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We've often wondered about the application of net-tools to the problem. With CareerCentral's affiliate program (see last week's issue), the question of paying for resumes (and the coming price war) was broached. The rumors are that one or two of the large boards are about to begin paying a $500 finder's fee for resumes that result in placements. It looks to us like a real revolution in Recruiting is about to rush over the industry...an actual way to harness the energy of referral programs.

The reason for this article is not to trumpet the arrival of resume buying price wars. We're relatively sure that you know what we think is about to happen. Rather, we want to tell you about a remarkable tool we reviewed yesterday. We think you should jump up and get on board before your competitors do.

ITTA (who are one of our sponsors) have released the latest version of their ProRecruiter product. Now, we'll grant you that IT-TA has managed to build the single ugliest website in the business. (We often tell them that one of their office cats might do a better job on the graphics.) But, the technology is powerfully enhancing the Recruiting results of their customers. Resume-Robot, an ever refined tool, is now capable of performing those time intensive subscription database searches and pulling the results into in-house Recruiting databases.

If all they did was beef up the Robot, we wouldn't have written about it. We tend to hold our customers to a higher standard than free press for a software revision. Remember our Kudzu story?

The real revolution is a component of their offering called Job Display. Job Display is an application that allows small websites to run a portion of ITTA's job database as content on their pages. A small site simply delivers demographic information, places the application in their page and has instant job listings. The site gets a (significant) percentage of banner advertising revenue. IT-TA currently has over 200 participating websites and the number is growing geometrically each day. Job boards in these tiny niches are exactly what targeted Recruiting is about and ProRecruiter offers its customers the ability to target banners and ads to the nichey little sites. It's a powerful alternative to the grandiose job board networks focused on the bigger is better (not) approach.

So, you're asking yourself, how does this make a referral program? The same tool can be used to deliver job ads to employee web pages. By offering the same payments as the existing referral program (usually $3,000 to $10,000 per hire), ITTA has single-handedly allowed its customers the ability to deploy web based employee referral programs nearly overnight. Since each resume is tagged in the submission process (and accounting is managed by ITTA), these programs are taking off.

Several of the beta customers report employee participation in the 20% range. Imagine if 20% of your employees were effectively harnessed as part of the Recruiting team! The concept is mind-blowing. All we can say is "Get your employees on board before some other recruiting operation starts to pay them to refer your internal team." We can easily imagine an explosion of employer sponsored web pages as the direct result of web employee referral programs.

In a single stroke, ITTA has given employers an extremely useful competitive weapon. Get an account and get started. And, do look past the graphics.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Video Interviewing

As you know, we're still in the depths of sorting out our local usage of video (more in an upcoming column). Given the level of frustration we've experienced with the process, we had a jaded view of SearchLINC's potential as we were introduced to the subject. We walked away from our initial encounter more than a little enthusiastic about the future of videoconferencing in our industry.

Any one who has used most contemporary video communications tools understands the other-worldly experience that you expect. Unless you have access to very fast (satellite) communications, the process often resembles a badly dubbed Godzilla flick. The lips and bodies move and then the words come out. Known in the industry as latency, the problem is the key technical hurdle in online videoconferencing. Once you start assuming that your conversation partner is really a bad actor in a low budget film, the credibility leaves the relationship. High latency (a long gap between video and audio) is useless.

It turns out that the tolerances are quite tight. A lag of more than 5 milliseconds (tiny little increments of time,a millisecond is a thousandth of a second) is noticeable. Although the SearchLINC system has an extremely low level of latency, it was apparent in the early moments of the conversation.

But, as the conversation with the person in Dallas took shape, the effects of latency diminished into nothingness. The SearchLINC tool was able to facilitate a long distance conversation with all of the body language and appearance cues with no obvious distortion from the medium. Overall, we found the SearchLINC system to be a useful addition to the Recruiting arsenal.

The parent company, VirtuaLinc has established a network of visit-able sites in Radisson Hotels around the country. According to their sales team, a video-conference facility will be within one hour of 85% of the workforce by year's end. This raises the possibility of widespread decreases in time to hire and travel costs for SearchLINC customers.

Given technical reality, SearchLINC faces an interesting problem. Even though the system works, getting people to use it requires that the company find a way to give potential customers a realistic experience of the tool in use. In our offices, we've been toying with much simpler tools. While we'd love to work the kinks out of our system, there's nobody to talk to. SearchLINC faces a market challenge similar to selling the first telephone.

If it's any help, they get our vote. The system works and the results feel like a real live face to face conversation.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

How To Do It

You can tell the engineers from the managers and marketing folks. Ties vs no ties; rumpled with cell phones on their belts vs suit coat disguising the cell phone on the belt. They come in shifts with the engineers arriving early and the managers arriving fashionably late. Some come for competitive intelligence; some as a raise momentum strategy and some to look for the next gig.

The booths range from single man operations to extraordinary gimmicks. NEC's approach included a talking robot who aggressively wandered into the crowd grabbing likely suspects and dragging them over to a recruiter. The hipper Internet companies were swarmed while the companies who have lost momentum were somewhat underattended. The buzz was high.

Westech has been at this a very long time (their roots are in the early 80s). They know how to throw one of these shows. The Post-show event, a dinner for Recruiters, Westech staff and some advertising account execs was crowded and upbeat. The banquet hall, with seating for about 750 was nearly full. A standup comedian provided a respite from the day of hard work.

It's no surprise that Westech is such a powerhouse in Silicon Valley. They simply know how to deliver customer service. Account managers work the booths from the show floor, making sure that their customers have everything they need (really different from the typical trade show where the vendors are completely ignored). The post show dinner provides an opportunity to cement relationships.

We walked away impressed and overwhelmed. If you want to see the recruiting game in full swing, put a Westech Job Fair on your calendar.

Lower Common Denominator

Recently, we watched a focus group of new Recruiters tackle a series of online job boards. (Focus groups are all the rage in front end design these days even though they don't seem to add all that much to the process.) There were about a dozen Recruiters who had been brought together to test various aspects of a new Recruiting interface. The company tried to balance the group by providing 6 Recruiters of varying ages who had no web experience with another 6 who had varying degrees of web experience. The results were comical.

One of the options in the new interface asked Recruiters to hold down the "CTRL" key while clicking a mouse. Two of the dozen (one in the "experienced" group) held down the C, T, R, and L keys (instead of the "control" key). Besides the silly hand contortions (try to hold all 4 and click your mouse), a more serious point emerged.

As we get more sophisticated in our web usage, we tend to take a lot of the little things for granted. Many new users have not climbed the learning curve along with us. The other side of Sumser's law is "As the median experience of a new user declines, your relative level of experience grows exponentially." It is critical that you learn to account for the fact that each day you gain additional experience that increasingly distances you from the average user.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

What's Up?

Along the road to publishing this edition of the print newsletter, we've undergone some changes here at IBN.

After two solid years of bouncing around the North American continent delivering classroom seminars, a couple of simple things dawned on us. First of all, it became increasingly clear that many job boards were going to be delivering free seminars as a part of their marketing strategy. It's a natural and important evolution. Internet Recruiting tools currently require a heavy dose of education before customers can effectively use them. Secondly, it became clear to us that classrooms are not effective in delivering the sorts of advanced techniques that we've pioneered.

As a result, we've split our training product line into two separate components. For the past couple of months, you've probably noticed the piece at the bottom of this page offering our onsite individualized training. By focusing on the specific needs of a specific company, we've been able to leave our customers glowing, effective and ready to move full tilt into the online recruiting game. We're convinced that this customized approach is a necessary part of building a solid online recruiting team. With a dozen, of these engagements under our belts, we can assure you that our customers end up extremely satisfied.

In the print newsletter, we're announcing the second part of our training initiative. Seminar In A Box, our CD based training program, will begin shipping on June 1, 1999. The idea is simple. Rather than taking a full day out of the workplace to digest relatively foreign ideas, we're building a day long training program that can be constantly reviewed by all of the people in an office. The courseware is built around our day long Advanced Searching and Sourcing Techniques seminar and includes video, text, testing and a completion certificate.

We are convinced that solid Electronic Recruiting can only happen in a work environment that shares a base level of competence. With a CD based training program, the workforce can be trained during slack hours. Because the material is reusable and repeatable, it's now possible to create a solid foundation of expertise within a company. We're proud of the fact that we're the first (as usual) to use the technology to reduce costs, increase benefits and further expand the capabilities of our customers.

We're offering the course at $295 for prepublication orders (through June 1, 1999). After that point, the package will sell for $395. Given the fact that similar seminars, held in hotel classrooms away from the workplace, retail for $995 per person (and more), we're sure that you'll agree that the offering is a bargain.

You can learn more about Seminar in a Box and get a copy of the order form by downloading the print newsletter. It's a great way to bring your entire office up the learning curve.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Customized Onsite Consulting

We've recently added Nicky Gordon to our staff. Nicki is a seasoned recruiting research professional and an acclaimed trainer with extensive hands-on experience solving sourcing problems with the Internet. 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 prospective candidates
• 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.