About Chinwag Jobs

A Slice of History

Chinwag Jobs, started life in late 2000 as a small, yet perfectly formed email distribution list of jobs in, what was called, new media, now known as digital.

Initially, a simple beast, it was set up by Sam Michel when he noticed that more and more subscribers to the popular uk-netmarketing discussion list (UKNM to its friends) list hosted at Chinwag were trying to find staff.

Sam's idea was to match UKNM subscribers and the other email lists hosted at Chinwag with the jobs posted on the discussion list.

What started as another email list called uknm-jobs, became was soon being used by the leading new media agencies, recruitment agents and dotcoms. Over the next few years, it experienced a steady growth in job hunters and vacancies sent.

By late 2005, Chinwag Jobs was sending millions of emails each month without a search or any of the handy features you'd expect from people keen on their web technology.

It was most definitely time for the next phase in the life of Chinwag Jobs. Fortunately, Thayer Prime and John Grimsey joined the Chinwag team to put together a website that would do it justice.

Chinwag Jobs: New Era, New Website

In January 2006 after many smoothies, a great deal of coffee and more than a handful of late nights, a new era for Chinwag Jobs was hailed with the birth of a website based on a design by the inimitable Claire Littley (you should definitely check out Claire's music, too).

You'll notice there was a beta badge on the homepage. It was kept up there to remind the team that we have a tonne of ideas to build into our site.

The aim was to create the best recruitment site for the industry keeping it simple, effective and most importantly fun. This was reflected in the site's tag line "work in new media". It should be as simple as that.

A Decade of Jobs

The Chinwag Jobs website was active for a decade (2006-2016) during the first exponential burst of growth in the digital industry. Many of the giants in the industry and some long gone used the site to find the people who made the magic happen.

Over 10 years, 54,068 jobs were advertised and 87,818 applications made. Sadly the number of roles accepted is lost to the mists of time, but it's lovely to come across senior folks in the industry who used Chinwag Jobs to take their first steps.

Here's some of the nice things people said about Chinwag Jobs. If you find an early job through the site, it would be lovely to hear from you.

What Next?

Having sat idle for many years, this site is now an archive of the roles that were posted during those years and may yet develop into something else. For the moment, it's experimental in the same vein as the long-standing beta of the original website.

Feel free to explore, have a play and drop us a line if you've got any questions or suggestions.

Thanks for popping by!