Secret Sauce?
TalentSpring’s secret sauce is a peer voting system which, in a sense, forces users to score peer resumes upon upload or change of their own resume.

The questions…
Why would job seekers sit around and rate their peers? What’s their motivation? And if they are rating resumes who says they have a good enough understanding of their specific industry to do so? Are they really qualified enough to rate me? Are users going to take the time to seriously review and vote on their peers? And finally…. Does a social scoring system really make sense here?

TalentSpring’s videos also talk about the real problems inherent in the online recruiting space, which makes me even more anxious to see if this social driven job matching system provides answers to them.

Personally, I like the social or peer matching concept although I’m still struggling with practicality or what I like to call the “WILL IT WORK?” factor…

Notable: I believe TalentSpring is the first “matching system” that didn’t compare themselves to eHarmony…

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Show Topics:
1) Video Resumes (VisualCV)
2) TRAFFIC… Does it really matter?
3) Ignore PR vs Damage Control PR…
4) HotJobs finally moves to Relevancy, yea the guys owned by Yahoo!, them…
5) Joel’s ERE Highlights
6) Social Median (Joel really misses JGo you can hear it in his voice)

It’s only about 25 minutes versus the first show which was an hour.. Enjoy!

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Seriously, if you need help mining resumes, finding talent, give Shally or Jim Stroud a call and stop trying to make a love connection with your openings…

Really, 29 dimensions? Geeesh!?!

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Hat tip

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So I took some time and gathered the following one week worth of data from Hitwise (week ending 3/8/2008) and thought I’d share… ENJOY!

Google provides:
80% of JobSearchUSA’s traffic
79% of JuJu’s traffic
73% of Jobs.net’s traffic - (CareerBuilder feeder)
61% of JobBankUSA’s traffic
50% of Flipdog’s traffic (Monster feeder)
48% of DiversityJobs.com’s traffic
46% of Simplyhired’s traffic
27% of Medzilla’s traffic and last but not least…
23% of Indeed’s traffic is provided by Google.

Indeed provides:
60% of JobKite’s traffic
57% of Jobkabob’s traffic
50% of AJE’s traffic
43% of FederalGovernmentJobs.us’s traffic
38% of AllRetailJobs.com’s traffic
35% of HospitalJobsOnline’s traffic
34% of Beyond.com’s traffic
26% of JobsInLogistics‘ traffic
21% of Dice’s traffic and
21% of ComputerJobs.com’s

I also found this to be notable: TopJobsUSA receives 24% of their traffic from Google and 25% traffic from Job.com.

Stepping back and taking a look at the big picture Google provides 12% of the traffic to the entire Employment & Training Category and Indeed provides 5%, which is actually pretty amazing.

Pretty incredible, although who are the winners and who are the losers in this scenario? Can recruiting be done more efficiently in today’s market by leveraging less, albeit more powerful properties? If some job sites are not diversifying their traffic wouldn’t it be easier for hiring companies to go straight to the prime source of the traffic instead of a middle man (ummm.. errrrr) person?

The message:
Grow, evolve, and diversify before it’s too late…

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So I took some time, did some research and wrote a synopsis of the following job sites complete with my humble twisted opinion.

Careerbuilder’s silly Monkey commercials, during and after, the Super Bowl propelled them into a new level of market awareness in 2006, although follow-up efforts in 2007 & 2008 could not replicate their initial traffic success. Careerbuilder’s consistent traffic has been solidified by their ability to turn into a finely search optimized machine coupled with job seekers returning through daily emailed job alerts.

HotJobs ran Super Bowl commercials in January of 1999 and found their site down for days due to pushing more traffic than they could handle, not a great first showing but this marketing method was an obvious success. Nowadays it seems their ability to gain ground on CB while passing Monster is mainly due to HotJobs ability to finally skew well in Yahoo’s organic search, which I’m sure has staffers saying “It’s about D@%# time!“.

Monster hit a homerun in 1999 with their “When I Grow Up” commercial; unfortunately they have not been able to replicate the success of ‘99, after several attempts, and over the past 3 years they’ve allowed their lead to dwindle being passed by Careerbuilder, HotJobs, and now Indeed. Monster’s highest single source of traffic originates, like CB, from their daily emailed driven job search agents which are sent to job seekers daily with a link back to their saved job searches. Most job sites have this email driven resource, although none has leveraged it to the extent of Monster over the past 8 years, unfortunately their advantage in SEO, which would complement their email traffic, has been spiraling downward for years.

Indeed is the black sheep of the bunch and hasn’t purchased a Super Bowl commercial. Paul runs a smart and tight ship, although continues to steadily climb into the group of traffic leaders. How? Well Indeed receives almost 25% of their traffic from Google through extreme amounts of SEO and targeted SEM. Indeed has a few high profile partnerships, although the bulk of their eyeballs come from search.

But aren’t Super Bowl ads providing brand awareness relative to search?

Of the TOP 10 keyword terms used on search engines in the Employment and Training segment (including job boards) 3 of these terms are a variant of Monster, 3 more are variants of CareerBuilder, 2 are Indeed variants and last but never least Yahoo’s HotJobs holds NONE of the top 10 terms for search… So thanks to the black sheep, Indeed, the “You need Super Bowl ads to brand yourself on a world stage properly” myth can be MYTH BUSTED.

My closing thoughts… If you have the cash on hand to spend on a Super Bowl commercial you’re richer than most. If you choose not to buy a SB commercial and spend it strategically using more of a consistent and diversified approach, you’re smarter than most. If you choose to take the SB commercial plunge you will also need the cash to support it with many long-term traffic initiatives, and if Monster and HotJobs couldn’t sustain long-term after their SB traffic tsunami, good luck. Also remember that back in ‘99 the internet was new and more of a novelty for most, meaning everyone flocked to these first dotcom companies utilizing the Super Bowl as a marketing vehicle.

Today’s viewers are just dotcomed to death!

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I started my Army career on active duty back in ‘89, went into the Army reserves in ‘93 and am now inching ever so slowly to my 20 year mark. I’ll be stateside (Fort Benning, Georgia) for the duration of my tour where again I’ll be serving as an Infantry Drill Sergeant training new soldiers.

Thanks you everyone who has already sent me supportive messages and most of all thanks to my boss, Bill Warren, who has committed to paying the gap in my salary while I’m away. This is neither the beginning, nor the end of Bill’s generosity to his crew, which is one of the biggest reasons I enjoy working at, and now getting back to, DirectEmployers and JobCentral.

Last but not least THANK YOU for reading, commenting and being a part of my blog. Yes, I’ll do my best to continue blogging about the industry, providing stats, doing the show and maybe even sharing some funny basic training stories once in awhile. So keep checking back or plug me into your RSS reader if you haven’t already.

- Chad briefing Segeant Major of the Army Preston in 2005 -
- Check out more Army pictures from my last activation at Benning -

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Amazing yes.. but there’s more…

I have also noticed Indeed’s traffic numbers have surpassed Monster!?! It’s no surprise that Indeed is still on the rise, although it’s Monster’s plummet that has me scratching my head. Why would a company who has predicated their business model on job seeker traffic let it die on the vine? Also, since it is speculated that Monster is looking to be sold… How does this help their “perspective” auction block efforts?

The real question is…

Where is Indeed getting all of this traffic? According to Hitwise over 30% comes from search with the bulk (22%+) supplied by Google..

Smart SEO and I would venture to say even smarter SEM are the big factors, and whether you’re a fan of how Indeed is garnering traffic or not, it’s working.

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