Is Recruitment an Inferior Product?

branding, business, Marketing, recruitment No Responses »
Jan 092012

Happy 2012!

This got prompted by Peter Martin’s post in relation to inferior goods.

Inferior goods are defined as those for which demand decreases as their users’ disposable income increases. He mentions cask wine and International Roast coffee as a couple of retail/consumer examples.

Is your recruitment product an inferior good, based on the definition above?

When our clients are better off financially, do they seek out your services or do they seek to replace you with what they perceive is a superior product (DIY recruitment, a more reputable agency, employer branding consultants)?

Yes, there are many moving parts to offer a one true answer. This is an intrinsic limitation of the neoclassical economic model which relies a lot on the Ceteris Paribus (all other variables remaining equal) which never happens in real life.

However is it worthwhile asking this question as recruitment service providers, don’t you think?

inferior_goods
Looking forward to being in touch during 2012

Posted by jorge at 6:40 pm

LinkedIn, Facebook and the Chinese Market Fallacy

branchout, business, Companies, facebook, linkedin, recruitment, TalentMe, technology, Tools No Responses »
Oct 302011

Over the past few months I have seen Facebook based apps/platforms (BranchOut, Talent.me, Monster’s BeKnown to name the ones I have signed up for and been using/testing) being touted as serious competition to LinkedIn.

The core reasons these and other Facebook-based services are being given a good chance of success against LinkedIn is not their technology prowess or unique business-commercial model; rather they are positively viewed by pundits due to the fact that they are hosted on Facebook, the largest social network at 750 million users (plus).

It is certainly possible that these FB-based systems do have great systems or unique value propositions for its users. These however seem to only come second to the “fishing on the biggest pond” advantage.

There are a number of reasons as to why I am sceptic as to this argument. Mainly, I am reminded of how China was viewed as a market a decade (or perhaps more) ago. I clearly recall many sales, marketing and business development presentations introducing China as a market with 1.3 billion “consumers” (which is as you know their entire population, more or less).

Closer inspection, of course, showed the fallacy of counting every Chinese national as a consumer without recognising their purchasing power, whether they lived in rural areas, etc. The rise of the middle class in China is certainly bridging the gap but it is still necessary to look deeper to understand they real size of the market for specific products or services.

The Chinese Market (size) fallacy reminds me of the volume advantage of the Facebook-based applications better-than-LinkedIn chances of succeeding. Even if these platforms were to grow large, recruiters know well that volume does not automatically imply quality (which drives candidate place-ability).

I am certainly not prepared to write off LinkedIn on the basis on the volumes argument. I’d love for other companies to continue innovating and making it easier for people to find jobs and for recruitment professionals to add more value to their employers/customers. I think this battle will be fought on the basis of benefits and value. I certainly hope so.

Posted by jorge at 9:02 pm Tagged with: , , ,

Second Degree Land

blogging, business, facebook, google, linkedin, Marketing, media, networking, recruitment, reportsandstudies, research, Talent, technology, Tools No Responses »
Sep 072011

InMapsWith Google, I found like I never had before
With Blogger, I published like I never had before;
With LinkedIn, I networked like I had never before;
With Twitter I discovered like I never had before;
With Facebook I played like I never had before;
I am not sure what I am doing on G+ yet…

I posted more or less the same lines to G+ a few weeks back; fact is I am not using it regularly and there is no immediate or apparent reason to go to it in a hurry.

But this is not about Plus; it’s about me reaching 1000 connections on LinkedIn which, as you well know, has no intrinsic value. It is also about a couple of articles on the rise of LinkedIn and its impact on human/real connections:

- Rick Bookstaber’s “Ultimately LinkedIn Will Make Your ‘Weak Links’ Less Valuable”
- “The continuing devaluation of LinkedIn connections” by Ross Dawson

These pieces are not comparable straight away in as much as they are not addressing the same issue. Bookstaber’s post centers around network theory and how weak links need to remain ‘weak’ in order for societies to flourish and develop (whilst LinkedIn might be doing totally the opposite).

Ross’ article is about the bastardisation of the LinkedIn connection as more “strangers” approach you to link-in simply because -as per the system’s features- this is the only way to get in contact with a member. As a contrast, he references Facebook, where strangers can message you and you can “sus-out” people without a prior connection commitment.

The point of convergence for the articles was reaching the 1K connections mark, which prompted me to reflect on what happened to my way of doing business since joining LinkedIn. Some insights and personal experiences follow:

- I think I have done well in not connecting with every man and his dog just for the sake of increasing reach. Weak first degree connections that have no opportunity to strengthen are very much like those conference attendees whose business cards we hoard but whose face or pitch you cannot recall. You cannot help them and they cannot help you.

- Strong first degree connections off the system as well as those nourished in it after the initial contact have been extremely positive for repeat business. LinkedIn has proven to be an effective CRM; then again I don’t have thousands of clients or lots of staff that demand highly coordinated relationship processes.

- Almost every new customer I signed up is (or was at the time) a second degree connection linked to a strong first degree connection. At the same time, there is a huge chunk of second degree connections which are, to-date, strangers; however, more often than not, I have enough information to work out what their business needs and priorities might be. So, you know where my marketing efforts go.

- Third degree connections is uncharted territory; every now and then, I see little archipelagos (members who I know or can connect off the system) but they are rare. LinkedIn Signal might change that, but I am not a heavy user yet.

- Throughout the five 1/2 years of going with the biz, my marketing expenditure has been negligible. You might say I could be more/really successful if I had spent money. I think that if I had decided to have marketed more, I would have done more of the same (e.g. blogging more, increased participation on Groups, more presentations, videos, etc.) which is a resource with a cost but still imply no material disbursements of dollars.

- My cold calls on LinkedIn – inMails, connection requests via Groups – have had about a 30% success rate at the most. Success here is understood as having the chance at strengthening a relationship, so that 30% is looking not too hot, is it. I don’t believe the conduit was the culprit; rather, it was my inability to sell the connection request well enough.

About 10 years ago, a recruitment ‘big-wig’ told me something along the lines of “Jorge, you will never be able to accumulate the amount of business cards I have on my Rolodex”.

I am not exactly sure how he did business, but one thing LinkedIn has enabled me to do is to check thousands of ever-changing Rolodexes of people that I am not even directly related to. My future clients, employers, colleagues, employees are – more likely than not – living right now in second degree land.

Posted by jorge at 6:11 am

Why Facebook will not destroy LinkedIn

business, Companies, facebook, linkedin, Marketing, recruitment, Sourcing, Talent, technology, Tools No Responses »
Aug 162011

Facebook-LinkedIn
Just read the article ‘Why Facebook will destroy LinkedIn’ on ERE .

This is argued on the basis of four core reasons:

- Larger volumes of people on Facebook
- Similar demographic groups
- Recruitment tools showing up on Facebook already
- Better ‘social marketing’ at Facebook

I think the article should have been better titled ‘Why Facebook can be used as another platform to recruit’. Less attention-grabbing for sure, but perhaps more balanced.

This piece, IMHO, assumes that LinkedIn will sit on its hands and let all the wealth of profiles, companies and relationships information logged over the years go to waste. I don’t see it happening

Along these lines, the ‘Facebook is huge’ argument echoes the pitch of job boards sales reps of yesteryear selling eyeballs and traffic. Organisations never needed Unique Browsers; they always needed placeable candidates that allowed agencies to earn a fee, or corporations fill a role. Bits of functionality like LinkedIn Skills which enables self-skills-coding has the looks of a powerful offering to do things like ‘get me 15 developers with android games experience in Sydney’

Similarly, demographic similarities have to be complemented with intention of presence – I go to LinkedIn to generate leads, connect with professionals, and hopefully grown my personal brand. I go to facebook to chat to my sister in Peru, look at pictures of friends and fam, mostly.

I entered Branchout early in their life and am using BeKnown. Kindly, and – this might go for Australia only – we’re at very very early and immature stages of seeing candidate attraction and retention happening on FB. I am not saying it will never happen; rather I am arguing that the social links – which can nurture professional links (e.g. I want to work at Adidas ‘cause I love the brand, and my cousing tells me training for salespeople is great) – are at this stage a huge haystack to look for needles.

I am looking forward to seeing a network, environment, app, etc. giving LinkedIn a run for its money; this will be very beneficial for the market as it will accelerate the pace of offerings. I just don’t see LinkedIn destroyed anytime soon.

Have a good rest of the week.

Posted by jorge at 6:15 pm

Recruitment and Virtual Goods

branding, business, Companies, facebook, Marketing, mobile, recruitment, Talent, technology No Responses »
Dec 092010

I was pretty sure I had not bought any virtual goods; I’d rather give a real bunch to the missus instead of getting her a one-dimensional rose on Facebook. Heck I might lose my face if I show with my byte-based present.

I caught a bit of the first day of @leweb a couple of days ago. During the time I watched it was all about games, mobile, social and payments. I won’t be surprised if that’s how it went for the rest of the sessions.

Fact is, I might be the only old-f@art not buying virtual goods. Billions of dollars have exchanged hands, and many companies have become hugely profitable off the back of these ethereal goods. And they all seem to get even stronger sale/expansion outlooks.

Thing is, I think there is a more comprehensive of virtual goods when I said I had not bought any yet.

If you think of software as a virtual good – whether it is a spreadsheet, a smartphone game, or an iTunes track – I guess this means we’re in this virtual commerce exchange for a long time now. The distinctive feature of these goods is that they have intellectual inputs that ‘impact’ the purchaser or recipient. The problem with my earlier definition was that I did not see intellectual inputs on electronic cows (which are totally different to electric sheep, but I digress).

Hopefully, you have agreed with this revised definition of virtual goods and with the fact that you and I have been supporting this economy for yonks. Let me put something else on top of that:

Physical goods – computers, jeans, coffee – have virtual goods in their make up that appeases or satisfy us emotionally, over and above the fact that the computer is fast, that those jeans hold your butt beautifully, or that the coffee is going to wake you up.

I put to you that those virtual goods are encapsulated in what we call ‘brand’. The implicit assumption is that, perhaps over time, you can find the physical features of branded (and great) goods in other white label products. Manufacturing technology, design progress and Japan seem to indicate this is rather plausible.

That was a bit of a long road to assert that the virtual elements of your product/service have the potential to be the source of customer engagement with them.

Where are our virtual goods in recruitment? How do agencies and hiring organisations build in virtual goods that make clients and job seekers react emotionally in their favour?

I guess as an industry we don’t invest sufficiently in these virtual goods. It might be worthwhile considering investing in them as these could be a tangible part of what you call your differentiators.

What will it take for you to consider investment in your virtual goods? Money? Better understanding?

If you leave an insightful comment I will send you recommendation to be an honorary member of Pet Society.

Have a good weekend

Posted by jorge at 2:03 pm

Young or Older, we need you Bolder

Job Seekers, Marketing, People, recruitment, Talent No Responses »
Aug 302010

I am always a bit sceptical about news of studies regarding perceptions and attitudes about the mature workforce like the one that got published recently.

Don’t get me wrong; if the findings indicate a true change of practice regarding older workers, that’s great.

I mean it’s in everyone’s best interest, right? Sooner or later – if we’re lucky – we’re moving up the age bracket whilst staying functional.

Whether we’re bosses or employees, we’re always selling our professionalism, experience and potential. Fact remains, the perception of our effectiveness as salespeople is impacted by how wrinkled we look.

How do we change these perceptions? How do we become grey hair impervious?

All of us have a to-do. Owners, managers and workers young and old need to nremain ‘responsible’.

1. employees, ensure you’re not mis-cast. There will be a temptation to take on a job that may not be a strength to you, but your potential employer is going to say ‘come on mate, you’re experienced, you can do this job’. if you know that is not the case, don’t accept it. It will come back to haunt you.

2. employers, just because some people have been on the workforce for thirty years, it guarantees you nothin’. There are people who are shit workers in their 20′s and they don’t learn, skill up or gain insights, and in their 50′s they remain shit workers. Leave the affirmative action stuff, don’t hire off the back of the wise-older worker preconception, and interview and test as if you want the job done the best possible way.

3. employees stay hungry. No-one wants lazy fat cats in their teams, however young or old. Show that you want the job, that you want to do well, that you want to become a linchpin of the organisation (here goes Seth Godin again). Stamina changes should not impact on your attitude.

4. employers, situational leadership won’t go astray across all your teams.There are certainly different motivators per staff member; don’t manage generational groups. Manage individuals.

Bye

12-10-2010 Update: Good stats and thoughts from Ross Clennett

Posted by jorge at 5:12 pm

You can post a job ad, but it will cost you

Advertising, best practice, Job Boards, recruitment, Sourcing 4 Responses »
Jan 312010

It’s the beginning of the year and I am already disappointed.

I thought 2010 was going to be the year where significantly less job ads, print or online, were going to include phrases like:

- ‘leading multinational’ to refer to the hiring company
- ‘high calibre individual’ to refer to the candidate they want to attract
- ‘challenging and dynamic environment’ to describe work conditions

What’s the real chance to get who you really want for this role with ‘details’ like those above?

I understand the anonymity has been used to protect clients from ambulance chasers, unsolicited CV’s etc. Those protection costs though are extremely high. It will cost real money to process unsuitable applicants – for example.

You might find the right individual in that hay stack you are generating. But just in case, get your calculator out and do your numbers; your job ads might be making your advertising/sourcing process more expensive than what you imagine.

Posted by jorge at 3:56 pm

Social Tools – The worst that could’ve happened to Recruitment?

best practice, linkedin, Marketing, recruitment, Search, Sourcing, twitter 3 Responses »
Dec 012009

Maybe…

In a recent post, @greg_savage reported that he had asked attendees of an RCSA event/roadshow for a quick show of hands about social tools usage. The results:

a) 80% of recruiters have a LinkedIn account, whilst only 20% were using it ‘actively’
b) there was a very low take up of twitter (5-10% have a handle)

You know what? If there were more ‘active’ recruiters on LinkedIn, or more consultants moving into twitter, the ‘damage’ might be even bigger.

What damage?

I went to @coffeemornings last Friday; I spoke to four peeps that had been approached by recruiters on LinkedIn that they had not heard from – let alone met – before; these peeps ranted about these recruiters effectively cold calling them, to either connect and then be referred to other LinkedIn members, or do the usual tyre-kicking (you happy in your job? kinda thing).

Some recruiters are using new(er) tools and combining them with old practices and old thinking. Big risk.

And big opportunities.

Recruiters that notice that LinkedIn is not a resume database or a Yellow Pages for candidates, will score; they will give themselves room to develop their brand as individual professionals and that of the firms the happen to be working for.

Recruiters that feel the disconnect between social tools and the ‘let’s put bums on seats’ way of recruitment, and are courageous enough to re-energise their practices in the eyes of clients and job seekers, will come on top.

Big risk. Big opportunities.

Posted by jorge at 3:48 am

The Merovingian said: for every action there is a reaction

best practice, Job Boards, Job Seekers, networking, recruitment, Sourcing, Tools No Responses »
Feb 252009

Recruitment agencies are receiving less assignments from their clients

Recruiters – like all or most of us – need to stay busy or else. They start chasing ads

If they chase ads, they might as well have a candidates that can fill the role

In lieu of/addition to looking at their own databases, recruiters chasing ads opt to create their own sourcing/trawling posts

The incremental cost of posting the trawling job ads is negligible; recruiters may have already paid for them as part of their monthly contracts

Applications per ad are already up given our context

Candidates won’t get much attention, because the recruiter’s interest in them is contingent on the ad-chasing success ratio (which I would say is low)

Hiring companies are getting peeved with cold-calling consultants, which leads them to (if possible) write more and more generic ads so that they are not identified by ad-chasers

What’s in the horizon?

As contracts with job boards get renewed maybe there will be less ads (both good and bad, but proportionally less bad ones)

Reduced confidence on recruiters will lead job seekers to going back to job seeking via people you can trust, which can also include hand-picked recruiters, but also colleagues, friends, family.

Referrals based on trawling ads will not produce results.

Niche sites that have the inclination and capacity to monitor the quality of job ads could also get the thumbs up. Issue here is: what’s quality? An ad for a work-from-home scheme? The fifth version of the same ad? A suspicious looking/fake one? The more judgment you apply the more labor-intensive / costly the exercise.

Hiring organisations have an opportunity to work on their employer brand during this time, A ‘grey’ recruitment practice does not necessarily imply low candidate quality.

Thank you @jobadder for your comments re. niche sites

Hope your week finishes very well

Posted by jorge at 6:22 pm

shooting the (job) messenger

Advertising, Job Boards, recruitment, Search No Responses »
Feb 152009

A few days back @gapingvoid twitted a link to a WJS article series describing the experience of recently made-unemployed US-based MBAs. In it, there was a sort of side-piece written by one of the individuals profiled, which touched on online job boards.. He says:

External job boards have certainly helped me with the search process, no doubt. They are great sources of information for discovering which companies are hiring for what. But when it comes to actually securing a position, my efforts in this area have been completely fruitless. In my conscious recollection, any resume that I have sent off into the oblivion of the Internet has never garnered a response of interest. In fact, a very small percentage returned any response whatsoever.

He then moves onto saying the following about vertical search engines (aggregators)

The job search sites that have been most beneficial are SimplyHired and Indeed, which aggregate job content from all around the web. These aggregator sites don’t necessarily provide the answers, they simply strengthen the cornerstone of daily searches by providing breadth and depth that other external boards don’t. I’ve also found that most of these job listings are linked to internal career Web sites so I can apply directly and even see other opportunities of interest. Best of all, these sites don’t require job seekers to have an account, or post their resume.

Apples to oranges, isn’t it

People use job boards and job search engines differently, driving significantly different expectations. A response is expected for a job application sent through a job board. From an aggregator, visitors expect depth/coverage (more job ads sources, better data slicing).

On the job board, people are job seekers, on the aggregator they turn into job researchers.

You will know that job boards are not the ones who are ignoring applications. It’s the consultant or the hiring manager – that is, advertisers – who would decide that there’s no point in getting in touch with unsuitable applicants, at least on a timely basis.

Meantime, you as a job board owner/manager and your brand are taking the heat.

So, how do you make the job board experience better for a job seeker?

- Do you follow up the advertiser and then ‘get in the middle’ and let applicants know of your efforts to ensure they get some sort of response?

- Do you let job seekers know that there is nothing you can do?

I reckon that job board owners/managers will be more inclined to do nothing if they think they are in the advertising industry. Conversely, if they see their organisation inscribed in the recruitment industry, they might be prone to make something to contribute to the recruitment experience.

Either way, it will come back to them.

Have a great week

Posted by jorge at 5:29 pm
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