link:http://www.careermosaic.com
(clicking will show you the results of the search, an impressive 19,352 inbound links)

link:http://www.yourcompany'sURL

When you change your site's structure, you invalidate these links. So, as we said yesterday, be sure that you include your traffic sources as a component of any redesign strategy.

Links

Because our site contains a plethora of links, we're on the receiving end of a lot of grumpy email from people who visit the site and find links that no longer work. We get almost as much mail from people who have changed their URLs and want our site to reflect the changes. While we understand the confusion about responsibility on the part of our visitors, we are constantly amazed by the pseudo-sophisticates who pose as web marketers.

How do links change?

Generally, some genius (a new manager or webmaster) inherits a website designed by his or her predecessor. In other cases, it's a detached boss who has just had a brainstorm. However the culprit is positioned in the organization, the result is predictable. In order to "make a mark", the website is overhauled without regard to the traffic that already visits and bookmarks the site. Clever new addresses are established; groovy new images are added, the look and feel is modified and the content changes. Unfortunately, most supposed marketers and designers don't understand that links create traffic infrastructure. So, the old URLs (and all of the customers and friends who have bookmarked or pointed to the site) are abandoned.

Throwing away customers and alliances is not a good idea in any medium. That is, however, just what happens when links are changed without regard to the inbound links that create traffic.

Fixing the problem at the source is quite simple. At the easiest, a simple tag called a redirect can be added to the old URL. The potential visitor will be whisked right off to the new page. More sophisticated solutions (server redirects) will take a potential prospect to a designated destination.

Instead, unsophisticated web developers try a different tactic. They send email to the people who had links pointing to the old URL and ask them to fix it. Instead of taking responsibility and making a twenty minute fix, they ask their (often hundreds) of allies to do individual work. The term "bonehead" often comes to mind. They multiply the work involved by asking everyone else to do it. It does have the nice side effect of creating more billable hours for them.

We don't make those changes on our site. It's not our job. We don't have the time or resources to do work just because someone else (a non-paying customer) had a brainstorm. The search engines don't, Yahoo doesn't. While inexperienced users get a little frustrated, we know that the embarrassment really accrues at the site that the link points out. Savvy surfers will quickly understand that site X isn't sophisticated enough to care about their customers.

The moral of this rant? Before you go changing your website, find out where the inbound links to the site are. Consider them in your design and marketing. If you're going to destroy traffic from a particular site to yours, do it consciously.

EmergIT II

Our initial look at their strategy focused exclusively on the website itself. We were extremely surprised by the quality of the hard copy magazine. Bassett Laudi shows their real commitment to this process by delivering a useful and attractive periodical.

The second issue of EmergIT has gone to press. The material is available on their website. (Of course, we think that the most important article is an interview with John Sumser called Recruiting Eyeballs.) But take a look at these key articles:

• The Way We Communicate Has Changed - BBDO, ICE and Taaz talk about creativity, strategy, people and technology.
• The New Investor - Someday, Everybody will trade the E-Trade Way!
• Recruiting Eyeballs - Are the Right Visitors Getting to Your Website?
• An Iron-Clad E-Commerce Solution - Ironside Technologies Builds on a Strong Foundation.
• Many IT Professionals are making the move to Free Agent status - should you?
• Setting up Shop - What you need to know before you incorporate.
• Screaming Expertise - Consultants who know IT.
• Exploring the Entrepreneurial Spirit - The Beta Release of a New Java Product.
• Sky-High Ambitions - Choosing a Start-up Over the Big Guns.
• Free Agents Speak - What Canadian Contractors Think About Their New Found Freedom.

The strategy itself is not complex and can (and should) be executed by anyone wishing to retain their recruiting effectiveness over the next five years. Complexity and commitment enter the equation at the point that you begin to execute the strategy. Watch Bassett - Laudi. They're setting the model for 21st Century Recruiting.

Tidbits

• More companies are paying bonuses and incentives for IT professionals -- 77% this year as compared to 30% last year. However, rather than tying bonuses to individual contributions or team success, as META Group recommends, most companies base incentives on overall corporate performance
• As the IT labor shortage and Y2K projects continue to drain company resources, many organizations have had to pull back on their education and training offerings. According to META Group, only 43% of companies surveyed provided tuition reimbursement in 1997, down from 86% in 1996. Additionally, only 48% provided professional seminars or formal in-house training, down from 63% the previous year

Bookmark the Alexander Hamilton Institute's Employment Law Resource Center. We particularly enjoyed this bit on "Office Politics" from the Problem Solvers Section.

Here are some tips for dealing with the office grapevine.

• Listen to whatever is being said without getting too emotional or losing your temper. You don't know what message will get sent back through the grapevine.
• If the information is accurate, don't go on a witch hunt to find the leak. You can't close the grapevine down, but you can put a crimp in access to it.
• If the information is totally false, don't make a public denouncement. Nothing cuts a grapevine deeper than a completely false story.
• Pump as much accurate information into the system as you possibly can. Prevent rumors by consistently leveling with employees. Correct false rumors immediately. Communicate in person whenever you can. Memos, e-mail messages, and comments that get passed through numerous people are usually wide open to interpretation.
• Don't try to kill the grapevine. It's human nature for people to want to exchange "inside information" about what's happening in the office. Too many attempts to manage the flow of information will make employees suspect you're covering something up.

Westech/VJF

Westech Career Expo (Virtual Job Fair), an outgrowth of Silicon Valley's wildly successful Hi-Tech Careers Magazine and Career Fairs, joins the rest of the substantial players in beginning to publish their blow by blow statistics.

The service has matured substantially since we last visited them. They've added dramatic search capabilities and a partnership with Junglee. (Junglee is the service that allows a site like VJF to have ads lifted directly from your site and posted on theirs. It's sometimes called "do-nothing recruiting") Their once heavy graphics have been toned down. The site's emphasis has been squarely focused on minimizing the distance between an opportunity and a candidate. They appear to understand that, from a candidate's perspective, the best site is the one that gets you off the web the fastest.

As for their statistics, VJF claims:

• resumes per month per job: 9.33
• hits per job per month: 1,452
• unique hosts per job per month: 56.33

We received this interesting resume for a web savvy recruiter in the Boston area.

Seminar I: Management, Strategies and Tactics
Don't jump on the bandwagon to be cool. Don't use technology without a clear view of the payback. This intense seminar addresses the questions any manager, owner or director should ask before continuing to invest in Electronic Recruiting. It is designed for owners, managers and section heads. We're offering it in 3 cities this Spring.

Schedule For Seminar I

April 29: San Francisco		May 12: New York City May 15: Chicago, IL

Seminar II: Advanced Searching and Sourcing
Learn how to mine the data fields. This one day presentation covers spidering, flipping, and depth searching...all of the tools required to unearth the passive candidate. The course includes a A CD Chock-Full Of Net Software and Tools.

Schedule For Seminar II

May 01: San Francisco May 04: Chicago, IL May 06: Denver, CO May 06: Columbus, OH May 08: Toronto, ON May 11: New York, NY		May 13: Austin, TX May 15: Atlanta, GA May 18: Irvine, CA May 18: Princeton, NJ May 20: Boston, MA May 20: Seattle, WA

Graduates receive:

Enroll today, seats are still available. There is a discount available for early registrations. The seminars have a retail price of $995. If your payment is received by April 15, there is a $150 discount. For Payments received by May 1, the savings is $100. We offer an additional discount of $100 for each member in a group of 2 or more.

You can learn more about the seminars, register online or call us at the office (415.377.2255 or 800-358-2278) to register.