Help Ex-Borders Employees

What's this blog about?

Some colleagues and friends of mine and I were pondering out loud on Google+ today: How can we in the writing/bookselling/publishing community come together to try to help some of those Borders employees find new jobs. Clearly we can't find work for all 11,000...but what if we could help 50? or 100? even 1000?

It occurred to us that a lot of you folks may know about job openings for positions related to those that a lot of these Borders employees were doing. Positions like booksellers, inventory managers, community relations and events managers, social media managers, web developers, buyers, cashiers, shipping and receiving clerks, warehouse people, bookkeepers, baristas, etc.. (Yeah, it takes a village to run a bookstore. Trust me: I've managed big stores and small ones. It's not all reading, hand-selling and having enlightening conversations about books. Sometimes it's all about mopping the bathroom floors. So don't think it has to be a bookstore job you're offering.)

But how best to let people know about these jobs? Sure, there's some great places online that post publishing positions, but these won't all be publishing jobs. And not everyone posts all their open positions. And most of the publishing job boards focus on the New York-area, which won't help many of the Borders employees.

So after much Google+ brainstorming, Laura Anne Gilman came up with the idea for a Borders blog, a place where those folks who work near a Borders store that is closing can post about any open positions they'd like an unemployed Borders employee to get first crack at. Chris Kubica put this Posterous blog together together on the fly.

And here we are:

a place for you to share job openings for Borders employees.

If you'd like to contribute to this blog, let Chris or myself know. Or if you just have a job opening you want me to post, shoot one of us an email. We'll get it up there for you. Include the job description, the geographical area, the best way for the person to apply, and whether you might be willing to give a Borders employee first crack at an interview.

And if you're a Borders employee visiting this blog for the first time, make sure to scroll through all the opportunities posted here. Good luck!

Cheers!

Colleen Lindsay
Community Manager
Book Country
deadlanguages@gmail.com

and

Chris Kubica
President, Founder
Application Architects
chris@applicationarch.com