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Candidate-Centric

(December 3, 1999) Occasionally, we slip into MBA-speak and utter the word "paradigm". We are generally trying to explain that old assumptions do not always apply in the new business environment. We immediately apologize and fumble for an alternative. It's hard to explain how different the world looks when you shift your focus. What seems subtle or obvious at first become the foundations of a whole new way of seeing things. Things change when you change the way you look at them.

In 21st Century Recruiting, the candidate is everything.

Like most businesses that have flocked to the web, Recruiters and Recruitment Advertisers have begun the process by moving their existing ideas to the web. What they have discovered is an increasingly savvy candidate whose demographics are in flux over time. The labor shortage simply accelerates the requirement for tailored solutions.

In the good old days, Recruiters competed for talent on the basis of size, neighborhood and connection with decision makers. In the coming weeks and months, the focus will inevitably shift to candidate pooling and candidate retention. Businesses that focus on the candidate life cycle will flourish while those that focus on the job opportunity will flail about.

Candidate retention is not the same as employee retention. The two are related, but candidate retention involves maintaining relationships while the candidate works elsewhere. Armed with the right data warehousing tools and the continual delivery of value to a candidate throughout their career, Recruiters who personalize and focus on the candidate are the ones to watch.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Banner Ads Work


(December 02, 1999) Lots of money is chasing the Super Bowl. Monster, HotJobs and KForce have plunked down their money and are charging forward. The bet is that brand creation is a way to make the market more effective. In theory, Superbowl Ads drive traffic. In practice, they drive market analysts' expectations. The sad part is that they lead to the notion that web advertising doesn't work.

Imagine the conversation....

"We want to spend $5 Million on Superbowl advertising because it works better than web ads."

"Hmmm", says the financial type "Do you think that they'll figure out that you are selling Internet Advertising? Isn't that a contradiction that terrifies you?"

"Oh no", says the Job Board CEO, "Our advertising works easily while other Internet advertising takes more time and is more expensive."

"Who's gonna believe that?," quoth the CFO.

In fact, no one has ever built a sustainable brand in candidate aggregation so all bets are just that...theories backed with advertising budgets. It's every bit as likely that the current crop of Super Bowl, print media, television and radio advertisers have encountered a simple fact: Internet advertising is complex and involves a lot of small transactions. The few companies who provide real access to targeted markets have conflicting standards. With prices measured in actual reach and readership, the cost per placement is so low that it scares traditional media buyers. The commission on one Super Bowl ad is the same as a purchase of 100,000,000 web page impressions, more or less. It would take an enormous amount of planning and execution to deliver on the promise of web advertising at that volume. In lieu of hard work, we see the big splash.

There are other ways.

Last week, we visited the team at TheWorksUSA.com. Their method for identifying and harvesting candidates (which is what Super Bowl ads are about in theory) bears a review. At TheWorksUSA candidates are hand acquired and hand sorted. Each candidate is personally solicited to join the database. Each Resume is vetted for a home. As a result, the quality of the Resume database far exceeds the noisy results produced by mass marketers. When they advertise, TheWorksUSA targets very specialized areas in search of very specific kinds of candidates. Their outreach is driven by customer requirements and a commitment to detailed (these candidates for this job) results for their customers. It's the exact inverse of the Super Bowl approach. Moreover, it supports their assertion that the Internet works.

While the big players take up bandwidth with their advertising, no candidate or employer who uses TheWorksUSA is required to remember a brand. The company does that work for them knowing that successful results limit branding effectiveness. (Good candidates don't come back to the job market quickly.)

So, if you are investing in stock, go with one of the Super Bowl services. If you are investing in a Recruiting Service, focus on the results stream.

We're not saying that Super Bowl ads don't work. Just that choice involves a range of approaches to results generation. The investment decision is hardly binary. We imagine that you'll use both kinds of services...heavily branded and and heavily results centric. Like different kinds of screwdrivers, both are useful in differing types of settings.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


The Consolidation Bugaboo


(December 01, 1999) With four issues of their print magazine (the Online Recruiting Strategist)under their belts, it looks like Hunt-Scanlon has joined us in the Online Recruiting News Business. Pretty soon, their website will be finished. Meanwhile, they offer a weekly email newsletter, free access to their archives and an interesting review of press releases. Over time, we expect to see a real voice emerge from their online efforts. The company is a leader in off-line Recruiting information and is a welcome addition to the marketplace.

With a mere 78 inbound links and traffic that ranks them well under the top 100,000 sites on the web, we wonder about their current claim

"Hunt-Scanlon is the leading news source and provider of data and consulting services on executive search, Internet recruiting and ....."
Hype aside, the site offers the possibility that a real third voice on the Internet Recruiting Marketplace will emerge (our current nomination for second voice is Perry Boyle's Labor Daze at Thomas Weisel Partners). The company has the right background and all of the other pretenders don't seem to be able to sustain their efforts. We're happy for the company and are really rooting for their success.

Whether or not (and how) the online Recruiting industry might consolidate is the question that caught our attention. In the current issue of the Online Recruiting Strategist, Hunt-Scanlon makes the case that Mr. Boyle has been making for some time now: the industry is on the verge of a draconian consolidation that will leave five or ten players standing when all is said and done. With a bit of bet hedging ("it's happening all over the Internet", says Lisa Sanders, Hunt-Scanlon's editor), the argument is that access to capital in the public markets will determine the fate of the industry.

Harrumph. Our obviously naive take is that the fat lady hasn't even started getting dressed let alone left her house, arrived at the opera, watched it and started singing. It's just past breakfast and the opera is an evening performance. While there is certainly an impending round of acquisition and capital infusion, we're of the opinion that the major players probably haven't even come out from under the rock yet.

With few exceptions (TheWorksUSA, Hire.com, RecruitUSA, Boxwood Technologies and ProRecruiter, and, Eployment come quickly to mind), the current crop of high fliers solve yesterday's problems. In one way or another, they are re-engineering the database in the unemployment office. They depend on volume to make the random intersection of jobs and candidates happen. Over the long haul, price points are rising, not falling. The degree to which a match happens (performance) is not counted in the current offerings. Regionality (as we keep saying) is only possible with real feet on the ground generating real content in real local markets. If there is a round of consolidation in our future, it will be to clear the crap off the playing field, not to limit choice.

The traditional staffing market has about 40,000 players after many rounds of consolidation (nearly as many as before the consolidations). The traditional Recruitment advertising marketplace has another 40,000 outlets. We wonder just which economic dynamics have changed so that these 80,000 businesses consolidate into 10 overnight. Here in Marin County, CA, we'd say "Someone is smoking some of Marin's finest."

It's important to remember that the market for employment transactions, online and off, exceeds $100 Billion and is growing rapidly with the Generational Labor shortage. The market is roomy, inclusive and ready to reward service and results.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Rosetta Stone


(November 30, 1999) We love visionaries whose passion extends to fixing all that's wrong with the national employment marketplace. They rarely make any money but the intensity is astonishing. We enjoy the thought of conquering World Hunger, Global Warming, Arms Proliferation and the End of Treachery.

And then we go back to selling.

Being an entrepreneur has almost nothing to do with having a vision. (Clinically, visions are treatable with moderate doses of Lithium.) For the most part, being an entrepreneur involves identifying a customer and fixing their problem at a price that the market will bear. Doing it well results in the opportunity to do it again, nothing more or less. Doing it often creates the chance to make a profit from "scale" (the current buzzword for volume). "Scale" creates its own set of opportunities.

Sales and service are at the root of entrepreneurial success, not vision. Great visions usually require extended hospital stays. Successful sales and service can result in the ownership of a large boat and an island retreat. Although the two end states share some similarity, the medical attendants are somewhat more optional in the latter case.

So, how do you tell an entrepreneur from a visionary?

It's pretty easy, really. When the sales pitch is "Do it my way, you'll love the results", you're dealing with a visionary. When the sales pitch is "What is your problem and how can I solve it?", you are dealing with an entrepreneur. When the question is "Why can't we all just get along?", it's a visionary. When it sounds like "How may I serve you?", it's an entrepreneur.

Always pick the vendor who is out to serve you. Stay away from the dreamers who want your money in order to end world hunger (or some equally universal objective). They are always scheming to design a "Rosetta Stone".

If you remember your history, the Rosetta Stone was

the key that unlocked the mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Napoleon's troops discovered it in 1799 near the seaside town of Rosetta in lower Egypt, and it eventually made its way into the British Museum in London where it resides today. It is a slab of black basalt dating from 196 BC. inscribed by the ancient Egyptians with a royal decree praising their king Ptolemy V. The inscription is written on the stone three times, once in hieroglyphic, once in demotic, and once in Greek. Thomas Young, a British physicist, and Jean Francois Champollion, a French Egyptologist, collaborated to decipher the hieroglyphic and demotic texts by comparing them with the known Greek text. From this meager starting point a generation of Egyptologists eventually managed to read most everything that remains of the Egyptians' ancient writings.

From The Rosetta Stone

During this century, a great deal of effort was invested in the creation of Esperanto, a universal language that would unlock global communications problems. After a century of work, have you ever met a person who speaks Esperanto? Have you ever seen a job order listing Esperanto as a Requirement? Hardly likely.

While the Rosetta Stone solved a long-standing, complex and finite riddle, Esperanto is a complex answer in search of a real riddle. All of the attempts to streamline the national job market we've encountered claim to be Rosetta Stones but are really Esperantos. The difference? A Rosetta Stone solves today's problem. Esperanto claims to solve tomorrow's (if everyone would just engage in "common sense").

How can you tell one from another? The entrepreneur will bring a Rosetta Stone, already finished, in the toolkit. The visionary will bring a plan for Esperanto and ask you to invest.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.


Pink Dot


(November 29, 1999) The web is regional. There's a reason that the big media companies like to suggest otherwise. Their best gambits are national and international. Over the years, they've failed in very tight regional markets. A technology that was good at exploiting Regionality would be a serious threat.

Last week, we we're sitting on the front porch of a client's office in LA. (In the 21st Century, many offices will have front porches!). Up the street came a slightly beat up minivan painted with the words "Pink Dot". The driver hopped out with a bag of goodies...2 six packs of soda, pads of paper and antacids (it had been a long meeting). He handed the goodies to our host; they exchanged pleasantries; he jumped back in the van; and headed off.

"What was that?", we wondered aloud. "Pink Dot to the rescue", explained one of our colleagues. "They deliver anything, anytime, all over LA. Webvan be damned, these guys are doing it all day, every day. We ordered the stuff on the web as soon as we ran out of soda, about a half an hour ago."

"Why haven't we heard of them?", we inquired. "It's an LA only thing" was the answer.

And so it was. In LA, parties for more than 20 have valet parking. The car is an extension of the personality. Traffic and driving are discussed in the space reserved for the weather on other locales. A name like "Pink Dot" works in LA where it would be too overtone laden in other cities. Deliveries scheduled through bulk super-regional or national shipping systems can never be effective on a local basis.

With a responsive, very local delivery schedule and local costuming, the Pink Dots of the world will be fierce competitors for national based, IPO funded competitors. It's hardly surprising that fewer than 50% of Web entrepreneurs even consider public funding.

Hiring is regional. By leaps and bounds (though it is rarely stated up front), the most important recruiting criteria are shared values and beliefs. Ease of access, local supply and demand, clear understanding of commute structures and local market rate sensitivity are critical for seamless placement.

We think that techies.com is on to something with their strong local emphasis. But, they lack the real local feel of a company with roots in the indigenous economy. We're constantly amazed by the newspapers' desires for huge markets that cause them to overlook the powerful local opportunities.

At its root (in spite of what everyone else says), the web will evolve into a local communications tool. National and international databases of job listings and other information are destined to become desktop utilities that are tried when all else fails.

- John Sumser, © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.



TopUSAJobs.com: Guide to Top Specialty Boards
Where Top Candidates Seek Career Opportunities
Accounting / Finance JobsintheMoney.com
Call Center CallCenterJobs.com
Drivers / Trucking JobsInTrucks.com
Enviro/Occup. Health & Safety EHSCareers.com
Executive RiteSite.com
Executive NETSHARE.com
Health / Medical HealthJobsUSA.com
Hispanic / Bilingual Hispanic Jobs
Logistics JobsInLogistics.com
Manufacturing JobsInManufacturing.com
Retail AllRetailJobs.com
Security Clearance IntelligenceCareers.com
Tax Specialists TaxTalent.com
Telecom / Wireless TelecomCareers.net
For more Specialty Boards, visit:
The
Employers Corner on TopUSAJobs.com
marketing@TopUSAJobs.com





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Materials written by John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.




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         Materials written
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         © TwoColorHat.
         All Rights Reserved.