No more. Ask any IT Recruiter. Potential candidates, inundated with queries and phone calls are not only becoming reluctant participants, they're actually hanging up on Recruiters. Like any supply and demand equation, since the balance has shifted to favor candidates, the rules have changed.

This change in the balance of power has occurred in parallel with the evolution of the Web as a recruiting tool. That's really quite a remarkable thing. The core of effective web commerce and the techniques required for effective recruiting in a tight market are remarkably similar. They both involve an increased awareness and understanding of the candidate or end user.

Usability testing is the discipline used to make sure that a product (software, usually) is easy to use. As the web has grown in influence (recent studies suggest that traffic still doubles every 100 days), clear advantages have been won by operations with easy to use interfaces and processes. They don't happen by accident.

Your job posting and website are the first impressions a candidate has of your operation. With all of the competition for his or her attention, you had better be squarely focused on making sure that your site is "usable". The only way to effectively accomplish this is through the use of usability testing. You have to get a representative sample of your intended audience to give solid feedback on your work.

The payback from your web efforts can be dramatically improved with a short test. Invite some users and have them tear the thing apart. Here's a great article on the subject

Tax Day

Check out the current article on Job Sites in Internet World.

Interface design problems aside, the Resume Robot continues to generate rave reviews for its nightly search of the web. Part of ITTA's suite of tools (the Proactive Recruiter), Resume Robot finds the latest resumes and dumps them on your desktop each day.

The site features a short tutorial called "What Is A Green Card." The company, Immigration Specialties, Inc. specializes in processing H-1B visas and Immigrant visas (green cards) for IT professionals. They also offer immigration information updates. Email info@immspec.com and ask for their H1-B Update and Immigration News Updates.

Tidbits

Suskind's Immigration Bulletin continues to be the best source for up to date info on changes in immigration policy. Subscribe by sending email to
visalaw-request@listserv.telalink.net
with the words
subscribe your email address (ie subscribe youknowwho@htmail.com)
in the body of the email.

The current issue includes details of processing times for various visa documents in each of the major processing centers, news about policy changes and a pointer to Embassies on the Web -- a key resource if you ever need to contact an Embassy.

You're in the middle of a frustrating meeting and the tears are just below the surface. What do you do? How do you hold them back? What if you do lose it? The IVillage Career Counselor deals with these sorts of issues. While it's probably great for job hunter traffic, it might not be as useful for recruiters.

Congratulations to Junglee. Upside Magazine named Junglee one of the "Hottest 100 Private Companies".

The article describes Junglee as

Software that forms relational databases from information on the Internet, intranets, and extranets. Junglee develops Virtual Database (VDB) Technology, a patent-pending data integration technology that turns a network (Internet, intranet or extranet) into a relational database. Junglee's VDB Server V2.0, to be released second quarter 1998, will let businesses aggregate Web data into enterprise applications, thus making business processes and decisions more efficient.

The bottom line with Junglee? If you are an online recruiting service and not giving your customers access to Junglee Technology, you're headed down the drain. Junglee helps online recruiters put their resources and energy where they belong...in recruiting, not in filling out silly forms one at a time. If you are a recruiter and still pay people to post to various services, get on the phone with your advertising providers. They're wasting your time and money.

A number of our other favorites, Including Career Builder, The Atlanta Computer Jobs Store, Northern Light and Classifieds2000 made the companies to watch list.

If you want a solid understanding of the overall direction of the web, check out the Upside Article in its entirety.

Junglee is an early application of XML. We'll be filling you in on this exciting new development. For the time being, you might want to review the Junglee background materials on the subject.

Recruiting in the web business? Checkout Red Herring's Headcount. It's a blow by blow description of reorganizations and changes in the industry.

There's an alert out that suggests that upgrading 3Com Modems may destroy them. The alert is on BugNet ("The Global Authority on PC Bugs and Fixes"), a great service to bookmark.

Talk about niche-y. The Environmental Jobs Home Page offers free job listings (and a tiny resume database) for the Bio-remediation (Hazardous cleanup) industry. Sponsorship (at $750/year) gets you reduced hassle when posting. In a pinch, it might be worth using. We're still fully convinced that free job posting sites cost you more than they save. They're usually not useful recruiting tools.

Calling itself "The Easiest Job Site On The Web", Adsite flunks our test. Although we could easily figure out how to pay to advertise, we couldn't easily find the jobs and resumes. Color us stupid.

These knuckleheads have decided that the way to do online ads is to scan the copy from their monthly magazine (College Recruiter). For $300, they'll give you an ad that can't be quickly downloaded for a month. For $585, they'll run it in their magazine for a quarter and give you the online ad free. This is a great example of how to reduce your effectiveness instantly.

We have no idea why they call themselves the "easiest".

New Thinking

The pieces come by email on Sunday Nights. You can subscribe by sending a piece of email to
newthinking-request@nua.ie

with the word subscribe in the body of the message. Archives of prior essays are available at http://www.nua.ie/NewThinking/Archives/index.html.

Here's a recent sample:

THE YEAR 2001 PROBLEM

The solution to the Year 2001 problem involves changing the clock in the brain. It was the Year 2001 problem that caused the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. Back in ancient times (the 1950/60s), people could not imagine a year beginning with '20.' Programmers, seeking to save valuable memory, wrote '66' instead of 1966. All well and good in the 20th Century. However, when 2000 arrives, unless the computers with the Y2K problem are fixed, they will think they've arrived at 1900.

This simple mistake, which is taking untold millions to fix, is a reflection of what I would like to call the 'Year 2001 Problem.' The new millennium may arrive, but many of us will continue to live in the old one.

Some reading this will ask: What millennium? If you are in China or the Middle East, there is no new millennium up ahead. True. However, this arbitrary new century and new millennium does in fact hail and signal a new age - The Digital Age.

The Digital Age may in fact have emerged with the invention of the computer in the 1940s. It truly began to hit home in the 1980s with the development of the PC. It entered public consciousness with the popularization of the World Wide Web in the 1990s.

It is a coincidence, certainly, but the millennium - in the West anyhow - becomes a focus and icon for The Digital Age and all its implications.

The world is changing faster than our sense of time can measure. Our minds - particularly those of older generations - are going increasingly slow. We need to change the clock in our brain. We need to switch from a mechanical Industrial Age device to a Digital Age time-keeper.

And with our new perspective on time we need also a new perspective on thinking. We need to learn how to learn again. We need to rekindle our sense of the inquisitive. We need to re-open the doors of the imagination. We need to start from a position that everything we know is wrong.

Are you afraid?

You have every right to be. Because if you feel no fear about this need for change, then either you are very, very lucky, or else you do not understand the true extent of the change involved.

Are you paralyzed by fear?

You should not be. Unless your mechanical clock is so embedded and rusted in your head, this rapid change can be managed. In the whirlwind of happenings, keep in mind that when everything settles, although things will have been moved about incredibly, the fundamentals will still remain basically the same.

We are humans. We live and die by communication and relationships. We will show as much love, fear, ambition, greed and generosity in the Digital Age as we have shown in the Industrial Age. The expression of these needs, wants and desires may be somewhat different, but the human core will remain the same for quite a while yet.

As I have said before, the future is not about opening mines. The future is about opening minds. We need 2001 thinking. And beyond (of course).

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: Santa Clara, CA 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.