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It is better
to not be on
the web than
to be on and
not know why
John Sumser

Reality
is more
complex
than
it seems.
John Gall

OUR HOME

It turns out that most companies (except the top 200 brands) don't have large enough web audiences to make the leasing of a home page function useful. What most purchasers discover is that a really solid employment offering points out the weaknesses in overall traffic development. When you begin using one of them, you are immediately confronted with the weaknesses in your web traffic.

As we saw in yesterday's note, traffic, in a permanent labor shortage, requires constant investment in value for the job hunting and career minded traffic. For the most part, the aforementioned services don't offer a meaningful solution to the traffic problem. In effect, they become the measurement of the problem.

Part of the problem is that really meaningful traffic development is really expensive and requires very careful planning. Given that a candidate is really worth 30% of the first year's salary and given that you need at least a hundred resumes that are close, a very high traffic development budget might be in the neighborhood of .3% of a year's salary ($100/visitor on a $30K job). At the other extreme, some points based programs get the costs down to around a dollar (though they aren't very targeted).

It's beginning to look like web traffic development costs spread on a "bathtub curve" with both low and high quality traffic being the most expensive. For instance, a loyalty program like Cybergold, while useful for developing visitors for a huge candidate pool like Headhunter, is, in the end, very expensive for a single company. Although eyeballs can be purchased for $1 a set (over time), the recruiting website is forced to discern professions from groups who are targeted along leisure interest lines. The traffic fit just isn't always there. Loyalty programs can produce high volumes of low quality traffic.

At the other extreme, visitor acquisition priced at search firm levels begs the "why bother" question.

The market's silly emphasis on Internet Recruiting as a cheap alternative to newspaper advertising makes the real traffic development numbers hard to stomach. Those numbers look like the cost of running a search firm (20% of the first year's salary). We've said many harsh things about the search industry over the years. Never once have we said anything other than "there is a direct correlation between the prices they charge and the value they deliver". Unfortunately, the cost of acquiring candidates is rapidly exceeding their reach.

In summary, the job board in a box offerings are slow to take off because they confront customers with a harsh reality and no solution. In a permanent labor shortage, anyone who promises cheaper is smoking pot. The solution involves owning up to the harsh new reality and delivering the right product.

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Paying Candidates

(October 17, 2000) It's here and we like it. Headhunter.net is offering incentives to candidates for disclosing information about themselves, reading job ads and pawing through email related to their interests. In a partnership with MyPoints.com, Headhunter offers careerists the opportunity to accumulate something like frequent flyer miles. Awards can be earned for use at Hilton, Barnes and Noble, Macy's, Sprint, Red Lobster and a stack of others.

MyPoints.com is one of a number of services that provide a vehicle for maintaining web visitor loyalty and expanding on it. (BTW, the others include Cybergold, clickRewards, Netcentives, RewardsPrograms and ecentives). These companies allow their customers and alliance partners to incent visitors for more information, measurable behavior or repeat visits. With the mypoints program in place, Headhunter now has a way to build loyalty and pay its users for their time.

When labor is scarce, you have to pay it for its time.

The program was so obvious that we should have been able to see it coming. That's why we think it's an absolutely brilliant move. Our hats are off to the folks at headhunter for being the first to figure out how (and why) to pay candidates.

It's just the beginning!

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Foundations Of an SBB (Part 3)

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(October 16, 2000) We're starting to have an interesting package of the characteristics of an SBB (single belly button) vendor in the E-Recruiting space:

• Objectivity
• Ability to Measure Job Board Performance
• Simple Decision Making Design
• Ability to Help Customers Spend (and choose) Effectively
• Dynamic Measurement of Job Board Performance
• Interface with Major Applicant Tracking Systems
• One Step Posting To Major Outlets
• Data Consolidation (resume standardization)
• Website Hosting
• Website Traffic Development

This is enough to justify thinking of a player as a potential SBB. It isn't, however, enough to provide single point accountability in the relationship. Additional things an SBB ought to provide include:

• Recommendations For Applicant Tracking, Workflow and Enterprise Installations
• Copy Editing and Improvement
• Brand Development Assistance
• Systems Integration Assistance
• Print Campaign Integration
• Gateway Services:
  • Assessment
  • Background Checking and Screening
  • Constant Development of New Sources
  • Performance Prediction and Fine Tuning by Source
• Staffing Audits and Improvement Techniques
• Staffing Source Selection
• Unified Billing (Single Invoice)
• Integrated Data Management (from all sources to customer system)

The list makes it clear that most of the current infrastructure players and wannabe's have a long way to go. While an enterprise software provider could, in theory, execute most of these systems, we're more likely to think that the channel marketers of enterprise players are in a better position to deliver real service.

In case we haven't been clear enough, objectivity and a total emphasis on customer effectiveness are at the heart of the SBB play.

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

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