LatinOcean – Digital Marketing Consulting

In the industrial era, Big money was spent on Big research that spawned Big products; the early adopters for such wares (planes, guns, mainframes) were either governments or well-funded, large corporations. Subsequent to that, mass-production-driven economies of scale allowed for diminishing marginal production costs through automation, cheaper labour, amortisation of R&D expenditure. The consumerisation of products was the result of its massification.

In the post-industrial period, comparatively small investments of time and money are dedicated to launch new tools and services that are firstly thrown into the hands of individual users, generally for little or no money. When this offering reaches or gets close to the proverbial tipping point, corporations and governments start to pay attention. Consumerisation effectively acts as a huge proof of concept.

The first example that comes to mind is ICQ; it supposedly started with pimply kids flirting and talking about music, right? Next thing, intranet based IM applications are vanilla services in business. Same for P2P, even email if you want to go that far back. The music discussions and flirting (may be) are gone but the design stayed.

So, next time you feel like rolling your eyes when someone tweets what she had for breakfast, may I kindly suggest you have a Stella, relax and reflect that in all likelihood the trivial stuff (maybe) will fade away from twitter, but its infrastructure will certainly remain.

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

Recently, Geoff Jennings reported a price increase in the C1 product which, correction notwithstanding, still took home the message that noone likes a price hike. Fair enough.

Even though nominal prices per ad were to go up for advertisers can I suggest the acquisition cost of acquiring candidates/job applicants may be going down?

This would be the obvious result of having more applications per ad (in turn due to more people looking for work altogether and, to a lesser extent, reduced ad re-posting). This argument assumes similar ‘quality’ of applicants, which is a can of worms I will open for the next inauguration, if ok with you.

Last time I checked, at 185 USD, a LinkedIn ad looked pretty unaffordable, in the words of a few recruiters I spoke to. But, what if that ad delivers more ‘quality’ candidates, or even the candidate that ends up being placed, earning the fees to the consultant?

I made this point in a previous post, Advertisers pay for an ad, but expect more than posting; they expect distribution and targeting. So if C1 is nominally more expensive than Seek for some of its ad packages. they might want to get ready to justify it in terms of application volumes (post note: turns out they’re not more expensive than Seek which puts the universe in balance again).

This tight period may prompt advertisers to pick up a pencil and review the source of their candidates; nominal per-ad prices might be misleading.

Over the past couple of years I have seen recruiters getting significantly wiser as to how to use web-based products, services, techniques; to source the talent they need to deliver to their clients. The majority of the tier-one players have made serious investments in skills (adoption / training) and products (e.g. subscriptions) in order to create what I call a multi-channel sourcing platform using generalist sites, niche sites, search, search marketing, professional/social networks, referral systems, etc. I’d love to think that LatinOcean had something to do with that.

This multi-pronged approach to candidate engagement – I am also happy to report – hast lost its novelty value and is now imbedded in the recruiters’ workflow, which is where it makes a difference. It is now part of the day to day for a material number of agencies and internal recruitment teams. This is not going away; we’re not going to just post classifieds anymore, is my bet.

Concomitant to this evolution, job seekers need to think now (more than ever) as to how to nurture a multi-channel job hunting platform online. Which employers do you want to be targeted by? Who do you want to meet? What is the first search result you want to appear when someone Googles your name? What is the best platform to research a company or agency or individual recruitment consultant?

What I am pointing to is that we, as job seekers / professionals in constant career flux, need to understand that it is our responsibility to determine/influence our reputation online and to use the channel other than just clicking the ‘apply online’ button to get the job you want. We are empowered and able to do so without the need for technical wizardry or expensive/cumbersome overheads.

Given this, I thought I would start a bit of a list as to what you can/should do/consider when refining your ‘interactive job seeker’ self. Hopefully the list and the points outlined can be enriched with adds / edits from the readers.

1. Reports of the demise of the standard word/text/PDF resume have been greatly exaggerated. This is still the document that recruiters work with when it comes to the crunch. So if you are going to post one of this mothers online, ensure it is a current one and it reflects your agenda/interests pretty much up to the minute.

2. The resume format of choice might be the same but possibly there are smarter ways to manage its distribution/broadcasting. Give emurse a try to keep multiple versions of your resume, and a fairly clear trail of who you’ve sent it to. If you believe a fancier CV format will contribute, register with VisualCV and give it a crack

3. If you want to be seen and approached at an early stage of the recruitment process or as recruiters conduct their sourcing activities, work on your online profile. LinkedIn is still very much the place to go for this (XING is not playing in Australia and has no plans to do so – in any English-speaking nation, for that matter). Beef up your profile with work experience, academic pedigree and associations; all of this gives the system a chance to connect you with (arguably) solid connections.

4. Avoid things that create churn for the recruiter. Serial/batch job applications to classified ads are as counter-productive as multiple postings of the same advertisement. In both cases you as the job seeker are on the receiving end. If your name crops up multiple times for a large variety of roles, you may not be considered as a serious applicant. I know this is a broad generalization and a perception that maybe overridden in case you happen to be a good candidate for any of the roles, but I think it’s a reasonable rule of thumb.

5. Google yourself, and have a look; which result comes first? If you have a common name (you know what I mean, so don’t take offence) narrow down your search to your profession or company. Are your results showing within the first 10-15 results? Are you happy with the results that point to you as an individual / professional? I spend a bit of time on my LinkedIn profile and it appears that LinkedIn corresponds by investing in SEO on my behalf (and theirs, of course)

6. Search yourself on Zoominfo. This engine crawls the net to work out a profile extracted from the info accessed. You can actually register and ‘claim’ the profile the system works out and update it with current information

7. If LinkedIn appears too slanted to networking as opposed to to-the-point job hunting you can keep an eye for the LinkedIn job ads. Alternatively you can have a look at resume databases like LinkMe, which is more a job-seeker ready environment with some social features. Remember also that you have the option on several job boards to make your profile and CV visible to recruiters

8. Use Google, LinkedIn, Zoominfo and Facebook to research a company of a specific individual recruiter. If you want to check out a company, also check their careers site; further to this, create a Google email alert so you can receive news or blog postings about the company you are interested in (you want to hear from people that have actual experience with the company, not with their PR machine). While you are at it, create an email alert for yourself (e.g. enter your name as a search key)

9. Publish (this is a bit of a big one to elaborate) may tackle on part 2

Just run out of time, I am sure there are good/better ones to add for job hunters to consider; send your comments and adds to keep building this up over the next few days.

Send me an email if you need further help on this, I might be able to tailor a few things for your specific situation as a job seeker (jorge at latinocean.com).

Have a great rest of the week

Would love it if it can be of use to anyone

Cheers

Good Morning

I’ve exchanged a few emails with a LinkedIn connection who – as a senior IT recruiter – uses the platform quite extensively to source candidates

Some interesting stats from this particular individual:

- Claims 75% of assignments are filled from LinkedIn-sourced candidates (this has got to be best practice, right?)

- Goes for quality of connection instead of volume (e.g. looks to connect with candidates that have been in contact via previous jobs applications, emails, etc.)

- Considers ads totally useless (this is somewhat of a surprise to me)

- Is using ‘status updates’ to let the market know of the current job openings

- Does not use introductions at all

- Resorts to InMail only as a last option. This might be why LinkedIn is looking for alternative revenue streams (advertising, corporate services, etc.)

What are your stats?

Have a great week

Throughout my time as a LinkedIn user, I have received a large number of invitations to connect. Every one of these invitations can be grouped in three categories that are represented with the following real and recent examples:

Example 1:

Jorge

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

-Joe

Example 2:

Jorge,

I am reaching out to you as a fellow member of (another online network).

I would love to connect with you to share networks.

I do understand that you might choose not to accept my invitation. If that is the case please ARCHIVE the invitation instead of saying you don’t know me.

I appreciate your time.

- Joe

Example 3

Jorge

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. We are connected through a number of different people and the X Talent Conference group and I was impressed when I saw your profile. I am seeking to create a powerful network of fellow professionals from around the world that I can learn from, share with and develop best practice to use every day. I thank you for your consideration.

-Joe

What matters most to you?. Is it:

- How interested/beneficial it is for you to connect to Joe?
- The style of the invitation and how much ‘effort’ the inviter has made in producing a customised invitation?
- The fact that you don’t know Joe

A quick snapshot of the self-confessed Australians on LinkedIn

1. 60k shy of half a million members.

2. In Crowds:

a) C-Level types = 8.5k
b) IT Professionals= 47k
c) Small Business = 15k
d) Finance = 14k
e) Sales = 19k
f) Entrepreneurs = 7k

That leaves a few hundred k’s unaccounted for, but suspect marketing, engineering, other professions are a big stack

Bottom line is there is critical mass on LinkedIn for the region. Now, how do you go about engaging them?

Stats kindly provided for an ad campaign by Mary Oliver-Iglesias from Linkedin. Maybe she can help you with a campaign too.

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

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