LatinOcean – Digital Marketing Consulting

Ross Clennett from Ingenius Coaching explains agency consultants in a recruiter daily article how they can convince hiring managers to go exclusive with them. From the article, clients need to be explained that:

- Multi-listing potentially devalues the job in the market and potentially devalues the brand of the employer
- Quantity becomes more important than finding the best candidate (e.g. consultants flogging CV’s only to be seen doing something)
- The client does more work and still pays the same fee
- The client does more work, resents it and starts to cut corners
- Exclusivity gives the recruiter time to do a thorough job to find the best candidate
- The reality is that all recruiters give priority to exclusive jobs
- The best candidates are put forward to exclusive jobs
- Other professions don’t do it

Text in brackets is mine.

He finally requests not to ask exclusivity for exclusivity’s sake (i.e. do the best for the client based on the circunstances)

I am sure recruiters can corroborate or not if this reasoning will get their clients to say ‘hmmm… ok! I will work only with you’.

Assumming clients know all this already, I’d say that the reason why clients opt for a portfolio approach is because they do not know which vendor is going to present them the most hireable candidate; this is how we go about making other decisions when outcome uncertainty is a factor, right?; investment in shares may be a good example (you don’t know which company will give you the best/desired returns)

Agency consultants themselves balance their options to source the right person for the client’s assignment. They run their databases, go to all the job boards, put the ad on the paper if they can afford it, etc. Again, they are trying to counter uncertainty by increasing coverage.

You could be rightly arguing that the chosen options are already coming from a pre-screened pool of vendors (e.g. the largest agencies, or the most trafficked websites). Even with this in mind, I put to you that lack of exclusivity stems from the vendor’s lack of offering differentiation, at least in the eyes of the paying customer. In this context, recruiters need to stand out, whether it is by focusing on service breadth, depth, originality, etc.

If this reasoning is sound, then your capacity as a vendor to get your clients to go exclusive with you is determined well before the client contacts you for your services; this perception was set when your customer understood what makes your product unique.

Now you tell me, is this a sissy theoretical argument and there’s no room for differentiation in the recruitment space? Do your customers care if you have a stand out offering? Do you bother in trying to lock in a client, and if yes what’s the clincher?

Have a good weekend

My sitewatch posts, usually comprising a top level summary of the features, benefits, perceived flaws and strengths, etc of new players in the recruitment, sourcing, hr space; elicit a healthy doses of ancillary comments. Recent threads from readers got me thinking as to the evolution of a business idea into a more formal plan and the model that will support it.

I may have a post-grad qualification but I am hardly your “let’s run the business idea through Dr. Pete’s 15-force revenue matrix as we learned it in the business strategy course” kind of guy. Having said that, during the summer holiday I had the chance to read blue ocean strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

I found the book appealing. It may have had to do that I loved picking up a book for grown-ups after so many Dr Seuss stories (yes, they also have a message for adults), but it definitely had its own merits too. I am also running a project that consists of the conception of a new business, and the book’s core premises were easy to integrate into the stated business vision, as opposed to the other way around.

As i was jogging my memory to remember the book’s ideas, I jotted down some of them, and thought I’d share them around in case it helped you. I also added a few things in brackets as if this was going to be used for an idea in the HR, recruitment vertical for illustration purposes. Here is it:

The idea behind ‘Blue Ocean’ is to develop and nurture a new market space, which is currently uncontested. Blue Ocean is the opposite of ‘bloody/red seas’ strategies that send companies to compete in highly contested markets, riddled with cutthroat pricing and low differentiation

Blue Ocean produces ‘value innovation’ which consists on not being superior to your competitors but making your competition irrelevant via the creation of leap value for your buyers; this is not only the result of the application of new technologies but the also of ‘market pioneering’ and extreme cost reductions compared to other players

The 4 actions framework

Reduce – what service components should be reduced well below the industry standard because they are of little value to the client?

Eliminate – what service components should be eliminated given that they are of no value?

Create – what service elements have never been offered by the industry?

Increase – what service elements need to be increased because they are of high value?

Addressing these questions creates focus (what we do and who we serve) divergence (we are different to everyone else because of this) and compelling tagline.

Reconstructing Market Boundaries (helps you in conceiving new market spaces)

You need to stretch the market in terms of audience, delivery, offering, competition, substitutes, etc. How do you go about stretching the market?

- Look across alternative industries (e.g. cinemas and restaurants aiming to fulfill a need for ‘a night out’)

- Look across strategic groups within industries (e.g. online assessment providers vs. high-touch premium personalized services)

- Look across the chain of buyers and influencers (e.g. candidates, companies buying on behalf of professionals, influencers/bloggers/specialist journalists)

- Look across complementary offerings (franchises to drive self-employment)

- Look across functional or emotional appeal to buyers (do you need to add or remove rational/feeling components of your delivery, e.g. do you need to use glasses instead of paper cups on the interview room?)

- Look across time and aim to identify trends which are decisive to the business, that are irreversible, and have a clear trajectory (e.g. candidate shortages, work-life balances, population ageing)

Creating New Demand from non-customers by value-innovating

Non customers Tier 1: people who reluctantly buy from your industry (e.g. candidates who hate agencies but will deal with them because they have the jobs

Non customers Tier 2: people who outright refuse to deal with you (e.g. applicants that go for jobs directly to employers)

Non customers Tier 3: Unexplored non customers that the industry has not thought of them as customers (e.g. high-school students, self employed professionals)

Testing for a Blue Ocean Idea

There you go.

A few months back I reported Checkster going on alpha testing. It is now open for access before release.

Checkster has a retail offering for individuals (candidates) and an offering to recruiters/hirers. Having seen products like those marketed by Insala, I did not find the tools used ‘brand new’; having said that, people might find some of the insights extracted from the reports useful to focus career or job seeking efforts.

On the b2b side, the twist is that these tools are being used in the recruitment process as an incremental source of reference checks, as opposed to when a professional is out-placed, undertaking company-sponsored career development, etc. I expect the value of having these assessments will be directly proportional to how they contribute to get the right individual for the job (measured in terms of tenure, performance on the role, etc.).

TalentSpring, in beta mode during q2 2007

Founders: Bryan Starbuck, CEO – Andrew Boardman, Development Manager – ex-Microsofties, no recruitment pedigree (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Their bios on the site here

Tagline: wisdom of the crowd brought into the candidate selection processes

How it works: potential candidates enter their profiles, subject to voting on other peoples’ profiles. system algorithms are meant to pick candidates who put crappy scores. recruiters use these scores to spot top talent in their corresponding industries and pay to contact the people they like (recruiters need to enter a JD in the system)

Value prop for job seekers: you resume stands out in front of recruiters because it carries a user-generated score (the merit score)

Value prop for employers/recruiters: easier to spot top talent because of the – you guessed it – Merit score

Comments:Does it sound a bit like jobster to you? I am unsure how the merit score is a good assessor of the quality of the candidate, and if recruiters will rely on the score to make contact/interview decisions. Very early stages though.

Thank you to Kris for the tip

from the Google Aussie Blog

I am pretty sure it makes commercial sense for at least one of the parties; but doesn’t it also impede the possibility for ffx to integrate its offline advertising arm with its online sibling to get a bit more oomph for the client? Or is the Aussie media company happy to compromise and then push Google to sell paper ads, as it was announced last year in the US?

Addtional news on the subject here and here

careermarket

CEO: Mark Norman, could not find anything about him online; anyone heard of him before?

Based in Neutral Bay, NSW

model: structured resume/profile search (candidates register against eligibility criteria), employer recruiter pays for profile info and contact

stated value prop from the website:

for the job seeker
# 15 minutes and you are in the job market…its easy
# The opportunities come to you!…no need to continually monitor job ads and post resumes
# The compatibility score ensures that you are an appropriate candidate for a job…you are not wasting any time on non applicable opportunities
# You are in control…only release your details to opportunities of interest to you
# You can view activity on your profile at any time
# You can remove or change your details at any time
# Its costs you nothing!

for the recruiter/employer
# Allow (sic) you to zero in on quality candidates…save (sic) you time
# Enables you to source candidates that may not be actively looking to make a change in employer
# More time and cost effective than placing an ad
# The compatibility score puts a science to recruitment
# Identifies quality candidates instantly
# Flexible payment options including pay as you go for sporadic users
# You can test the database without cost

Big promises as you can see.

Competitors: there’s really no resume search product in the country, is there? the better quality CV databases are still in the agencies’ walled gardens

Experience: the employer registration is broken at the mo; the job seeker registration is simple/basic/superficial. you need to enter your CV within the week

My comments:
- I doubt that this will appeal to people not looking for a job right now, specially if you need a CV as part of your profile
- If the opportunity match is based on the job seeker registration fields, i don’t think they are strong enough to produce a good match IMHO. There’s no info on other factors that can be used to match people to recruiter needs (e.g. CV indexing)
- Positive outlook for careermarket will not be helped by candidate shortages, recruiters’ increasing preferences for people that do not look for work on job boards (which I would say are the prime customers for careermarket)
- I could not see the “compatibility score” in action but if it does put the science in recruitment, well that’s going to be more valuable than jobs.com.au

In chronological order

Exhibit A: Facebook offering free classifieds

Exhibit B: Fred Wilson‘s ‘does information want to be free’ preso (pdf)

Exhibit C: Google Base API available for classifieds galore and ancillary mashups since late last year (see example applications)

Exhibit D: Sumser’s free classifieds on his 2005 review

Wanna contribute with a milestone of your own?

I had the chance to be email-viewed by Brett Iredale from Nowhiring on matters recruit.net. Give it a read, it might help understand a bit more the difference between a job board and a job search engine; you can also get the scoop on how it is partnering with one of the top three job boards in Oz.

And just to ensure that you know this has more than sentimental value, there is one hot lead out of the post.

Back in the day when I was responsible for the Hudson sites, we were pretty safe to bet on fresh content to encourage repeat visitors: new jobs and current salary data were consistently the most popular sections of the sites.

This was not a surprise: professionals always want to benchmark themselves especially as they move jobs, and hiring managers and HR people also wanted to stay informed on how well they were paying (or not).

This came to mind when I got wind that from today recruit.net was including salary data at job level (or its closest approximate) in its summary results page. Interestingly, the salary data comes from Payscale, a well-known online provider of remuneration info in the US. I must admit, I was gladly surprised they had information for the region (recruit.net has kicked off the service for Australia and India first).

I’ve had a few clicks and I would say the salary brackets shown are indicative enough; there are also a few blanks for the more obscure roles but I expect the information to get richer. The pay off for Payscale is that visitors can continue from the recruit.net links onto ordering for a personalised salary report (you can order a basic one for free too)

I think there’s still appetite for salary data, so I expect the widget will be pretty useful for job seekers. Give it a go!

related posts

Simply Hired, a vertical search engine, is now powering job search in MySpace UK, the first integration outside the one in the US. It might just be that SH is Myspace’s (News’?) jobs strategy globally, which in the medium term has to have implication for careerone. We will surely continue filling in the blanks when careerone releases its site, which I understand is was in the last legs of heavy testing.

Also related: Cheesman does not believe that Simply Hired will be gobbled up by Google