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Myjobsearch.com is different from other career sites in that it does not just list positions or resumes. Rather, it organizes the entire online employment sphere for the convenience of job seekers.

140,000 Links. And it's still very, very early in the game.

While we appreciate the urge to be the biggest, there's much more to the Online Employment scene than having the most traffic. By our count, there are over 1,000,000 entities of one form or another who will make a play of some sort in the Internet "space". Being the largest is like being the Wal-Mart, an interesting position but hardly the whole ball of wax.

Profitability, in proportion to size, is a much more important vector.

Although the business model at MyJobSearch is unclear (absent from the website, actually), the company has recently invested money in Inflight Airline advertising. Our guess is that they have "display advertising" in their future, once the traffic is built.

The work of keeping track of the emerging employment scene is not a small task. We welcome MyJobSearch into our world.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

HR Is A Profit Center

Each year, as a part of marketing, Caldwell runs two very interesting programs. Canada's CEO of the Year and the Top 40 Under 40, two widely followed awards, are sponsored each year by a nest of Canadian Companies under Caldwell's direction. All operating costs are offset, Caldwell's network is solidly refreshed, their continued market dominance is assured and the money rolls in.

It's a fun and lucrative operation. (The two words are not mutually exclusive.) The simple idea is that every item that adds value should be billed as such. We applaud that kind of thinking. It's exactly why we admire their operation.

As the labor shortage relentlessly pressures HR Departments to change into a non-administrative, outward focused operation, we believe that Companies like Caldwell can be seen as role models. After all, why shouldn't HR be run as a profitable business? At the very least, Recruiting ought to be held accountable to margin targets.

At its very best, internal Recruiting produces a huge amount of waste. For every 10 candidates who make it through screening, one is selected. The remainder of the group has already been processed. Why not recoup the investment. Simply because Candidate X was not chosen by hiring manager Y is not an indication of a failure on Candidate X's part. Today, the investment of time and resources is left on the floor, neglected.

Everyone is having trouble finding qualified candidates. It's very easy to imagine a highly profitable recycling business in which an HR department offers prescreened candidates to other HR Departments, recouping their investment and making a profit to be applied against operations.

We're betting, in fact, that several of the new entrants in the Job Board Game will actually be from HR. Why not? The advertising agencies are buying media companies. The media companies are buying Executive Search Firms. The Headhunters are buying outsourcing contracts. From where we sit, everything is in play.

Everyone in our industry understands the traditional credibility problems that HR has inside the organization. It's at the root of long sales cycles. Several progressive companies have already developed in house temporary agencies. Why not go the full distance and require them to make money on the open market?

Exposure to the rigors of the market would do everyone good.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Juan Beeelion Dollars

For instance, Baltimore's WBFF (BiffTV, a small Fox TV Station) is one of the few television operations with an observable job board. Ultimately this will change. The WBFF job board is a production of "The Community Career Network" (CCN). Somehow, CCN is tied to Bell and Associates, the jobcontrolcenter, Direct Jobs, and a couple of other small things we can't exactly figure out. Anyhow, the job application part of the core offering (advertise my resume)is fairly interesting.

Along the way, we had a good look at a couple of other tiny little niche sites and got to thinking about profitability in the job board business.

Imagine this.

At $95 per posting (good for thirty days), you only need to sell 878 postings per month to reach $1 Million in revenue. That's about 45 per day.

Interestingly, most job ads recur, so you really only need to find about 200 customers who need five people per month.

If you wanted each job posting to get 7 Resumes, on average, you'd only need to find about 7000 visitors per month. At $5 per visitor, you'd have nearly $600,000 dollars left for salaries, rent and hardware. With a staff of four, that's real money, real easy.

This is the simplest explanation we can offer for the notion that job boards will multiply like fleas once someone invents an affordable, shrink wrapped tool for small niches.

Want a business with $1 Billion in revenues? Just find 1,000 entrepreneurs who want to follow the formula. Our calculator says lots of people get rich. You could sell the franchises for $200K and have everyone say thank you.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Dancing With The Devil

With this contract, CDI becomes one of Monster.com's largest customers. Given the rapid decline in CDI's stock price, we wouldn't be surprised to see MRI become TMP's (Monster's parent) largest acquisition. The shape shifting of the traditional component of our industry is underway.

On a slightly different front, Adecco has joined forces with OfficeClick.com who will provide a web based workspace for Adecco's 80,0000 administrative temporaries. Adecco will contribute jobs and career information.

The difference between the two deals shows the breadth of partnering opportunities available on the web. Adecco's arrangement clearly boosts the value of their employees while gaining access to a broader candidate pool. It's a winning solution and a model to carefully consider. The CDI deal is another thing entirely. By focusing exclusively on the aggregate buying aspects of their enterprise, we're sure that MRI Headquarters has provided the branches with a cost savings. Unfortunately, the deal signals MRI's inability to attract candidates through more conventional methods. The Adecco play strengthens its position. MRI confirms weakness.

The web demands partnership, often with entities that appear to be direct competitors. No player can move into the 21st Century without broad partnering as a key component of their business strategy. Figuring out how to understand your worst nightmare as your best opportunity is a central feature of the deals that everyone will have to make.

The essence of understanding what makes a smart deal that should be highly publicized versus a dangerous deal that should be covered by Non-disclosure agreements is a solid positioning analysis. In a highly competitive market, knowing how to clearly distinguish your company from the competitors is part and parcel of making the partnership process work. The first step in a positioning analysis is defining what you are not.

While we understand that subcontracting research to Monster is probably a necessary chore, we wonder where MRI's Marketing Department was. There is no question that a better framing for the deal could have been arranged. As one of Monster's largest customers, there was more on the table than a discount. It's no wonder that TMP's stock price is soaring. Their competitors are happily announcing that they are paying them.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.

Advanced Lock Down

The ratio of Jobs to workers will hit 1.10 (10% more jobs than workers) sometime in 2001. It will happen even if the bottom falls out of the economy.

In that environment, guaranteed time off, extraordinary compensation, ownership and radical workplace flexibility will be the key retention issues. On the Recruiting front, getting any sort of response will be the critical concern.

Between now and then (30 months), companies are going to get really good at keeping their people. Velvet handcuffs (extreme perks and benefits) will be the norm. We won't be surprised to discover that the real value of operations like Monster's Talent Auction is the data about compensation. It's increasingly easy to imagine compensation packages pegged to current market rates.

Just In Time Recruiting (JITR) has been portrayed as "communicating with potential employees well in advance of the employment transaction". While that's certainly a part of the equation, the more important pieces are long term planning and management of the candidate pool.

The current abundance of jobs has resulted in a net increase of 25% in the hours required to place a candidate. The only reason that the staffing industry hasn't shut down from this change is that they've been able to raise their rates. The question is: "What happens when time per placement doubles, as it will over the next three or four years?"

To build a reliable labor supply, the first requirement is that you understand the pool of potential candidates from their perspective. To build a relationship with them, you are going to have to deliver a lot of value well in advance of making the actual Recruiting pitch. They have to see it as value.

The time to begin an aggressive campaign is now.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.