interbiznet.com
Our Rate Card
interbiznet Listings
- Associations
- ATS Co's
- Public Co's
Find out more
About
IBN
Got a news tip?
Tell us at
news@
interbiznet.com
Our Rate Card
Articles
Presentations
Trends Reports
Archives
Suggestions?
|
Click OK to subscribe to our free email Newsletters
Information on the2002 Electronic Recruiting Index.
2002 ERI ATS Buyers' Survey Executive Summary (requires Acrobat),
Sign up for the interbiznet Bugler and have industry news delivered to your emailbox daily.
December 27, 2001 interbiznet Press Backgrounder #1 - Key Trends
2001 Key Events
December
is the time for recaps, forecasts and summaries. Over the next weeks, you'll be
seeing lots of them. We looked back over the last year to try to understand the
pivotal events shaping our industry's future. Depending on your perspective
(Vendor, Recruiter, HR Executive, Investor), the relative meaning of events is
somewhat different. For that reason, we present the following list as an
unranked look at some of the key events that shaped our industry during 2001.
It's part One of a two part offering (seconds, tomorrow), this is the summary
level material from the 2002
Electronic Recruiting Index. In the ERI,
a total of fifty key Events (acquisitions, product offerings, management changes
and trends) will be identified to illuminate the marketplace trends driving our
business forward.
-
TMP's
incredible acquisition plays during the year. For the first time ever,
the Federal Trade Commission took an interest in our industry. TMP's
consistently aggressive acquisition strategy, rooted in a stock value that
is still nearly 40 times revenues, included a soon to close purchase of
HotJobs. On one level, the company has effectively consolidated all of the
old market (Search Firms, Job Boards and Ad Agencies). On another, it has
simply cleared the decks for the logical new entrants. TMP's continued
success will be increasingly dependent on word of mouth quality stories and
the development of additional revenue streams.
-
Customer
focus shift to financial fundamentals and ability to execute. Following
the untimely death of ISearch, which left hundreds of customers without an
Applicant Tracking System, vendors began including financial data in their
sales pitch. Clearly, the largest single beneficiary of the renewed emphasis
on business fundamentals was BrassRingSystems because of their deep pockets
parentage (The Washington Post). The next couple of years will include
increasing focus on management quality and fiscal wherewithal. In market
development terms, this trend is evidence of a "chasm-crossing" in
the web based ATS market. The next step will include an emphasis on measured
quality that will again rearrange the market.
-
The
aggressive move by Peoplesoft into the market. The Recruiting end of
Peoplesoft's business was traditionally executed by Restrac (Webhire) or
Resumix in arrangements brokered by large consulting firms. Realizing the
incredible revenue to be acquired through Recruiting oriented transactions,
the Peoplesoft Team unveiled their Recruiter's desktop in July. Simply
rearranging the existing relationships so that Webhire clients are converted
to full Peoplesoft accounts makes the move the "come from nowhere into
prominence" success story of the year. Peoplesoft is positioned to
become a major industry influence without marketing beyond their installed
base.
-
Salary.com's
release of the Personal Salary Report. Imagine a world in which salary
negotiations include employees who are armed with real market data presented
in a clear and intelligible form. Likely to be the most influential new
product of 2002, Salary.com's $30 offering will permanently rearrange the
dynamics between employer and employee. Ultimately, this product will be
seen as a critical step in bring real-world market forces into the workforce
(which has been traditionally shielded from real market pressures.) As the
labor shortage expands during 2002 and 2003, we imagine that the
compensation analysis market will explode in order to meet the requirement
for desktop access for hiring managers. This, in turn, will open the gateway
for other products that meet hiring manager's needs. Salary.com's Personal
Salary report is the first real evidence that the decentralization of HR
functions is a reality.
-
The
dramatic expansion of regional job board offerings. The
"recession" has diverted attention from a number of
counter-indicators. The unemployment rate is already beginning its decline.
Total layoffs amounted to only 0.3% of the workforce. And, very importantly,
regional job boards exploded on the scene this year. The number of micro job
boards expanded from 3,500 to nearly 10,000 with no sign of slowing growth
during 2002.
-
The
introduction of HodesIQ. After years of growing by simply picking up
disaffected customers from the TMP acquisition spree, Hodes set about
catching up with the market defining RecruitUSA. Led by Jeremy Shapiro, who
is one of the smartest folks in our industry, HodesIQ is an elegant product
that makes great strides in the automation of online recruiting. Finally, an
ad agency is playing as if the web were a reality. HodesIQ sets the standard
for simplicity and effectiveness in online media planning, execution and
results management.
-
RecruitUSA's
move to dominance in the JAD industry. By focusing on solid contractual
alliance infrastructure development, RecruitUSA positioned itself as the
gateway of choice for targeted online advertising distribution. While the
other competitors focused on data exchanges at the expense of contractual
relationships, RecruitUSA invested significant resources in enterprise level
integration, contractual certainty and performance guarantees that are not
subject to market ups and downs. The rest of the JAD industry contracted
while RecruitUSA kept its head above water because of the attention to
business development instead of technology.
-
Personic's
introduction of a pure web services product. Get out a pencil and write
down the phrase "Gen4 Computing". Positioning themselves for major
wins in the early adopter set during 2002, Personic reinvented itself as the
definition of technical excellence in the industry. Focusing on Microsoft's
"dot net" initiative, their latest release turns industry
standards on their head and proclaims the start of the "Web
Services" business. Microsoft calls them "one of the first"
software companies (of any type) to fully embrace the new world. Web
services facilitate data transfers among disparate databases leading to easy
to customize offerings that meet the real needs of users (over 15% of the
market uses in-house solutions because our industry offers such static
products). Personic will be the first to really reach the hiring manager's
desktop and leads the pack in decentralizing HR.
-
The
destruction of the national job fair market. Sometimes, a business isn't
what it seems on the surface. As the newspapers (through BrassRing)
consolidated the National Job Fair business, they meticulously severed the
ancillary businesses associated with the companies they purchased. Print
publications disappeared, websites were spun off and job fairs were
streamlined as an events business. Unfortunately, no one asked the customers
or the sales people about these decisions. It turns out that customers
bought a "bundle" of services from Job Fair companies. Sales began
eroding last year as the result of the new policies. The recession simply
nailed the coffin closed. Expect vibrant new entrants from a combination of
old players and new upstarts during 2002.
-
CareerExchange's
Emergence as a public company. The small Canadian firm (with offices in
Oakland) backdoored its way into public financing during the summer. Proving
that profitable growth can be a reality, CareerExchange represents a new,
stealthier player that is able to combine multiple revenue streams into
virtual recession proofing without dreams of market dominance. We think it
is an extraordinary example of the possibilities available to the many
thousands of small operations.
-
Death
of the Industry Trade Show. Although we never imagined the incredible drop-off
caused by the events of 9/11, we knew the trade show business was headed for
rocky shores last year. Perhaps better understood as the "boondoggle
business", this year's trade shows suffered from simultaneous expansion
in their number and a decline in attendance. Vendor grousing about results
reached a peak at SHRM where an army of speakers with no relation to the
industry kept attendees away from the booths of the people who actually pay
for the show. Given the examples set by Hire.com and Recruitsoft (attention
to customers first with very minimal public marketing), budgets will come
under incredible scrutiny this year. Expect a thinned down set of offerings
with a good deal more prominence for the vendors and a clearer understanding
of what customers actually want.
-
Broad
acceptance of the CRM metaphor. Recruiting involves relationships with
people who are more like customers than not. This simple notion is the
foundation for a broad range of offerings that claim to allow recruiters to
capitalize on the development of relationships with potential employees.
Unfortunately, no one has bellied up to the development of the analytical
tools needed to really mine those relationships. CRM is a complex tool set
with analytical engines that iterate a variety of data mining scenarios in
search of trends in the data. With the exclusive exceptions of Hire.com and
Monster, no one is really paying attention to the real power of the metaphor.
Most talent relationship management schemes are no more than integrations
with Microsoft Outlook so that correspondence may be better managed. The
real meat on this trend is, unfortunately, lost on the crowd that sells
buzzwords.
-
Recruitsoft's
prominence as the year's fair haired new entrant. Due in large part to
the phenomenal effectiveness of iLogos (Recruitsoft's marketing department)
and the incredible value provided by Recruitsoft's website, the company
moved from the backwaters of Canada to prominence in our industry.
Converting their status as the "charming new entrant" to enduring
market presence will be the company's challenge in 2002. Recruitsoft's broad
market success in 2001 was a symptom of the market's shift from the old
Restrac-Resumix market to a new one that features a triad of Recruitsoft,
BrassRing and Hire.com.
-
Newspaper
Industry purchase of CareerBuilder which, in turn, is purchasing
HeadHunter.net. After many failed attempts to build a viable defense of
their classified advertising business (which used to be worth nearly
$8Billion/year), the newspapers bought CareerBuilder. Claiming the emergence
of a two brand industry (what malarkey!), the company moved to buy
Headhunter.net, alienating customers and vendors in the process. Meanwhile,
classified advertising revenues continued to erode prompting our expectation
that the Newspapers will continue to invest heavily in the industry.
- John Sumser © TwoColorHat. All Rights Reserved.
Contact:
Colleen Gildea
colleen@interbiznet.com
415-377-2255
Please call or email for materials in the format you require.
© 2013 interbiznet.
All Rights Reserved.
Materials written
by John Sumser
© TwoColorHat.
All Rights Reserved.
interbiznet.com Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.377.2255
colleen@interbiznet.com
|
Electronic Recruiting News
FEATURES:
interbiznet Listings
- Associations
- ATS Companies
- Public Companies
interbiznet Trends (New)
EMAIL NEWSLETTERS:
- Bugler (Sign-up) Daily Industry News
- ERNIE (Sign-up) ERN in Email
ANNUAL REPORTS:
E-Recruiting Index (ERI)
- 2002 ERI
- 2001 ERI
- 2000 ERI
- 1999 ERI
- 1997 ERI
- 1996 ERI
- Report Pricing
INTERBIZNET REPORTS:
- Choosing A Job Distribution Company
- Report Pricing
RESOURCES:
Integrated Employment Branding Presentation
2003 Trends Whitepaper
interbiznet Listings
interbiznet Trends
interbiznet Bookclub
Top 100 E-Recruiters
Presentations
- Recruiting Then/Now
Recruiter's Toolkit
Seminar In A Box
ERN Archives
1st Steps In The Hunt
ADVERTISING:
Our Rate Card
Demographics
Recently Archived Articles
2001 Key Events Part 2
2001 Key Events Part 1
Should They?
Community
How Not To
A Small Town View
Message Delivery
A Hero Retires
What's Missing
Yahoo II
Monetize The Candidate
Gen4
Wowie:PSFT Gets Merritt
ATS Market Shares
Buyers Survey
2002 ERI
ERN Archives
Stocks We Watch:
Public Companies in Electronic Recruiting
All material on this
website is the
property of interbiznet
(The Internet
Business Network:
interbiznet.com)
You may download
a copy for personal
use. Redistribution
without permission
is strictly prohibited.
All material on
this site is
© 1995 - 2006, interbiznet
|