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Times have changed

The CareerWeb site no longer indicates any affiliation whatsoever with the Landmark Operation (Landmark's site lists them, however). They've managed to create the Internet's longest disclaimer and seem to be down playing their screening services. Without an emphasis on their pedigree, the service resembles a "plain vanilla" Electronic Recruiting tool. The service is remarkable when seen against the backdrop of its origins. It is unremarkable when compared to the rest of the players in the industry.

Within the newspaper industry, the fundamental problem in delivering a profit stream from online recruiting boils down to a single issue. The level of talent required to mobilize an effective Electronic Recruitment Advertising Sales force violates the internal dynamics of hiring in the classified advertising department.

In this regard, CareerWeb is nothing short of extraordinary in its development history. The service is freestanding and, apparently, profitable. They are branching out beyond their small town Virginia roots and into the Healthcare and international arenas. Their longstanding commitment to generate job listing content from internal sales makes them a standout.

The lack of public accountability for traffic and value delivery makes them just another member of the pack. With services ranging from $5,500 to $7,500 annually, you'd expect that they'd clearly enunciate the performance value of their advertising. After all, no one should understand the relationship between circulation and revenue better than a newspaper operation.

With a fairly limited number of inbound links (278 in Hotbot, 276 in Altavista), we wonder where their traffic comes from.

It's entirely possible that CareerWeb somehow represents a higher level of performance delivery in Recruitment advertising online. You can't tell by looking at their fundamentals and they don't deliver a performance based sales pitch. That said, they've managed to keep the site reasonably readable, easy to navigate and straightforward to use. Their next development step will have to involve traffic development, a clearer focus on results delivery and spidered acquisition of job content from their customers (a la Junglee)

Tidbits

For a quick look at the staffing industry in Europe, check out "What's It Like Across The Pond." The article is a reprint from the Staffing Industry Report which continues to be the must read paper newsletter for anyone interested in the 3rd party recruiting industry.

Bill Vick, CEO of the Recruiter's Online Network (RON), continues to churn out value for his membership. Recently, the service unveiled Job Posting Wizard 2.0. The tool is a desktop database (built around Microsoft Access) that publishes jobs to the RON Posting Engine. From there, RON distributes the job posting to over 100 newsgroups, Yahoo and an assembled network of 400 "premium employment destinations". (That's a code for distribution agreements with Classifieds2000, AdOne and Infoseek). If you're looking to turbocharge your job postings, an annual membership fee of $495 gets you unlimited access.

A cautionary note from Annette Hamilton (at ZDNet) suggests tempering optimism about Web Growth. Although domain names have reached the 2,000,000 point and new users are coming online at the rate of 17,000 per day, the "low hanging fruit" is gone. As growth slows, competition will resolve around performance as it does in any other industry. Take a look at your web efforts and make sure that they can tough it out in a tighter marketplace.

There's a new release of Internet Explorer that fixes a lot of the bugs in version 4.0. We remain unabashed fans of the Windows95/ Explorer / Office 97 suite. If you're doing any online research or recruiting, the combination will seriously lower your administrative costs.

Got A Favorite?

As we gear up for final production of our annual industry survey, we're very interested in knowing if you've got a favorite spot. Please send us your suggestions and reviews.

Recently, we've stumbled on:

• Jobs-Careers Online: ho-hum and hypey
• Automotive Headhunter: slowed down by the sound of a speeding car
• The MRI site (Management Recruiter's International): Somehow, the world's largest can only muster a single page on working with recruiters
• Kennedy Publications (the Red Book): Ads for books. Great example of how not to do it.
• Online Columbia: We were hoping for a job as a money launderer but this Columbia appears to be in Missouri.

While the technology zooms ahead, we're all just beginning to learn how to use it. The first quarter of this year showed an exponential explosion in the number of Recruiting sites coupled with an extraordinary decline in quality. It serves as a solid example of our current view of the Web:
As population doubles, average experience declines by 50%.

Survey Sez...

This issue includes the following articles:

• Do Nothing Recruiting
• Spiders Don't Bite
• The View From 35,000 Feet
• Free Resume Databases
• Useful Spiders
• Recruiting With Mailing Lists and Usenet
• The Summer 1998 Seminar Schedule
• and much, much more

Of course, the downloadable edition has all of the links enabled. You can click to view all of the sites and tools discussed in the newsletter.

If you have a moment, please download it and forward it to a friend. At about 450K, the file should take about 5 minutes to download. Just save it to your hard drive and attach it to a piece of email.

In the center of the newsletter, you'll find our 1998 Electronic Recruiter's Survey. We're excited about the prospect of developing a quantitative view of online recruiters' experience and requirements. If you take the time to fill out the survey and mail it to us, we're offering the following incentives:

• A $100 Discount on our Seminars
• A copy of the Recruiter's Internet Survival Guide (limited to the first 500 responses)
• A copy of the executive summary of the survey (in late September 1998)

If you want to be certain that a paper copy of the newsletter reaches your desk, simply fill out this form.

Advanced Searching and Sourcing Techniques
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.

Seminar Schedule

July 13: San Francisco, CA July 13: Boston, MA July 15: Irvine, CA July 15: New York City July 17: Seattle, WA July 17: Princeton, NJ		July 20: Metro DC July 22: Raleigh, NC July 24: Atlanta, GA July 27: Dallas, TX July 29: St. Louis, MO July 31: Chicago, IL

Graduates receive: