Job|SearchMarketing

Get local unemployment data from Google

2009-06-01T10:53:07-05:00

Looks like Google and the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics have gotten together and its likely to benefit recruiters. If nothing else, it's likely to add some flair to your next corporate recruiting presentation.

Useful? Probably to some but no where near as useful or cool Google Wave is going to be.

Looking to hire lawyers, BitterLawyer may be a great place to advertise

2008-11-26T12:14:22-05:00

I dont know what sort of traffic or targeting is available but the site's webisodes are hysterical and sure to keep lawyers and law students coming back. Don't miss, 'Typo,' and 'Punching the Clown - Part 1.'

The videos are a little too long to feel comfortable watching them at work, about 5min. But that goes to show that film makers are still in control of the content and not a media company. A major law firm, legal recruiting firm or recruitment ad agency needs to jump on this.

Hat tip, Jose Santana.

Review and Live blogging my read of Taleo's Career Site 2.0 White Paper, 'Taking the Lead in the War for Talent'

2008-10-22T13:35:55-05:00

I just finished reading Taleo's White Paper and live blogged it here on Job|SearchMarketing.

It was very well done. I strongly agree with its stated case, 'With Web 2.0 functionality and best practices implemented on the career website, an organization may achieve a competitive edge in recruiting the most qualified candidate quickly, and gain financial benefits from direct cost reductions as well as opportunity cost savings and value creation due to faster recruiting process that captures higher quality candidates.'

However, it lack substance when it comes to discussing such best practices, and web 2.0 functionality and integrations. The meat of it seems more to be a rather disingenuous pitch to position 'smart' and presumably new Taleo functionality as '2.0,' and benefit from the buzz around the topic.

Onto my live blogging of the read...

At start, given the use of the term, 'Career Site 2.0' I'm expecting this to strongly focus on the use of social media on corporate career sites and the integration of popular social networks into such sites.

Stated focuses of the report are: next gen corporate career sites, candidate experience, opportunities to implement web 2.0 features, understanding and measuring the value of implementing a rich candidate experience.

It's hard to communicate that, it will be valuable to me if they do it well.

I agree that a next generation candidate experience will attract and engage higher qualified candidates and that winning in the 'war for talent,' starts here.

This white paper is going to be good.

Great job making the case for a need for a competitive advantage in recruiting.

They show the huge rate of growth in global 500 companies with corporate career sites between 1998-2003 and how that correlates to growth in Internet usage during roughly the same period. (I'm purposely not including the data. If you want it you can provide your lead info to Taleo and download the report yourself.)

I'm expecting the next data to show the adoption of social media by Internet users, what it has meant to engagement on other sites and how limited adoption of social media has lead to success already.

I'm expecting to see how the slow rate of adoption is holding hr/recruit back form major gains already seen by other sites more aggressive in their adoption of social media.

Nope. I'm disappointed to see that they followed up with a claim that hourly jobs are being filled online too...not just professional. Thanks for that (sarcasm)...I'm assuming large retailers are a significant target of Taleo and this white paper, retailers like Whole Foods which is using iCIMS.

Now on the the war for talent...Taleo does a decent job covering it as it relates to global competition.

It could have referenced some of the good domestic demographic data that John Sumser mentions in his presentation on multi-generational hiring and the talent shortage. That would have provided a good transition from millennials to the changing expectations in web user experience to the report's next topic, candidate experience.

Of course, you would only do this if you (1) have seen john's presentation and (2) offer features related to that experience. In the case of Taleo...it seems they do not.

Next up, candidate experience...glad to see corporate transparency is first thing mentioned...too many hr execs still in the dark on the extent to which their orgs are transparent. Most are not aware that sub-sector of recruiting is being developed around because of this transparency. (SourceCon, Shally, Jim Stroud)

On to gaining competitive advantage...

Paper admits that web 2.0 includes concepts such as social networking and that candidate experiences on corporate sites should echo those familiar experiences on site like google, amazon and ebay...agreed...also highlights the fact that social networking and community are key elements of web 2.0.

Highlighting some pretty standard features advanced and presumably 'web 2.0,' features such as rollovers, help, icons, progress bars and stream lined data entry. They're dif pitching right now.

I'm starting to feel like the report might be disingenuous because I don't feel like these are web 2.0 features and given their own definition of web 2.0, neither do they.

I kinda feel like they're using a hot keyword to position some pretty standard product features. My guess is they recently rolled out similiar functionality.

The platform sounds 'smart' but they seem to be trying to position it as 'web 2.0' which to me says social, not just smart.

Now on to quantifying the advantage...undoubtedly the most difficult part. At least it would have been to me if I were the one righting it.

Wow they did a great job of making the case for the value in converting more visitors to applies and partial applies to full applies by tying it all to a lower cost per applicant.

Any change in that metric would naturally influence all other metrics related to cost per hire. But they neglected to make the case that the added applicants would be more qualified.

And that's what matters...because if the added applies aren't of higher quality then this is just numbers magic...It's not really changing anything.

Hmm...another good example of using metrics. In this case turnover costs...whomever wrote this section is either a smart person or someone with significant hr/recruiting executive management experience. Maybe both.

Now on to implementing the next generation candidate experience..leads me to questions...is it fair to call something a next generation web experience today if it is void of social media and community?

...that's it. Im done. If you care to download the whitepaper you can do so here. I recommend it.

Something to think about as you type away, catching up with work between sessions at the 2008 Fall ERE Expo

2008-10-21T16:48:10-05:00

Enjoy the conference. Be sure to check out Urgent Career's Jeff Stewart at the Vendor Watch Start-up Track...and be mindful of what you're working on in public.

Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Keyboards Experiment 1/2 from Martin Vuagnoux on Vimeo.

Som

In case you missed my 29th birthday surprise dinner

2008-10-08T22:36:12-05:00

If you're not connected to me on Facebook then you probably don't know that my gf Sara threw me a pretty kickin surprise birthday dinner. I had no clue, hence the gym clothes. It was unreal, so much fun. Too bad you missed out on the homemade wine and fresh mozz (moot-z) aka Mozzarella.

Next year we're gonna do a 30th birthday prom in Manhattan or Hoboken like Indeed's Nolan Farris did a few years ago.

Here are the pics.

TheLadders pulls super-cool brand move

2008-10-07T22:37:38-05:00

TheLadders, the premium job site exclusively for 100k+ talent looking for 100k+ jobs, pulled off a really cool branding stunt.

They left $100k cash unsupervised in a park and recroded the reactions of people passing by. Check out the video they created. It's way cooler than hanging upsidedown and it completely associates TheLadders brand with the $100k+ lure.

Now, if they would only hire the same people who did the video to redesign their site. (They really gotta get rid of that stock photography.)

For what its worth, what I've heard of TheLadders recently is that they are kicking butt. Clients love the service and the company has a very high valuation. That means they are worth a lotta money.

Hat tip to MTV's Nick Livingston for finding the video and sharing it on twitter.

BanyanLink launches, fails to be interesting

2008-10-06T13:45:06-05:00

BanyanLink, 'the premier professional utility and online network designed for everything college and beyond,' launched today. Crains' Amanda Fung covers it here.

It looks like its another social network for college student trying to connect w employers and vice versa (see Kickstart). I think Facebook and LinkedIn have this covered.

Path101 is a more interesting startup focused on college students. Rather than just connecting students with organizations, it helps college kids figure out what career path is best for them. This sort of personalized intelligence is highly valuable, not more friends on social networks.

BrandWeek peeks into role changing employment landscape plays on job boards

2008-10-04T10:58:21-05:00

BrandWeek recently questioned what the changing employment or should I say, unemployment landcape means to job boards. Author, 'Mike Beirne's article, 'Career Sites Get a Monster Reboot,' shares some input from Monster and CareerBuilder brass. HotJobs was absent. Mike and I talked about a bunch of things. Somehow my thoughts on what HotJobs is doing made its way into the article. I think what employers themselves are doing is a more interested topic. i.e., the use of blogs and video in corporate career sites.

Facebook Recruiting App: The Absolute Hands Down Best Way To Do It

2008-09-24T12:50:52-05:00

This is my idea for a facebook recruiting application. I offered it to hotjobs while I was there but they didn't want it. They decided to go with this, which I guess makes sense since the company needs to be focused on job seekers.

Me, I was selling to HR Directors, so I was focused on them and I think this app would deliver what they need: highly targeted, applies and career site traffic from their employees referral networks and referral program compensation and motivation.

If I had some extra cash laying around (and believe me, with yahoo's stock in the $15's..I do not) I would build this for all my favorite Barbs&Bobs in HR out there but I don't. So, I wont. Unless something crazy happens like I partner up w someone.

Here's the deal:

Hr and Recruiters mostly agree the traffic from monster and the job boards is not good
They want new ways to encourage employee referrals and they want more of their employees friends spending time on their career sites
With the right Facebook app, employers can drive traffic and applies from their employees profiles, directly through their career site, compensate their employees w cash that would have been spent on monster and measure it completely
Though jobs on job boards are purchased on a per job basis, at the end the year or the quarter one can look at how much they spent w any given job board, compare that to the number of people who clicked to view the ad or visited the career site and determine what was the cost-per-click of using that vendor over that period of time
For the sake of explaining this, lets say you paying monster $1.00 per click
Your encourage your employees to install the app
The app, through rss, displays, on your employees facebook profiles, links to jobs that are live on your career site
Your employees friends see the jobs, click the links, visit your site and apply to jobs
Each month its reported back to you how many clicks, and applies came to your career site and which employee's profile is responsible
Now, HR can compensate the employees in an appropriate way, its referral program that compensates and encourages your employees for bringing their friends into the funnel, not just for hires.
I would suggest compensating at the same level you are paying monster (if not more) for the traffic, your getting more qualified traffic at the same cost and I would pay a referral fee for hires coming from their networks

What do you think?

Anyone want to partner on this to build it? Pete? Ray?

Update, 9/29/08: TMP has already released an app that does something similar. Its call Work With Me.

Radio Silent

2008-09-12T13:42:32-05:00

Radio Silent...sorry.