How do you function through interruptions? Think back to the last time you were interrupted - either your child in the morning, someone racing into your office without pause, the dogs.

Me? I hate being interrupted. As a writer and coach, it's hard to think through something beginning to end with constant distractions. I can't quickly start and stop the flow of a story. Bonus: they give me anxiety.

Over the last few years as my career, and now Three Ears Media , have grown, things are naturally more chaotic. There are a lot more interruptions. To function in that chaos, I have to control the breaks that I can. I set rules about things like email that become wormholes of lost productivity.

As I reflected on how I spent a day, I found big things and little things. The surprise was that the most frequent interruption is one I didn't even think about: the notifications on my phone.

I have cravings for them, and I know I'm not alone. Simple updates and interactions can make all of us feel happier. These 140 character notifications shake us up, put us down, and alter our mindset like a drug.

If you whisper that around a marketer, they'll try it. The emotion altering behavior is the pinnacle of marketing success.

Then, they ruined it.

Here's the catch with interruption marketing (in recruiting.)

The second most marketing agencies get their hands on an idea, we as consumers start to tune it out. Interruption marketing has very quickly become the annoying version of traditional marketing where companies tried to get attention with charm, uniqueness, and humor. We're all a bit like hipsters in that way: too cool for standard marketing games (unless there's a promo code, of course).

But that doesn't mean recruitment marketing agencies aren't selling interruption marketing for recruiting like they sold social media in 2008.

Because...
- it worked that one time in 2010.
- We have to "steal attention" from our talent competitors.
- Because they build recruitment marketing like they've never been a job seeker before.

Things need to change. We can't slap a traditional marketing approach that's already annoying consumers on a human experience like recruiting.

That's what I'm talking about in this video and why I'm willing to say that I think traditional job alerts are dead. Thoughts?