Diddy Searches for Assistant with Online Ad

By Shelley Akers and Brian Orloff

Friday July 13, 2007 03:10 PM EDT

Sean "Diddy" Combs is looking for a new assistant – and he's put his videotaped plea on YouTube and his MySpace page.

In the one-minute clip, Diddy sits at his desk in his New York City office and encourages fans to apply for the gig online. "What better job than to have me scream at you, go crazy, keep you up late hours, have you sleep deprived?" he asks.

And forget paper résumés: He wants anyone who thinks they can handle the job to upload a video – three minutes or shorter – on YouTube explaining why he or she should be a part of Diddy's team. "You know I'm the best. I like working with the best," he says. "So if you the best, holla at your boy."

To date, more than 50 people have responded to the solicitation, submitting their auditions on his designated YouTube page.

One applicant, Crystal Dennis, who says she's a Web producer and promotions assistant in Miami, tells Diddy she wants to work for him because he's "the most respected and most successful entrepreneur in the business" and adds: "I'm willing to work 5,000 percent just to be what you need me to be."

Another potential assistant shows off his cell-phone answering skills. "Hello, this is Andrew, Diddy's assistant," he says in a mock call. "No, Diddy cannot come to the phone now, bee-yotch, now stop calling!"

Candidate "pmwangl," originally from Tanzania, explains he'd make a good assistant because "I'm unemployed." Then he takes Diddy's directive to "holla" literally – jumping from his seat and shrieking at the camera.

But not everybody is jumping at the chance to serve Diddy.

"I would never want to be his assistant. He will make you walk from New York to Philadelphia at 1:00 a.m. to get him some cheesecake," "salamanjack" writes on the YouTube page. (His comment refers to an episode of Making the Band 2 in which Diddy forced members of Da Band to walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn at night to buy him cheesecake.)

And in one 21-second video clip, "nobbithewho" gives three reasons he would not want to work for Diddy: "I don't like your music. I don't like your dancing. And I would never carry your f------ umbrella."