutcracker Suite EP

Audio

The Nutcracker Suite by matthurst

A synth inspired tribute to Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s ballet

Continuing my journey with re-imagining music in the public domain, this holiday season I’ve recorded my own synth-inspired tribute to Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”. This story and music always take me back to my childhood, dreaming of holiday magic and imaginative adventures, so it seems fitting to record my own cover versions in the chiptune style that was the soundscape of my youth (with more than a few gifts under the Xmas tree).

And just as with my previous release of the “1923 EP“, I’m releasing the following new songs into Creative Commons licensing so that others can remix, reuse, and adapt the recordings into something new”
– Waltz of the Flowers
– Dance of the Reed Flutes
– March of the Toy Soldiers (aka The Nutcracker March)

I hope you’ll give my remixes a spin and share them anytime you want to celebrate – please consider it my gift to you this holiday season!

Blogs, Measurement, Strategy, Work

New Recruitics blog post: Using Marketing Strategy to support Seasonal Hiring goals

Link

My latest blog post on Recruitics’ website provides a high-level outline for how employers can build recruitment marketing strategies to help support their seasonal hiring plans.

Strategic Ways to Recruit Seasonal Workers

Learn how companies should optimize their recruitment strategies for seasonal hiring and actionable steps that are in sync with the current market.

As with all marketing strategy, this guide begins with market research and gathering the relevant data to create a data-driven plan.

“With data, companies can understand the performance of their jobs across all sources – which helps companies plan the roadmap for success. Without quality analytics, companies might be making budgeting decisions off of intuition rather than insights – which isn’t an effective way to strategize.”

To learn more about talent attraction, programatic job advertising, reaching diverse audiences, employer branding, and engaging with candidates please give my blog post a read. And thanks again to Recruitics for the opportunity to share my insights and ideas on their platform!

Personal Branding, Uncategorized

Kicking off the Roaring Twenties with my new “1923 EP”

One of my New Years resolutions for 2019 was to make more creative risks, and this took on many forms: photography, storytelling, even cooking. But from January 1st I had a big project in mind: making new music for the first time in nearly a decade.  A year later, I’m finally ready to share my “1923 EP” :

1923 EP by matthurst

Inspired by Roaring Twenties classics which were finally released to the public domain at the start of 2019, I set out to rearrange and re-contextualize these classics from the American songbook for the 21st century. What I came up with was a stripped-down set of songs, influenced by nostalgic sounds like chiptune, FM synths, and vintage samplers that help bring these old melodies to life.

Inspired by the Roaring Twenties, I set out to rearrange and re-contextualize these classics from the American songbook for the 21st century. What I came up with was a stripped-down set of songs, influenced by nostalgic sounds like chiptune, FM synths, and vintage samplers that help bring these old melodies to life.

But why 1923? Last year marked the first time in over two decades that copyrighted works from 1923 entered the public domain, thanks in part to lobbying by big media companies in the late 1990s. To help correct the absurdity of overly-restrictive copyright laws keeping great music from the public for nearly a century, I’m proud to share my recordings through Creative Commons licensing so that others can share or remix my music to make their own creative projects.

Continue reading Kicking off the Roaring Twenties with my new “1923 EP” →
Non-Profit, Work

Reaching new Movember Milestones with Recruitics’ team!

As an active Movember supporter for many years, I’ve been proud to help raise money and awareness in support of men’s health issues like prostate and testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention.  And I’ve written before about how Movember uses social marketing techniques to promote men’s health issues.

But this year was my first leading a team of fundraisers, helping my Mo Bros’ and Mo Sistas’ at Recruitics through “no-shave November”.  What started by a post gauging interest on Slack was quickly embraced by Recruitics’ leadership and with members signing up from across our company.  We even organized a “Waffle Wednesday” fundraiser to earn donations from our hungry co-workers! Continue reading Reaching new Movember Milestones with Recruitics’ team! →

Search, Strategy, Work

Career update:

I’m joining Recruitics!

I’m excited to share that I will soon begin working with Recruitics as a Marketing Strategist! Recruitics is a data-centric recruitment marketing agency that makes it easy for the world’s leading brands to attract and hire great talent.

In my new role, I’ll be helping staffing agencies, fast-growing startups, and Fortune 500 companies attract top talent at scale using digital marketing via Recruitics groundbreaking Analytics and automation platform to help optimize job advertising strategies. I’ll be based out of our New York City office, with Recruitics recently expanding its regional growth with offices in London, Wilton, and Atlanta.

Measurement, Social Media

Watch the throne: Who takes the media crown during royal weddings?

If it seems like Harry and Meghan have taken over your social media feeds, or you’ve been sucked in to the wall-to-wall news coverage about the Royal Wedding, you’re not alone.  No matter whether you live in the U.K., commonwealth countries, or even in the U.S.A., it feels like the whole world is on edge for the Windsor family’s next wedding. You might even call it the most anticipated wedding since Robb Stark married Talisa (although hopefully with a happier ending).

And this is nothing new – back in 2011 I used Nielsen’s analytics tools to measure media buzz about Harry’s older brother Prince William marrying the future Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton.  Surprisingly we found that American news outlets covered that Royal Wedding more frequently than their UK or Commonwealth counterparts. Back then William was most mentioned in social media, except in the UK where Brittons were abuzz about the people’s princess.  Overall Americans made the most noise about the Royal Wedding in social media, although Brittons had a higher share-of-voice on the topic, which seemed to be on everyone’s mind up to the big day.

It seems like history is repeating itself for Prince Harry, so I thought it might be fun to take one last look back at the first Royal Wedding of the social media age: Continue reading Watch the throne: Who takes the media crown during royal weddings? →

Non-Profit, Policy

Speaking at the United Nations

This week I lived out a lifelong dream of speaking before the United Nations! I was honored to deliver a statement on behalf of HelpMeSee​ to the 50th Commission on Population and Development.

HelpMeSee statement to UN at CPD50

In April 2017, I was honored to deliver a statement on behalf of HelpMeSee​ to the 50th Commission on Population and Development. Lean more at: http://www.matthewhurst.com/2017/04/speaking-at-the-united-nations/

As part of my role managing communications and content marketing at HelpMeSee, I often write speeches/statements and build presentations for our leadership. Late last year I took on responsibility for managing our global NGO’s membership with the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC), participating in membership events and submitting HelpMeSee’s initiatives in support of the UN’s agenda to support public health and sustainable development. I was thrilled when our submissions were approved, so when our CEO was unavailable to speak I was nervous but excited to present our statement before the the committee at the UN’s headquarters in NYC.

To read the full transcript of the speech and statement, please visit HelpMeSee’s website.

Content Marketing, Communications, and Social Media Strategy