JOHN SUMSER,
E D I T O R
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Required
Reading
and Tools
Resume Databases(Over 60)
Company Job Listings
(Over 1500)
NATSS
Staffing Industry
Employment Mgt
HR Net Gateway
HRSP
NTSA
Personnel Journal
SHRM
DejaNews
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
Everything required
to move from
the Industrial Age
into the
Knowledge Age
has been invented
and will soon
be put into place.
Redgate
Programmability
underlies diversity
which gives
the consumer
more options.
Regis McKenna
website is the
property of IBN
(The Internet Business Network)
You may download
a copy for personal
use. Redistribution
without permission
is strictly
prohibited.
All material on
this site is
© 1995. 1996 by IBN
PR Insight
(January 18, 1997): If you intend to build traffic to your Recruiting site, you are going to have to build relationships with a range of web journalists. Frookee's Tips for Web P.R. from Interactive Age Digital
describes what journalists look for and what is required to catch their attention. We recommend saving this article offline since there is no way to tell how long the link will still be valid.
Getting the Word Out
(January 17, 1997): Our vote for best marketer in Electronic Recruiting goes to Maureen Callahan of E-Span. Ms Callahan tirelessly, persistently and politely churns out the kinds of press releases and correspondence that win E-Span its ever escalating stream of press attention.
The latest missive from her keyboard details the auto-email capabilities recently added to E-Span's suite of services. New features include the ability to search the resume database by email and an "agent" that notifies candidates of potential matches.
Faced with the challenge of announcing one more Email service in an already crowded field, Ms Callahan offered a refreshing "tag" line:
Ironically, the best place to find qualified human beings is inside a machine!
We bet that you'll see this idea popping up in all sorts of media pieces over the next six months.
Regionalization
(January 16, 1997): How many job hunters actually want to know about jobs scattered all over the world? Our take: entry level recent graduates and some of the high dollar contractor set. For the most part, job hunters want to know about openings in their profession in a 25 mile radius from home.
It's the newspapers' game to lose. With an established regional info-brand and embedded credibility, everyone else in the game ought to be riddled with jealousy over the starting point advantage that the local newspaper has. But, as we've mentioned before, the papers get starting position and the handicap of a large organization.
There are rumblings in the industry. Take a look at the recent makeover that the Washington Post gave their Career Post section. Streamlined (and dominated by a photo of Richard Bolles), the opening page is maturing. The real excitement, though, is the job search engine (driven by a company called Junglee). What the Post has been able to accomplish is fairly interesting. They've integrated job ads posted on DC area company sites into their classified ads database. That way, companies get to run ads on their own sites and use the newspaper's engine as a distribution multiplier. The Junglee software spiders the site and reformats the material (something like Net-Temps does with Resumes using Open Text). The ad sales job for the Washington Post is now somewhat streamlined and leaves the customer with lots of flexibility.
One of the really interesting features of the Post's approach is a regionalized look at the marketplace. A visit to the Job View page shows a matrix of Metro DC communities segmented by job specialties. So, if you want a job in Human Resources in Fairfax, VA, you click in that cell of the matrix. A little clumsy (because of the size of the Job View file), it's a very interesting bright spot in the future of Newspaper advertising. Who else, but the regional paper, would be smart enough to know the precise distinctions between say Arlington and Rosylyn or Alexandria and Crystal City. From a National employment perspective, they are blips in the data. From a job hunter's perspective, they are huge differences in neighborhood and commute time.
Tim Rudert is the driving energy behind the Washington Post online classifieds. He's a player to watch and the new search features should tell you why. He's asking the right questions.
Promotion
(January 14, 1997): If you find that you don't understand the technical people who help you with your Internet presence, you are not alone. If you find yourself wondering whether or not they're really helping you, join the club. If you're downright suspicious that they're hurting you, you could be right. Here's an example:
Livingston, a supplier of firewall technology, has a jobs open page as a part of their website. It's nothing to write home about, but we track these things in our Company listings. Recently, Livingston changed most of the URLs on their Website. That's where the fun began.
They have done a very solid job promoting the site and have managed to garner over 1,000 inbound links. Once the website changes had been made, they realized that all 1,000 links were now bad (because they'd changed the addresses). So, they developed a technical solution.
Spider technology (in case you don't know) involves using a "Robot" to run around the web and check for stuff. (Net-Temps uses it very effectively to develop pieces of their resume database.) Livingston developed a spider to cruise the net looking for outdated links. On the surface, this looks like a very interesting idea. Their implementation got us thinking, however.
We've been behind the 8-ball with deadlines and customer requirements for about 60 days now and the maintenance of the website has suffered in the interim. It's made us very aware of the incredible volume of changes to links since we haven't been keeping up with them. The Livingston spider's results began popping up in our mailboxes each Monday with a message titled "AUTOWARN" and a note that said "Please correct these links as soon as you can."
After receiving several, we sent the spider a note (no human contact available) asking to be removed from the list. Their reply included a range of insult that left us stunned.
Technology is easy, business and sound marketing practices are a lot harder. We'd suggest that you take the following lessons from this little story:
- Never let your tech staff send out negative mail without approval. (It's likely to get you written up in a widely read column).
- If you send automated notices, carefully check and recheck the language for any hints of insult.
- Inbound Links to your web page are free ads (sometimes worth thousands of dollars). Treat them as precious resources.
- Make the decision to change URLs on your website very carefully. The change will cost you in traffic. There are simple workarounds that allow you to keep the benefit of existing links.
Promotion
(January 13, 1997): So, you've got your website up, your jobs listed, the database integrated and nothing happens. Most likely, no one's told you that the website is just the groundwork for your online marketing campaign. There are several ways to think about building traffic to your site.
We like Postmaster from NetCreations . For $500, the automated sevice will post your offering to a wide variety of search engines and announcement services.
We're also intrigued by the idea behind a new software package. SitePromoter is supposed to reduce the time required in promoting your site and help you keep track of your promotion efforts. If you want to develop real traffic, you need thousands of incoming links. It's an administrative nightmare. We can't tell you that it works, but , if you're serious about large scale promotion, this may be the tool.
Finally, the big job ad services can help you promote your site. Be sure to include your URL in every ad that you post.
We've Added Daily News
(December 14, 1996): We think you'll like this one. In partnership with Individual, Inc (the news providers), we're now offering a section of daily headlines for recruiters. Check it out.
Recruiters' Internet
Survival Guide
(AUGUST 01, 1996): It's here and we're proud. Staffing Industry Resources has published the Recruiter's Internet Survival Guide by our editor, John Sumser.
Order your copy today.
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