Generation Y for Dummies

eWeek has a great article on recruiting and working with Generation Y employees. As they point out a number of times, Boomers are retiring and GenY is filling the gap left when people my age (young, old farts) move up the corporate ladder. Some highlights from the article:
...the biggest difference between members of Generation Y and those who came before them is that they have spent their entire lives surrounded by technology. The second notable characteristic of the Generation Y work force is that they will switch jobs over the course of their careers more than any generation before them, holding as many as 20 jobs before they retire. The portability of retirement benefits and a lessened need to vest has contributed to this. Lanzalotto argues that it's important that companies not view employee turnover as bridge-burning. "As a manager, I know if they're good, they may leave. But, we have more boomerang employees than ever: those who leave and come back, with the added advantage that they know the culture, they know the company and they come back with a whole different perspective and institutional knowledge," he said. "They might come back in five years with some great experience and be a real asset to your company." Because of this focus on output and not method, they want different things out of their schedules, he said. "As long as they're getting their work done on time, they don't see why they shouldn't have the maximum flexibility: flex time, flex hours and working from home,"
The entire article is here.
Tagged Employment

Everyone's a Job Site

This is a little bit dated, but I was at the lake for a while and, conveniently, we don't have internet access up there.
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Over the past week or so, two of my favorite blogs for early stage companies have launched job sites. The first, Alarm Clock, launched TechGigger. TechGigger is more of a blog form that highlights open positions for companies written about in a:c. I like TechGigger as I think that the writing of the position is witty in a way that pushes the company but not so hard that it seems like an advertisement. I don't think that they are getting paid, so it removes a bias to promote the companies in way that is nice. Case in point, the recent post about Compiere looking for a MarCom VP.
Are you a dyed in the wool enterprise software weenie? Open source ERP start-up Compeire is looking for a VP of marketing and it shows. Just look at that tasteless logo.
I love it.
A-List blogger, Michael Arrington, also launched a job board in the past week or so. Michael's job board, CrunchBoard, is a little bit more formal and is set up in the traditional job board format (listings, search, job type, etc.). When he originally wrote about the site, I had the impression that CrunchBoard would only be posting jobs for companies that Michael and staff write about. I'm glad that I was off base on that as I have to believe that there are more companies hiring than TechCrunch can write about. CrunchBoard has some great companies on the site right now including Fox, MobiTV, PhotoBucket & Mozes. It turns out, that digging into the TechGigger site, is that it is fairly simple, thanks to companies like JobThread, for anyone to become a job board. I am thrilled about this as it hopefully is another nail in the coffin of the traditional job boards. Why is a guy that sells recruitment advertising for Yahoo HotJobs so happy about this? Mainly because as job boards become more commoditized, Yahoo has competitive advantages in the space that can't be matched by CareerBuilder and Monster. The job board market is at a cross roads right now. Employers are posting their jobs on job boards (Monster, HJ, CB, etc.), however, with a 4.5% unemployment rate across the country and much less than that in major metro areas, people just aren't going to job boards any more. Also, employers are starting to see the value in services like SimplyHired, GoogleBase, Indeed, and other aggregators that are giving away job postings at no cost. As employers start waking up to these services, they won't be going to the paid job boards for much longer. However, if people aren't going to job boards in general, you still get what you pay for. Hence, my excitement. Yahoo has a competitive advantage right now in terms of both search and visual media. This is something that Monster, CareerBuilder or any of the aggregators can offer. No one goes to Monster to see their sports scores, no one goes to CareerBuilder to check their stock portfolio and no one goes to Simply Hired to search the web. They come to Yahoo to do all of these activities and this is where recruiters should be reaching out to possible candidates. Employers should leverage what Yahoo knows about it's users and translate that into recruitment campaigns. It is the future of recruitment and it is coming quickly.
Tagged & Others Employment GOOG MSFT YHOO

Google Cost per Action & Recruitment

Interestingly, Google announced that they would begin testing a Cost Per Action (CPA) strategy the other day. CPA advertising is one in which instead of paying for impressions, advertisers pay based on a certain action being completed. For example, a resort may only pay when users request a brochure or call to find out more information. It is a good strategy to help alleviate some of the negativity associated with click fraud. I have been chewing on this since the announcement and thinking about how it could relate to selling recruitment advertising. At the end of the day, it is the recruiters goal to get the best / most butts in seats for the lowest possible cost as fast as possible. While that sounds like a simple task, in this job market, it is an unenviable challenge. To recruit solid, professionals, especially in high-tech, there are few options available; 1.) You can hire a recruiter to pound the phones for you to find a person. You pay her on a contingency basis of about 30% per hire. In the case of a good high-tech worker, you pay about $30,000 per hire. 2.) You can spend your own time doing this. It is cheaper, but if you are a company like eBay with 300 open jobs, this isn't cost effective for the company to do this. 3.) You can take out ads on a job board or in the paper and hope that a good fit finds you, this is cost effective, but it isn't practical in this job market where people aren't actively looking for jobs. So where does that leave a company looking to recruit the best possible people? Well, one option is to run ads online reaching people when they aren't looking for a job, in their email for example. Which is why I am so interested in the idea of CPA for recruitment.  The action in recruitment may be an actual hire, however, more realistically, the action would be submitting a resume. A good HR department should know that for every 'X' number of qualified resumes that they receive, they can make 1 hire.  Therefore, if X=25, for a general programmer position, for an example, a company like eBay might pay a CPA of $1,000, if the action is a resume submission. This makes a CPA model much more effective than paying a recruiter. While this may sound like a crap shoot for the recruiting company, eBay in this example, the targeting of the ad and job description on eBay's site should be created in order to weed out any unqualified candidates.  For example, if a user was targeted as a computer programmer, in the Bay Area, that has a behavior of a job seeker and the description of the job is written in a very descript manner, in theory, the only people applying for this job are highly qualified candidates.  All of a sudden, $1,000 per resume looks fairly inexpensive. Could this be the end of recruiters and the start of CPA adoption by the recruitment community?  Probably not right away, but as more organizations begin to explore alternatives to recruit the best people, this should be one of the options at the top of their list.
Tagged & Others Employment GOOG MSFT YHOO

Arrested, Bored, Fired, Hate, Sexist

While it may sound like the 5 chapters of the next Dan Brown novel, these are some of the words that the latest CrossRoads Career Development Newsletters recommends that you don't include in your resume. Perhaps I will have a contest of undetermined winnings to the person that can come up with the best resume entry using all five of these words.  All entries, please fill in the comments section.  Readers, feel free to vote.
Tagged Employment General

Market10 Review

Because I suppose they are a competitor, I took a look at Market10 the other day.  I found out about this company when Alarm:Clock, my favorite technology funding site, called them the eHarmony of jobs.  The problem is that if Market10 is the eHarmony of jobs, than there are a lot of lonely people out there. I really like the concept of Market10.  The idea of matching you to the ideal job based on a questionnaire is clever.  However, execution leaves a little to be desired.  First, setting up my account was incredibly painful.  I found that creating a user ID was tougher then it needed to be.  I am sure that they are working out some bugs a bit, but each time my ID was rejected, all my registration fields where erased.  Secondly, and more frustrating, was the questionnaire.  I like this in theory, however, after completing the questions, I was left with a message that no jobs meet my criteria in a 75 mile radius.  Perhaps my salary was a bit specific (service gives you salary choices in increments of $10K).  Perhaps my verticals were too wide (I've sold a bunch of stuff).  I am not sure, but after spending 15 minutes completing the questions, I was left with a message of:
Currently there are no positions that match your profile.  Please be sure to check back as we are adding new jobs on a daily basis.
That's annoying.  I wish that it would have told me prior to me doing the questionnaire that there was only a limited number of jobs in the Bay Area and given me the option to complete it.  Perhaps if there was a message of:
While we are adding partners everyday, we only have a limtied number of jobs in your region with companies such as ABC, ZYX, and LMNO.  We suggest you build a profile to be kept up to date with your best job.
I wouldn't be so torqued about this service.  Or perhaps have a counter that shows how many jobs match my criteria.  Oh, Bay Area - 125 jobs, Bay Area / Sales - 35 jobs, Bay Area / Sales / Technology - 28 jobs and so on. In the future, I'd like to see Market10 add suggestions about what they think that I should do when I grow up.  I've noticed that Monster is starting to do that, however, whenever I take tests like that I always get something along the lines of being a jeweler or a plumber or something.  If you are interested in a total career change, Market10 isn't going to work. Market10 will be a good asset for recruiters.  It will help them find candidates that are qualified and interested in looking for a new job.  It will also develop a good, permission based database of passive candidates, something everyone wants access to.  Sales of their database should be huge. Getting the passive job seeker to fill out the questionnaire, in a market with 4.5% unemployment will be a challenge for Market10, especially if there is no return of jobs that meet the users background.  However, if they build their database, then they will be able to go to organizations and sell them on the database. IMO, this is a very Web 1.0 strategy.  Get the users then figure out how to monetize them (selling the database).  It is a very risky short term strategy, but one that could pay off big time long term.  It will be fun to watch and I welcome them to the space.
Tagged Employment Money & Philanthropy

The Future of Recruitment

6 months ago, when I left the Yahoo Messenger team to go to Yahoo HotJobs, people thought that I was crazy. Why would you want to leave a growing property that is now starting to put into effect all the work that you spent the last year plus working up to? A good question and the simple answer is that I wanted to get back into direct sales.

A more complicated answer has to do with my desire to be with a small organization where I can have the most impact. I like to get the ship started and sailing in the right direction and then move on to another ship that needs to be dropped in the water and pointed.

A more complicated answer still is that my new role allows me the opportunity to have significant impact on changing the way that, not only a business unit, but an entire industry operates. That is the true answer to the question.

Everyone that hasn’t been in a cave for the past 10 years knows that the advertising business is in the midst of a change moving from a spray and pray mentality to a more targeted approach. Print and television advertising are getting killed right now because smart advertisers are wising up and understanding that they can’t justify spending money on something with no measurable ROI. A billboard on the side of 101 costs about $60K - $100K per month and there is no way to tie that back to revenue. The most basic explanation for why internet advertising is doing so well is that for every dollar you spend, you can easily track. If you spend $1,000 on an ad and instantly know that it was responsible fore selling $2,000 worth of widgets, it’s a winner.

I took the job with Yahoo HotJobs because I see a shift in how employers recruit employees happening that will be an excellent wave to ride.

In the simplest terms, if you have a job, you aren’t going to a job board (HotJobs, Monster, Career Builder, etc.). You might hit Monster once in a while to see what is out there, but for the most part, your company is working very hard to make you successful and keep you on board and you are happy. With a national unemployment rate of 4.7%, you are highly desirable to another company. But if you aren’t going to a job board (and everyone knows you don’t read the news paper, especially the classifieds and who remembers anything they hear on the morning drive 20 seconds after they shut off their car?), how do companies find you?

I think that Joel Cheesman is half right. If a user does a search for ‘finance jobs’, it is important that your company come up first in sponsored search in both Yahoo & Google. But who does a search for ‘finance jobs’ if they aren’t looking for a job? Remember, you want to find people that have a job.

This is where my new (semi-new) job comes into play. Yahoo has embarked on a new program allowing recruitment advertisers to leverage what we know about our users and serve up ads no matter where they are on the Yahoo network. Example, if you are a good sales person in Washington, DC and making your number and making money, I guarantee that you don’t go to a job board. It is the farthest thing from your mind. This is the issue that is keeping recruiters up at night. However, if you do a quick survey of sales people in your organization, I suspect that significant percentage of them like football. With the recent NFL draft, and Yahoo’s coverage of it, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to advertise directly to sales people, in your industry, in Washington, DC on our NFL news page? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to serve a message directly to the job candidates that you want to reach where you want to reach them?

Yahoo knows a lot about its users. When you register for any of our properties, you provide us with information such as your location, age, gender, INDUSTRY and OCCUPATION. If you are a recruiter (or a VP of Sales), how valuable would it be to serve ads to people that have identified themselves as being in the occupation and location for the position that you are hiring? How valuable would it be to serve your message, with a trackable ROI, to the truly passive candidate? The people that don’t know that they are looking for a job. To paraphrase my friend Dave, ‘I love my job at Yahoo, however, if I log into Yahoo Mail and I see a job advertised that lets me play golf, travel with my family to exotic locations and make a million dollars a year, I am going to click on that ad’.

This is where recruitment is going. If you change jobs 24 months from now, you will find that job in a much different way then you found your current job. For your next job, there is a very good chance that the company will reach out to you. This is much different then hiring a head hunter. A good head hunter can make 75 - 100 cold calls a day netting you maybe one resume a day. In this market, I would suspect that this number is lower then that. My record to date for one campaign, highly targeted to 200,000 people delivered over one day, resulted in 15 hires. And no, these weren't some easy to fill KellyTemp positions.  These were finance professionals going to work in the corporate office of a Fortune Magazine Top 100 Companies to Work For.  A recruiter will spend 25% of the candidate’s annual salary on a head hunter. A campaign such as the one that I mentioned will cost about ¼ of that. As a CFO, VP of a business unit, or a recruiter it becomes very hard to ignore the cost per hire and time to hire difference between these two campaigns.

In a tight labor market, targeted online recruitment advertisement is the future of how companies will get the message that they are hiring across. The challenge is, how long will it take the market to board this new ship?

Tagged & Others Employment GOOG MSFT YHOO

A Visit to Electronic Arts - It's In The Game

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EA Lobby I was at EA yesterday for a meeting. It is hard to see in this crappy picture, but this is a picture of the 20 foot screen in EA's lobby that shows highlights of their games. While the company is all business, their lobby reminds me more of a night club then a multi-billion dollar company. The lobby is full of big comfy chairs which of course have plasma screens connected to all of their games on different platforms. I was early and my contact was running late. Typically, this is a chance to get caught up on email, but yesterday, I was able to get in about 10 holes at Pebble Beach in Tiger Woods 2006. Such a cool company. They are hiring too.
Tagged Employment

Inside Sales Representative Career Opportunity

My friend Peter Shutte is one of the best sales managers that I have ever worked for.   He is a very smart person, he is fair, he builds great comp plans and he is polished in front of a customer.  He is also a person that has been around the block a few times and one can learn a lot from him.  Top that off with the fact that he is a really cool guy to hang out with and you have a pretty good package. Peter is the VP of Sales for Nsite, a company that specializes in quotation & proposal management.  Nsite has built their business model in the white hot SaaS space and their business has taken off over the past couple of years.  In short, they have recieved a few rounds of funding as well as built a marquee list of clients. Peter is looking for a senior inside sales representative to join his team.  Specifc details on the role can be found here. If I know you (or your a FOAF) and you are interested contact me. Otherwise, please apply directly on Nsites website.
Tagged Employment

You Should Hire Jeff Clark

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Seth Godin shared the fact that Jeff Clark is looking for a job.  He built a pretty ugly website, but maybe that is what he was going for.  That semi-unattractive Web 2.0 look. What is appealing about this is that this maybe the  future of how to get hired.  Joel Cheesman posted about blogs being the next resumes, which I completely agree with and I have a post floating around in my head on. I've often thought about simply purchasing some ads in Yahoo Mail or buying some Sponsored Search links when looking for a job.  They are cheap, they are aggressive, they are effective.  Probably more so then submitting your resume to some seemingly endless supply of resumes that most companies receive.
Tagged Books & Blogs Employment Internet Marketing & Management Mobile & Technology Movies Music Sales Television

We Rule

Silicon Valley is the number one place in the country for jobs per Silicon Beat and a recent Indeed survey. The point that they make though, is that while there are 99 available jobs for every 1,000 employable [assuming] residents, there isn't enough trained people available. During the bust years, employers were lucky and were able to create a list of 10 pieces of criteria that they wanted in a candidate. Because unemployment at the time was so high, it was no problem waiting until someone with 10 out of 10 matches came along, and they did quickly. Unfortunately for both employers and job seekers, the 'We will wait' mentality has not waned, despite the pool of potential job candidates rapidly declining.  Perhaps, as the employment rate reaches boom proportions again, it would be best to let some of the criteria for candidates slide a bit.  Put a butt in a seat that meets 75 - 80% of the need and take a risk that someone smart and has demonstrated pervious successes in similar roles, can quickly learn the other 20%.
Tagged Employment
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