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.

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.

Wow, the previous blog entry I made was in March; don’t think I’ve ever left it for so long.

I think – like others – I was sorta kidnapped by Twitter; meantime though a number of things happened in regards to the LatinOcean practice. Allow me to make a recap:

1. Despite the GFC (remember it?) there were a quite a few clients keen to make investments in their staff education, reviewing processes and sprucing up internal and external systems. They were able to take advantage of their revised/lower opportunity costs (e.g. consultants less busy, more negotiation power with vendors, etc.).

2. What also helped us keep a steady path re. ‘business coming in’ was the expected growth of career management and transitioning/outplacement services from our larger clients. To leverage of this part of the cycle, we adapted our sourcing and recruitment focused offerings into the services from HR outfits that were preparing retrenched professionals for their next move. Our contribution had a lot to do with personal branding and reputation management on the web.

3. At the end of June, LatinOcean was sold to Jabor Holdings. Jabor Holdings is a private company in which I am a director. Our expectation is that LatinOcean will continue operating for as long as our customers want us around. If anything, we plan to explore how we can use the materials and IP developed over the last three years to expand into other professional services verticals.

4. Jabor Holdings is also owner of Digital Reach a new venture that came to life at the beginning of this year; focused on the online advertising industry, this startup needs lots of love and nurturing which is what hopefully we will be giving it.

This post is making me look back and now I understand why I haven’t blogged in such a long time.

In the meantime though, there have been interesting/encouraging topics/trends emerging; on which I can only hope I will be chipping in more proactively. For example:

- Less observers and more doers online; in particular more actual recruitment consultants walking the talk re. online sourcing, etc. and bringing insights from the real world. Greg Savage and Kelly O’Shaughnessy come to mind.

- The ever growing quality and volume output coming from the thinkers. The discourse and reports like Phillip and Michael’s sources of talent study opened the room for debate, discussion and further refinement outside the echo chamber.

- The ongoing tinkering with services and technologies supporting recruitment, sourcing, engagement

- The social recruitment meme, which was undergoing a stylish discussion entanglement until someone looked at the time and said that it was time to get back to work (just being facetious; I am always keen to listen and contribute to concept-shaping views on this topic)

Look forward to getting back into blogging shape. Thank you for sticking around

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.

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

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

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.

Then the web enabled Aggregating. For job ads, this meant shoving classifieds in one central point, that would help with exposure/effectiveness; this is the ‘eyeballs’ era.

Subsequently, the web got good at Distributing. (the ’social’ era – not just 2.0 social web stuff; I mean search, syndication, ad networks, etc. I guess it also includes 2pointoh)

Publishers (say job boards) that leveraged of what the web had to offer during these eras, are finding market players that ultimately challenge them at the highest/current point of the ‘value of the web’ continuum. Example: job search engines competing on the basis of its distribution prowess (if/when available), without offering Posting.

It would be great if you accept that this ‘era’ model can help build a simple strategy framework for organisations that want to succeed in the online recruitment advertising space. If that’s the case, it might be worthwhile sketching a few ideas on the following fronts:

- What’s the next / upcoming web era after distribution? That is, from where is the incremental value to be offered to your market going to come from? If you answer ‘mobile’ or ‘networks’ i think you’re kidding yourself.

- Do you need to redefine who your customer is? Or do you just need to change/increase the markets you serve?

- Do you need to redefine which business you’re in? Do you sell ad distribution or are you in the job seeker/career management services bizo?

I reckon those have a dozen sub-questions. Any takers?

Stay well

A bit of a rant and/or speculations re. the news on job ads

a) The 50% + decline in newspaper ads includes the economic slow down factor and the migration to online factor which, if you have seen the Seek investor presentations, is BIG

b) The almost 30% decline in online ads includes the slow down factor, the ‘less-reposting’ factor and to a still small extent, to a ‘migration off classifieds’ factor.

c) If you take a) and b), then the corollary is that the decline in the actual job openings is less dramatic that the ad statistics.

d) There will be more applicants per job ad, but possibly less applications overall (due to lesser volumes of ads). But if you accepted a) and b) then it will not be 50 or even 30% harder to get a job, ceteris paribus

John Sumser wrote about how the media loves the bad news. I encourage everyone not to make our own gloom.