Cartoon Close-Up is a recurring feature where I highlight Andertoons cartoon subscribers, custom cartoon clients, and customers who just buy the occasional cartoon.
This edition’s answers come from custom cartoon client Clea Badion at Robert Half.
1) Tell me a little about yourself and your job.
I’m a freelance writer, editor and content manager. Currently, I’m a blog manager for Robert Half Technology. I plan, write and edit content for the blog, working closely with the Robert Half Technology brand team. I’ve worked with Robert Half, mostly in a freelance capacity, for almost 15 years. I’ve been fortunate to get regular, interesting work from the company, and being a freelancer gives me a lot of flexibility with my schedule.
2) How do you use your custom cartoons from Andertoons?
IT professionals are our audience, and they’re a group that can be challenging to reach and engage. Our blog content includes career advice for tech professionals and hiring managers, trends impacting the industry and jobs, and suggestions on what programming languages are most in demand and why. The cartoons are a fantastic way to engage this audience in a different way, and they always perform well. Sometimes we post them on their own, but recently we’ve been integrating them into posts on the same topic. They make an otherwise straight-forward post more visually engaging and, of course, funny!
We use the cartoons on social channels, too, and they not only get a lot of engagement, but they also drive traffic to our blog.
3) Please give me an example of how someone has responded to a cartoon.
When we shared a comic on the topic of girls who code, we used the hashtag #ilooklikeanengineer. The woman who started that movement, Isis Anchalee, retweeted it with some kind words and we consequently got massive engagement on the post. It was very cool to make that connection with someone who led a social media movement
4) Which cartoon is your personal favorite?
I have many favorites. This is a recent one created to go with a story about tech nightmares. We posted it around Halloween and I love how it turned out:
This one about how hard it is to find .NET developers still makes me laugh. It’s very specific to this audience, obviously, but I think any hiring manager having trouble filling a specific role can relate to it:
I also really like this one about things you can’t put on your LinkedIn profile:
5) Where online can people find out more about you?
They can check out my LinkedIn profile.
6) Do you have any questions for me?
Yes! How and when did you decide you wanted to create cartoons for a living? Was this your first choice as a career? How do you prepare for a career as a cartoonist?
As a kid I always read the comics and thought it would be pretty much the best job ever. Turns out I was right.
I actually went to school for music and then worked in fastener sales, metal coil distribution, and advertising. It was only after my wife and I knew our first child was on the way that I decided I’d quit my job and try to make a living as a cartoonist full time. It’s a crazy journey.
If you want to know more you can check out my talk at the National Cartoonists Society event last year.
Thanks so much to Clea for her time and terrific answers!
If you use Andertoons cartoons and would like to be featured here on the blog and in our monthly newsletter, drop me a line!