sitewatch

sitewatch: notchup

Companies, recruitment, referrals, sitewatch, Talent, Tools No Responses »

Feb 012008

company name: notchup

based in the US, currently in beta mode. you can apply for registration or get referred (send me your email if you want to go straight in)

the idea: give candidates cash for taking interviews with employers and recruiters; members are also encouraged to spam, i mean refer the site to people that might be interested in joining by given the inviters a % of the money made by the invitees in one year.

the user experience: clean design (although someone commenting on the techcrunch article reckoned that the layout was a ripoff from google’s grandcentral. uploading your profile from linkedin is meant to be easy too, though I did not manage to connect. On the other side of the equation, employers get to see a blind profile which they can choose for interview and lay out the cash

The site offers 100% money guarantee, not sure about the terms of reimbursement though.

It will be obvious to you that the model can fall on its bum before it comes out of beta if there’s abuse, lack of talent or buyers. I am wondering tho if you as individual agency or corporate recruitment department would be prepared to materially reward candidates at interview, shortlisting or placement stage of the process. Or, are you already doing that?

Hope you have a safe weekend

recruitment portals in ’08

best practice, business, Companies, recruitment, sitewatch, Sourcing, technology, Tools 1 Response »

Jan 162008

Hope you all had a fab beginning of 2008 – personally, I had a ‘fat’ beginning to the year, after all the holiday food that I am still trying to work off..

Just to bring to your attention what might be the type of online operation we’ll see more of in the coming months if it works for their stakeholders, Recruitment portals or markets are intended to aggregate employers and recruiters and take the friction out of a what is still very convoluted, and therefore costly, exchange. A couple of players coming up with soft and hard launch dates soon:

- VacancyBid, you can catch Danny Nerezov, the 24-year old CEO, on Facebook any day of the week. From their site:

VacancyBid is a Sydney based company which exists to lower the cost hire for employers, and create maximum revenue opportunities for recruiters.

- NeedRM; I met CEO Michael Rhodes many moons ago about this initiative, so I guess the business model has been reasonably worked. The tag line for the company from their homepage:

NEED Recruitment Market is a recruitment revolution that has the capacity to change global business dynamics. As an efficient recruitment marketplace that sits between employers and recruiters, NEED delivers real value to traders by harnessing the speed and global reach of the Internet.

I will be watching with interest to understand how they go to market and how well received they are specially in the context of:

- the continued growth of the BPO/Managed services deals between employers and one agency which brings its own exchange platform, thus locking out unauthorised delivery by other agencies

- the continued scarcity of talent, e.g. recruiters wondering “why do I need to go and bid for work which may not be overly profitable if I still have job orders I cannot fill?”

- the fact that these markets may rely on externally sourced data to reveal its effectiveness, that is employers/recruiters have to go back to the system and flag an engagement as closed (person placed)

In some ways, recruiters are already bidding for work using the classifieds model: if the see company abc publishing an ad for an accountant on a job board, I won’t be surprised if they receive a few calls from agencies canvassing the demand on an ongoing basis.

As I said, the marketplace is still partially intermediated. There’s a few challenges, I certainly don’t have the solution. My bet is technology alone will not diminish friction.

have a great year

sitewatch 4/7 – Climber.com

Companies, recruitment, sitewatch, Sourcing, Talent, Tools No Responses »

Jul 052007

Climber.com

Tagline: “We are like dating for jobs”

Jist: Matches candidates with employers based on resume type information plus something that resembles a preferences and attributes profile (e.g. are you money-driven, does you work have to have a positive social impact). Climber calls this the Career Fingerprint.

Snapshot today: At the moment the jobs matched to the system’s registered users are keyword-matched ads from the Indeed engine, but as employer preference data grows the matching is expected to be more comprehensive. Professionals have private profiles and decide to share personal/contact info to specific employers.

Initial assessment: The attributes and preferences profile is superficial; then again, it is not meant to be a rigorous tool to assess a person’s suitability for a role. Given this, if the profiles were to convey the candidates/employers likes and dislikes, there is an increased chance to assess a level of compatibility between potential hire and hirer at the onset.

I would also like to know how this information is embedded (e.g. taken into account) in the recruitment process. Maybe RPO and corporate recruiters are readier than others to use this information effectively.

Down the track: It has the potential for interesting metadata

My philosophical question: At the end of the day do you hire on (soft) compatibilities or hard skills?

Went for a bit more info, but the system is like, down

Checkster from alpha to pre-release access

Companies, Job Seekers, recruitment, sitewatch, Talent, Tools No Responses »

May 272007

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.).

sitewatch 19/05 – Talent Spring

Companies, crowdsourcing, Job Seekers, recruitment, sitewatch, Talent, technology, Tools 5 Responses »

May 182007

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

sitewatch 17/05 – careermarket

recruitment, sitewatch, Sourcing, Talent, Tools No Responses »

May 172007

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

let’s hope it is not an Aeron

Advertising, Job Boards, sitewatch, Talent 3 Responses »

Apr 172007

I am still scratching my head about thebigchair. Maybe it’s that Fairfax got me used to the sleeker mycareer and the newest channel looks blunter that it really is. Maybe it is early stages and there are really, really big changes for the site already under way. Maybe for the next release I can actually search for jobs, as opposed to just be able to browse, and browse.

If I had it my way, I would have not wrecked the fin review online a few months ago and would have sprinkled big chair content all over and around it. Imagine a smooth bubble or dialog box or something prompting people for an exec role with a company when there is a news piece about that company and you hover on the article. You did not even have to spend money to build another brand and drive traffic to another career site. And if you are thinking “what happens if the news is not good for the hiring company?” well it can’t be that bad to provide a potential applicant with relevant information, can it?

Other than that, one of the benefits for the site as explained in recruiterdaily, is that visitors can make expressions of interest, without submitting a CV; I guess the research Fairfax made shows this function is a plus because seniors don’t like to send their CV online.

Three points on this:

- my theory is that top-end candidates do not want to send their CV’s to people they don’t know or haven’t heard of. Resumes from senior professionals fly all over the internet via email, once relationships are built. So this is not a channel issue, this is a trust issue; information resolves the issue: information about the employer, the agency, the consultant, the job itself

- a serious recruitment process does not kick off without a resume, period. That may be something you and I don’t like, but that’s how it works at the moment. It will take significant changes for recruiters to do away with the document in its current form and substance

- the majority of the current advertisers to thebigchair, within which you can find the larger agencies, still prefer to by-pass the expression of interest jig and request for applicants to use the advertiser’s own apply online engine. So, not much damage done.

Jobcasting anyone?

Companies, General, mobile, sitewatch No Responses »

Apr 032007

Long introduction not required: I give you Jobsinpods

People get audio files from jobsinpods with career info, employer details (what’s it like to work at acme, values, testimonials) and actual job openings, that can be listened to on their iPods or mp3 players whilst on their way to their soon-to-be ex-employer

Flipside, it provides a mobile channel to agencies and employers interested in marketing to potential candidates via alternative media (you noticed how many people with earplugs on the train, ferry, streets – right? there you go)

Get this widget!

Advertising, Companies, Search, sitewatch 2 Responses »

Mar 122007

spotted myspider today, though I am not sure how recent it is; it claims to have 300k plus jobs aggregated from the top job boards in Australia; jobsearch and and other corporates coming soon.

It called my attention that compared to other aggregators that take visitors to the original site if visitors want to see the job ad in full, myspider shows a flat text version of the ad scraped from the job board, on their own site. Only if job seekers click on the ‘apply online’ button, are they taken to the native (job board) online application screen.

The full ad display on the site is kinda ugly (e.g. no line breaks) but hey they info is there. I wonder is what this produces is more filtered traffic to the original site (she who clicks applies). If that’s the case, is it better or worse for the job seeker? and for the job site? and for the advertiser?

online recruitment advertising in Asia

Advertising, Companies, recruitdotnet, sitewatch No Responses »

Mar 112007

The online recruitment market in Asia is still far behind that of the United States, according to Maneck Mohan, director of Recruit.net. In Recruit.net’s markets, Australia is the most mature and China the least developed in the transition from traditional offline media job postings to online postings.

article from workforce management – march ’07

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