Waiting outside the offices on a fine March morning, we read the historical plaques with interest, admired the huge globe in the lobby, ogled the depression era etchings in the building's face and giggled aloud. We tried to imagine what the throng of newspaper workers in the 50s and 60s might have thought if we'd told them that the future included a scenario in which advertising agencies were the major tenants of the building named for the news industry. We'd guess that they'd think we were crazy in the same way that the current news industry leaders do.

The front face of the building is covered with a mural, etched in the red stone, that shows people in all walks of life engaged in the various and sundry heroic struggles of the time. In those long ago days, we're pretty certain that the newspapers understood that the business was all about reaching those people. The audience was the thing and because the audience had certain characteristics, the industry was organized around them.

Decades of bigness make it impossible for the giant news industries to see the impact of their actions. At the root, large companies are very different than the small companies that dominate the economy or even the mid-size operations that want to be like the bigger players. Having all of that money at your disposal makes do things that entrepreneurs find easy nearly impossible. It's no surprise that the News industry couldn't see the value of the historic place when they moved out. By that time, things were run by managers, not owners.

We finally entered the building to visit the team at HodesIQ. While we didn't get nearly enough time with the team, some things were patently clear. Hodes still understands how to attract and retain entrepreneurial talent. Dwaine Maltais, their VP of e-Recruiting is fresh from the entrepreneurial struggles that are the company that became HodesIQ. Jeremy Shapiro, our favorite from way back, plies the interface development process with solid input from real customers.

Like RecruitUSA, HodesIQ works at being the gateway for recruiters to the myriad opportunities to advertise a job around the internet. With embedded media planning and quantitative measurement of results, the team is assembling enough data to start making real world predictions about the behavior of this media outlet vs that one.

As we all are, the HodesIQ team is cleaning up from the worst advertising year in a long time. They've used the time and energy to refine and improve the core offering which is well worth a demo. The coherent interface and choice management systems are the equal of anything currently available. HodesIQ is clearly another long term survivor.

And they inhabit the most ironic quarters of anyone in the business.

 -John Sumser

Workstream Recruiting Systems - Make the right choice!