Christine Overby [Posted by Christine Overby]

I am thrilled to welcome Augie Ray to Forrester! Augie is coming aboard as a Senior Analyst supporting interactive marketers and focusing on Social Computing. He's starting on November 15 and will be based in Forrester's Foster City offices (Augie is relocating from Milwaukee and eagerly anticipating the warmer weather!).

I've been the hiring manager for nearly a dozen positions at Forrester, and I've come to recognize a particular feeling when I'm talking to a special applicant. Sure, there are lots of people with strong CVs and interviewing skills. But a great candidate brings ideas to life, and the interview becomes a fun gallop through the world of marketing themes, customer behavior, and the craft of writing. My first conversation with Augie was exactly that.

But it wasn't just up to me. Forrester's recruitment process involves the entire role-based research team, and, this time around, our Interactive Marketing clients themselves. You see, social tools gave us the ability to open up this search in an unprecedented way. Not only did Augie and the other candidates interview with the team, their writing samples were anonymized and then distributed to our private community of Interactive Marketers. In this community, Forrester clients got to critique the writing samples and vote for their favorite candidate. Augie's analysis made a big impression on the community, just as it did the research team and me. 

And so here we are with a new Social Computing analyst vetted in part using the very tools that he'll analyze. That feels pretty cool.

Read more about Augie's new adventures at Forrester and join me in offering a big welcome to our newest analyst!