YouTern and Switch and Shift Team Up for Greatness!

 

Stand for something inspirational. You’ll be amazed at the caliber of leaders who flock to your cause. – Bernie Turner, co-founder of Walden University

Shawn and I have an announcement to make – something we’re both really excited to share: Mark Babbitt, CEO of YouTern.com, is joining the Switch and Shift team!

It gets better: his team at YouTern, including Dave Ellis, YouTern’s Content and Community Manager, is joining us as well.

Let me be clear: YouTern is still their first priority, and they would let nothing – I mean nothing – distract them from their incredible work there. However, Mark and his crew see the tie to Switch and Shift as an “and” to their ongoing efforts, not an “or”. In other words, helping Switch and Shift will only enhance the value they already provide to their loyal YouTern community.

We’ll let Mark riff on this if and when he likes. It’s his story, and I wouldn’t want to put words in his mouth… so I’ll get back to what this means to Switch and Shift:

• Our co-blog now has the knowledge of a much more established community behind it; YouTern is the online resource for college students, recent graduates, and the hiring professionals who know them best
• Mark himself is a well-respected leader in the career space (so respected that, among all of our connections, Mark was the first person both Shawn and I thought of when we decided to ask for help with Switch and Shift)
• Dave Ellis is a leader among his peers as well; the job he has done with the contributing bloggers at YouTern is the stuff of legend – so much so that just Dave alone would be more of an addition than we could have hoped for!
• The rest of the team at YouTern, both the staff and the community of interns who help drive the site, will be an incredible boon to the ongoing success of Switch and Shift

The story behind the story is this…

Shawn and I agreed that – in its first nine months – Switch and Shift had already grown into something well beyond our original ambitions. We knew that if we were going to keep growing our community organically, and to avoid stunting our site’s growth, we would need an Editor, a Community Manager, or an army of interns – someone, at least, to help us with the heavy lifting.

So we discussed who we’d reach out to, whose connections might fill that slot. Both of us had Mark Babbitt at the top of our list. He is that much of a resource. We’ve both known Mark for years, at first distantly, then through mutual ties, and eventually by working together more closely as we all had with the Talent Culture (#TChat) community.

Mind you, we called Mark just to talk about expansion of our team – and to our utter surprise and delight, he offered to help us himself! You ever meet a rock star, jam with him a little, then ask if he knows a guitarist who can help your band… and he offers to join your band instead? Now you have at least a little idea what Shawn and I are feeling.

This is probably a dream, but please… don’t pinch us yet!

Meet Mark and Dave

 

Art by  Tyler