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OUR HOME

But,

The more time we spend on their site, the more we like its goofy brand of friendliness. Job hunters are, as a class, extremely anxious. The cartoonish design helps relax nervous temperaments.

We particularly like their statement of values which reads

Our value system is like our personality. We cannot change it. Our values represent who we are and whom we hire.

• We are fair, honest, and reliable.
• We value and respect the individual.
• We reward performance.
• We are good stewards, managing company resources as we would our own.
• We display teamwork and take ownership of problems until solved.
• We are easy to do business with.
• We listen to our customers, employees, and investors.
• We do what we say

Time will tell whether or not their innovative pricing model (you pay for positioning in their search engine) will pan out as a viable approach. We don't have a crystal ball that is that clear. What we can tell you is that their gregariousness is not an act and that repeated exposure creates a contagious fondness.

Our nit-picky critiques aside, if they can continue to manifest this "personality", they are going to be around a long time.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Demographics

Now, where do you suppose that college educated, late 20s, gay women in San Jose make their living? Yup, they are all involved, in one form or another, in the Silicon Valley industries. How many are motivated by pure compensation? Not many. How many are focused, committed and hard workers? Most. One thing you know about this particular slice of our American pie is that they are used to standing for something. Judging from the complete absence of sloganism on the tee-shirts, their values are quiet and persistent.

Ultimately, audience reach on the web will be all about statistical demographics. You'll be able to target an audience (owned by a content provider) as a way of reaching a very particular slice. The content providers will know all about their audiences and you'll be able to choose from a menu.

It's just not quite there yet. Until we get there, demographic targeting will be an art of approximation with mixed results. When we get there, the price will be much higher. The tradeoff, if you want to experiment today, is in the quality of results. Our bet is that you will always pay market rates for the same set of results. It's just that the results stream will be cleaner.

There are very obvious moves, currently pursued by the most sophisticated online recruiters. They target their advertising to reach various online professional areas. Increasingly, we run across well targeted ads (like last week's ESpan banner in a New York Times Article). We're still waiting for the next step.

Why, we wonder, hasn't anyone wandered out into the office that needs more workers and listened to the music on the radio or looked at the art on the office walls? If the existing staff is doing a great job listening to the Grateful Dead while staring at Dilbert posters, you might think about hunting for additional players on the Dilbert site. Consider buying an ad that is delivered when one of the CD databases receives a query for "Jerry Garcia".

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Where It Starts

The bottom line in deciding which job posting service to use? Measure your results by testing several. Results can vary by industry, profession and phase of the moon. Only you can tell where the right intersection is for the results that you need.

One area in which you can exercise control: The quality of your job postings determines their success.

It's easy to get confused by a title. Job postings are not postings (like you see on internal bulletin boards). They are ads. They need to be written like ads. They are called postings because advertising was a no-no in the early days of the web. That is no longer the case.

In general, the more jobs posted in a database, the lower results. Unless your provider has a clearly articulated traffic development plan, each new job in the database will diminish the effectiveness of all of the others.

It's important to remember that as the net doubles in population, the average experience of users falls by 50%. This will remain true until service is universal. It means that your sophistication is increasing while the average is declining. It's a recipe for bad design. You have to fight to remember this one.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Extending The Definition

"Recruiting is the sales and marketing component of a company's relationship with its employees and potential employees."

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Low Hanging Fruit

Every seasoned, high performing recruiter has a "cache" of high quality candidates and a "secret source" for the hard to fill assignments. Both tools enable the high performer to effortlessly execute a range of searches. The net first effect of web recruiting is to plunder these resources. The tight labor market simply accelerates the process.

By now, most recruiting offices are starting to grasp the fact that the number of hours per placement (HPP) is rising. The web's ability to ferret out the low hanging fruit results in a faster increase in this number (HPP). During the next 18 months, marginal performers (at both the desktop and branch office level) are going to be under a very serious margin pressure. As HPP rises, profitability falls in third party offices. In HR settings, productivity decays.

In an earlier time, the low hanging fruit was distributed, more or less evenly, to all of the players. Now that it is centralized and webified, performance differences between recruiting entities will boil down to competence in the fundamentals...delivering value to candidates over the life cycle.

In what we see as a key move, Net-Temps has begun brokering candidates for its customers. An HR manager can now scan the Net Temps Database for pre screened candidates "owned" by a third party firm. It's a model that's sure to be copied by RON, Dice and TopEchelon. It's a short leap to see the major Recruiting companies join in the process.

This could only happen in a market in which the low hanging fruit was all but picked.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

New: Customized Onsite Consulting

We've recently added Nicky Gordon to our staff. Nicky is a seasoned recruiting research professional and an acclaimed trainer. She will be delivering these customized training programs in which:

• We will explain how to make a clean move to web recruiting as the principal source of your income.
• You will receive the tools needed to search the Internet effectively including A CD with over 30 Software Tools to get you started.
• You get the full benefit of our "Advanced Searching And Sourcing Seminar" without having to leave the office.
• You gain the knowledge needed to use Spiders and Robots, advanced Search Engine Techniques, Candidate Pool Access and the development of Just-In-Time Sourcing techniques. We'll teach you the skills and tools used by visionary recruiters.
• You will get a detailed course of action; we will walk you through the steps involved in going from Job Order to Placement.
• All Examples are done Online specifically tailored for your operation.