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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


It's better to
do a few things
really well than
than to do
a lot of things
badly.
If you can't
make the necessary
commitments of
time and energy
to your
electronic
marketing
efforts
scale back
your plan.
John Sumser




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Targeted Traffic
(February 16, 2001, 2000) For al of the hullabaloo, the business of making your corporate website deliver the candidates you want is still a black art. You've got to cover the basics, of course. The right meta-tags, link development programs, ongoing novelty, value for the visitor and the right advertising can contribute to the momentum. But, if you are like most folks charged with the problem, at the end of the day, you are left with the nagging feeling that it isn't working as well as it might.

Enter Salary.com.

You may not know this, but salary.com is the third or fourth largest Career website based on traffic. With 18.9 Million page views from 2.4 Million visitors in January alone, the Salary.com website rivals all of the big names in the game. Since they do not compete with the job boards (who are often their partners), they find themselves with an abundance of traffic.

When a visitors goes to the Salary.com website, she identifies herself by position description and zip code. In order to deliver truly relevant compensation information, this is the core data collected by the website. That means that Salary.com knows the intersection of Geography, position and salary for each visitor.

Take a good close look at their advertising options.

Candidate Sourcing allows you to specify both geography and position in an advertising purchase. Salary.com will guarantee the delivery of ten qualified candidates (right to a very specific URL, a job posting on your site, for instance) or a continuous flow over time. In other words, Salary.com offers a method for purchasing the precise traffic that you need to make the corporate jobsite work.

Like may innovations in our industry, this one is just enough ahead of its time to provide extremely powerful value to companies that become early adopters. We expect the idea to catch on very rapidly and imagine that Salary.com will be one of the big winners in 2001.

We'll be following their evolution closely, so stay tuned.

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Things Have Changed


(February 15, 2001, 2000) In our supposedly slowing economy, unemployment claims dropped while the unemployment rate is still 4.2% nationally. We're certain that we remember a thirty year period during which 4.2% was thought impossible. Certainly, the notion that unemployment claims would drop during a downturn is relatively unprecedented.

We hardly believe that recession has been eliminated or that the economic cycle has been banished to oblivion. But, the permanent generational labor shortage changes things in a profound way. In non-manufacturing sectors, the recently laid-off are being quickly hired with no observable economic loss.

The manufacturing sectors are another thing entirely. Factories are the last place in which physical inventory has a higher value than intellectual inventory. Traditional notions of business cycle and downturn still apply in this sector. But, it's important to understand that Manufacturing is now less than 15% of our economy.

In Silicon Valley, where negative unemployment is the norm, we're hearing an interesting tune. "If layoffs continue at this pace for the next three years", they say. "we'll reach positive unemployment for the first time in five years." The very concept of negative unemployment is currently foreign to the ears of a Recruiter in an industrial area.

The web is important because it is a two way communications system. Until now, almost all of the applications and systems we've developed in this industry are replicas of older approaches moved over to the web. It isn't going to last much longer.

The difference between an inventory of human capital and an inventory of physical goods is that the human capital has many minds of its own. Rather than bar codes (the next wave of old generation stuff about to be launched by "assessment" firms), human capital communicates independently. You have a relationship with Human Capital. You count and assess physical items.

Companies that move forward with real relationship systems will have an advantage over the firms that treat their Human Capital like physical assets. Relationship inventory can quickly adapt to changing circumstances. Physical inventory just sits there waiting to be sold.

There is still some chance that the major news media, hungry for a simplistic horror story, will discover that things have changed. Whether they do or not, moving your Human Capital Management strategy another step forward is increasingly critical.

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Love and Recruiting


(February 14, 2001, 2000) The love affair between Hire.com and the music community in Austin is as close to a Valentine's day story as we'll get. Housed in Willie Nelson's old Opera House, the company is profoundly committed to being a part of the town, its history and its betterment. In Internet businesses, it's very surprising to find strong regional flavor at the heart of an enterprise.

We think that demonstrating a firm grasp on a region's real issues is a critical component of expanding into the various local labor markets. Hire.com demonstrates, with its singular focus on things Austin, that being rooted in a place is an essential part of a national strategy.

At first, that seems like a huge contradiction in terms. How does being solidly regional prepare you for national markets? Shouldn't a regional bias limit broad expansion?

The Hire.com case is worth exploring fully.

Many of the staff of the company (including Doug Miller, the Marketing Manager) have solid ties to the music community. (Doug is often accused of being the best blues harmonica player in town). The company routinely sponsors events and contributes to the SIMS foundation, a local non-profit health care for musicians organization. The Austin scene, from bat watching to honest Mexican food is a part of any visit to the company or any conversation on the road. There's never any question about where the heart of the company is.

We think that this prepares Hire.com to build a National operation rooted in the notion that "all hiring is local". It's not just a local presence, it's really local with deep involvement in the community and its causes. A local hiring operation is not a bunch of sharecroppers who move into town for the next crop. Rather, local operations require connection, compassion and involvement. Understanding this is the critical part of building a national network of regional operations.

We've agreed with the folks at Hire.com (because we think they're on the right track and that its a good cause) to help them with a project for the SIMS foundation. If you take a look at their website, you'll see a large button promoting a new recording by a local band called "Double Trouble". A dollar from each sale goes directly to the SIMS foundation. The album itself is another Austin story featuring a great group of local musicians who made the recording for the love of the opportunity. You'll recognize a number of the players (from Willie Nelson to Dr. John). We'll be donating advertising to the cause.

While you're thinking about the relationship between strong local roots and national success, please give those musicians in Austin a Valentine's day gift and purchase the CD. You'll get an opportunity to give, receive and ponder whether a similar relationship with the community would strengthen your operations (and recruiting effectiveness). It might even be an opportunity to ask one of your peers about the relationship between love and recruiting.

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Whose Responsibility Is It?

(February 13, 2001)

Over the past year, we've been fairly inspired by last year's Chief Talent Officer (CTO) Conference. We've tried to detail the roles, responsibilities and processes of the job. The 2001 Electronic Recruiting Index is, we think, the first place in which the roles and responsibilities are clearly articulated. (Download a copy of the executive summary and order a copy today.)

We've sniped at more than a few HR VPs who claimed that they could not get traction because their CEO wasn't behind them. We occasionally offer a copy of The Prince or Siu's The Craft Of Power. Fundamental changes can be brought about internally but they require aggressive leadership with little sensitivity for personal risk.

Then, of course, there are the leaders who get it.

In the effort to drive change, it must seem like no one could possibly meet our leadership standards. While far from the truth, we do believe that a clear understanding of the real value of Human Capital is a critical component of the new mindset. Solid examples are hard to come by.

Today. we'd like you to take a couple of minutes to read a speech given by Bill Marriott (CEO of Marriott Hotels) last fall. In a small excerpt, Mr. Marriott says:

Some may view the labor shortage as a passing problem, the consequence of a hot economy. But I am convinced the challenge of recruitment and retention of the best talent -- will be with us for at least another 10-15 years.

Boom times come and go. Labor markets expand and contract. But more lasting forces are converging today to permanently elevate the premium on human capital. It is now the central ingredient of economic output. Workers' minds and attitudes are as important to satisfied customers as materials and machines used to be.

And thus recruitment and retention are now indispensable skills across every industry, from hospitality to high-tech.

Although we carry a high-tech bias (it's a part of living in the Bay Area), it wasn't a complete surprise to see a solid leader in the hotel business talking about Human Capital. After all, like software, recruiting, engineering, legal, medical and other knowledge professions, the hotel business is the people who work there. Quality, as a function of customer experience, is directly caused by the people of non-manufacturing or agricultural businesses.

While the VP of HR in Marriott is a particularly lucky person to have this sort of backing, we thought you might find that forwarding a copy of this speech to your front office helps you turn the tide.

We've taken the liberty of archiving a copy of the speech for the years after it leaves the Marriott vaults.

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Trend 4: Continued Rumors Of Consolidation


(February 12, 2001)

Spiked by this year's acquisition of CareerBuilder (by CareerPath) and CareerMosaic (by Headhunter.net) and last year's acquisition of DICE (by Earthweb, the public company), dire forecasts of a draconian consolidation continued to fuel the down moments of industry gossip. Monster's recent purchase of JobTrak kept the fires burning. The HotJobs purchase of Resumix seemed to indicate that the trend was spreading beyond the job board industry. Most often, the repeaters of this tidbit of industry talk were the hopeful many who wished that their job board(s) would be acquired.

Peeled back from the hype, however, another story emerges. Today, as always, one company buys another for fit, function or some other obvious purpose. HotJobs needed the revenue (they had an applicant tracking system). Earthweb needed a job board for revenue purposes. Hodes was trying to reclaim market credibility (as an objective middleman) in its sale of CareerMosaic. Monster, busily trying to flesh out its market niches, couldn't resist the JobTrak fit. The CareerBuilder purchase was a quiet way to acknowledge the complete failure of CareerPath (after many tens of millions of dollars). Soon after the transaction, the new entity decided to "keep the CareerBuilder management team" and close the CareerPath Offices. Each was a simple transaction that contributed little evidence that the overall industry is merging together.

In fact, we believe that the industry will continue to fragment for the following reasons:

    1.   A Job Board can be profitably executed by a team of four and generate about $1Million in annual billings.
    2.   No historical entity has been able to carry off more than four percent of the overall market.
    3.   There are no meaningful barriers to entry in the business in spite of what the entrepreneurs are telling their funders.
    4.   Like other markets with consumer front ends, the top of the market can have as many as a dozen recognized brands.
    5.   The low end of the business (the low 90%) is a microniche relationship endeavor best suited to small teams.

*Excerpt from the 24 Trends In Electronic Recruiting.

- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

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