Jason Gorham - Founder & CEO CareerMetaSearch.com - Sharkstrike.com

The recent article in Fortune entitled Hot job: Selling Web ads is one that makes me snicker about how people don’t utilize the resources they have to recruit.

The article speaks of how pressed online advertising firms are to find great salespeople and how in-demand such people are. Companies are offering 2x salaries and using recruiters and paying higher fees in order to get people in the door. One of the missing items that I believe these types of companies are missing is the fact that they have their own recruiting tool at their disposal. What is it? It’s their own product and or business model.

Hiring a sales director "is the single biggest challenge that we have faced," says Dina Kaplan, co-founder of Blip.tv, a video-sharing site. Kaplan says she spends as much as six hours a day searching for the right person. She's close to a hire - "We're trying to steal someone from a TV network," she says - and may offer twice her own salary.

If you look at Blip.tv’s model which is a video sharing site what better way to recruit someone by using their own platform to do so? Create a very compelling, funny engaging video about what the company is searching for and distribute it via their network, Youtube etc. Make the job fund instead of tiresome, boring and spending six hours of your day doing so. This way Dina could not only push her product using her employment value proposition but she can recruit the person of her dreams by doing so.

I have seen this time and time again that companies don’t use their own tools to complete their own work, but rather go outside to spend ten times the amount of money to recruit someone. It may take a little more work, some phone calls but what better way to promote your company to recruit the right fit?

Posted by Jason at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Don’t you mean candidates looking for jobs? Nope, that’s right, jobs looking for candidates. I had a great conversation with a banker yesterday about our technology and what a disruptor it is in the industry. He summed it up with this one phrase…. “Oh, I get it, so it’s advertising software that makes jobs search for employed candidates.” One thing that people don’t understand is how does a job candidate searching software work? The first response people give is oh, it goes out to seek people looking for jobs. As we are disruptor, we are doing just the opposite. Our jobs seek out/search people who have jobs.

It doesn’t seem logical to have software seek out people who have jobs; however, these are the best people in the market. This is what the head hunters, recruiting agencies, and temp agencies are all jockeying for. Essentially, I have taken 11 years of recruiting experience and have now moved it to an online product. One of the questions I always ask when I speak at an event is, how many people aren’t looking for a job? Almost the whole audience raises their hand. If you pay me 1 million a year to sit on a beach and shuck coconuts, then yes, I’m looking for a job.

So how do you go about finding people who don’t want jobs? The best place to find these people are on the internet. People that aren’t looking for jobs are typically employed people (just wanted to make sure you’re awake) that are spending time online reading about their job or industry. We are able to serve ads to employed applicants to get them interested in clicking on the ad and eventually applying to the job. This not only captures the best available applicants, but we also understand what keywords we utilized to find these people.

So if you’re looking for a job, then we aren’t the best place to look, if you’re not looking, we will find you.

Posted by Jason at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just finished reading an article from the wall street journal entitled “the new battle for MBA grads” and it really made me wonder how employers are missing the boat. The article is a discussion about what employers are doing to attract MBA’s from certain schools and how they are changing tactics to do so. However a lot of what they are doing is the 2nd step in recruiting talent as well as missing the most important point of Employment Value Proposition.

Consider appliance maker Whirlpool Corp., of Benton Harbor, Mich. The company continues to do on-campus recruiting at its "core schools" -- Duke University, Harvard University, Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago.

But the company recently extended its reach to schools such as Dartmouth College, the University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California, the University of North Carolina and Clark Atlanta University by reviewing résumés online and conducting 45-minute telephone screenings of the most promising candidates. It brought its top picks to Whirlpool's offices for formal interviews.

In this case isn’t Whirlpool just increasing a flawed method? The campus recruiting effort is flawed as if they can’t recruiter from a certain number of schools than why increase the amount of schools to recruit from if the method is flawed? Now that I pointed out the flaw here is the solution. Whirlpool should not be increasing the number of schools they are recruiter from but to figure out the issues of why candidates aren’t working for Whirlpool? First Whirlpool isn’t a sexy company to work for so it’s up to them to make it sexy to work for. This can be done by increasing their employment value proposition, increasing awareness of their management track, or even highlight their longevity and what they have done to change society.

Whirlpool also is experimenting with a technology in which students answer a set of questions via a remote PC-based video camera. The recorded interviews are stored on a secure Web site that only a Whirlpool recruiter can access.

This is great idea however I revert to my first point that if you can’t recruit them how do you get them to answer any questions? More time should be spent on the front end to get these people in the door versus spending money on technology to interview them. If you get the pick of the litter of talent than your interview process becomes much easier.

"I believe recruiting will become more and more virtual," says the company's recruiting manager, Tiffany Voglewede. "We cannot afford to recruit only from our core schools because other schools, including some small schools, have amazing students."

I disagree with this point as I believe that recruiting has been online for sometime. I started my career in 1995 in recruiting and we were utilizing online techniques to recruit back then. I think the point here should be that online recruiting has been enhanced with a direct connection to candidates that spend time on linkedin, facebook and myspace. You can now connect with people where they spend time online.

Some companies are updating their career Web sites to get more in tune with today's students. Whirlpool, for example, is launching a chat feature on its site, assigning employees from different departments to answer questions at designated times. "Today's college graduates want someone right there when they have a question," says Ms. Voglewede. "Many college students have expressed their preference to communicate interactively with someone rather than just read someone's observations about the company."

I think this is great technology but how is it getting in tune with today’s students? Does it understand how the students thrive in the work environment? Does it understand the student and then try and recommend a position that would fit the student? Or is it just saying we have jobs you want jobs let’s chat?

Technology companies, not surprisingly, are among the most active online recruiters. International Business Machines Corp., which recruits at more than 100 U.S. universities, is planning to increase its online efforts, particularly for its Extreme Blue internship program. The company is setting up meeting spaces and islands in a virtual community called Second Life, where it plans to hold events such as recruiter question-and-answer sessions, educational lectures and online interviews. Students can log on, create avatars to physically represent themselves and visit IBM island. Senior business leaders, engineers and inventors, who often can't travel to campuses and job fairs because of work demands, will be able to participate in such virtual events.

Once again I believe that IBM is not taking the high road here. It’s not a matter of having a virtual island but how does one get to the virtual island. If the product is a reinforcement of their on campus effort than it’s really lost. Students have choices so if they have 20 companies onsite for a career fair than how do you stand out? Companies should be spending more time reaching these people before they are on campus or trying to reach the students that aren’t even showing up to meet employers. I liken these people to passive candidates as they are usually the candidates that you want first.

Wooing Candidates

While some companies aren't ready to give virtual recruiting a try, most understand the need to go beyond formulaic techniques to succeed in today's hot job market.
Nearly two-thirds of the respondents in The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey said their companies are trying new tactics to boost hiring rates. About 44% of the respondents said they are simply trekking to more schools. Others said they are recruiting earlier in the school year and staying on campuses longer, sending more senior managers to formal presentations and social events at the schools, and paying employees to refer promising M.B.A. students. Some companies are assigning "buddy" employees to top prospects to help woo them and making a bigger effort to convert summer interns into full-time hires. They also are emphasizing flexible work-life balance policies in interviews.

This one blows my mind. Companies aren’t giving virtual recruiting a try are really missing the boat. All signs point to internet growth, newspaper decline, web 2.0 is on the rise and people are coming together networking, meeting and greeting online. Without an internet presence how do you connect with anyone? When someone wants more information about you what do you do…mail them? The one piece that I thought that should have started the article was omitted from the article. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents in The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey said their companies are trying new tactics to boost hiring rates. If this number is referring the above mentioned tactics than I believe it’s not going far enough. Some of these tactics that they should be doing are the following:

Campus Recruiting Referral Bonuses
Search Engine Marketing Including Paid & Organic Search
School computer ip targeting to reach students via their school ip address
Online Behavioral Targeting

A good example of keyword ppc targeting is one of our case studies which consisted of our client Apex Systems that was recruiting entry level candidates that were college graduates. In a 3 month campaign we were able to capture 555 applicants with 5020 clicks. Most of the keywords that were utilized were geared towards college applicants, college graduates, entry level career or entry level careers. So not only was our client able to brand themselves but they were able to reach a specific demographic candidate that was their ultimate goal that no other employers were utilizing to do so.

So if I can give one piece of advice to employers. Start on the first step to separate yourself out from other companies in order to attract, recruit and retain the best talent in the world.

Posted by Jason at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got this email from monster and thought I would share.

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To buy one Monster Job Posting and get two more free, call 1-800-MONSTER (666-7837), ext. 1019010 now. Be sure to mention promo code A16Q3T4.

Offer ends 10/15/07, so now is the perfect time to put Monster to work for you.

Posted by Jason at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have been having some great success with our candidate profiling and I thought I would share some insight about this. First, candidate profiling sits between name sourcing and resume sourcing. Here is a breakdown of how candidate profiling works:

1. Client gives target profiling consisting of title, competitors, location, and salary range.
2. Online competitive intelligence begins to find these people, if they are online.
3. Pick up the phone and call them. If you get voicemail, DON”T LEAVE A MESSAGE.
4. Get a candidate live and explain who you are. They will always say, “Who?” and then explain to them why you called..
5. The next hurdle is when they ask, “How did you get my name?” Don’t spend a lot of time on this, just say off the internet.
6. We go through a 10 question survey which is really a mini-interview with the candidate. Gets them thinking about another job and what would it take for them to leave.
7. Try to get a resume from the candidate if they have one. If they don’t have one, let them know it’s not a big deal. Remember, these people aren’t looking for a job, so you should show them a little more love.
8. Produce results to your client. The client is now armed with all the information they need to be able to close these passive candidates.

These people aren’t looking for jobs, and usually will say to you they haven’t posted their resume anywhere. That’s great, you don’t want that. You want the cream of the crop, the best of breed, per se. Here are a couple of examples of candidate profiling we have done recently.

This profiling was done for a transportation client.

Candidate Title: Operations Manager

How long have you been with your current employer?

19 years.

Title: Senior Account Manager

How long have you been with your current employer?

10 years experience

If you’re not doing candidate profiling, then get in touch with us as we can help. Contact sales at careermetasearch.com for pricing.

Posted by Jason at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Job hunters perfecting their resumes for that dream job are being urged to also polish their online profile--and clean it up if needs be, with a new breed of companies emerging to help mold Internet images.

Recruitment experts advise job hunters to google themselves before stepping out into the competitive job market to see if a search pull ups that blog entry written about legalizing marijuana or drunken party photos with friends.

"The Internet brings a new dimension to the application process. Sometimes it can work to your advantage, and sometimes to your disadvantage," employment Web site Careerbuilder.com spokeswoman Jennifer Sullivan told Reuters.

Various surveys have shown that employers are using online searches to check out potential candidates, especially as some of the early Internet surfers become bosses themselves.

A study of 1,150 hiring managers by Careerbuilder.com found 26 percent of managers admitted to using search engines such as Google and 12 percent of managers said they used social networking sites like Facebook.com in their hiring process.

Those numbers may be low, but not the repercussions.

Of the 12 percent who checked social networking sites, 63 percent declined to hire an applicant based on what they found, citing lying about qualifications and criminal behavior as two of the top disqualifiers.

But with hiring managers and job seekers using new and different ways to stay one step ahead of each other, new technology has emerged to help both sides of the game.

For $10 a month, ReputationDefender.com will search your name everywhere--even "beyond Google"--including password-protected sites, and give a report of their findings.

For about $30 a month, clients can have them do a cleanup, which involves ensuring that all links to, for example, a college kegstand on Facebook.com or a disparaging blog entry from a former partner, will not appear during an online search.

"More than half of my clients use us just to search and don't even ask us to clean anything up," the company's chief executive and founder Michael Fertik, 28, told Reuters.

Fertik, a graduate from Harvard Law School, said it's important for everyone to know how they're perceived online.

"Often pictures that are intrinsically innocuous get taken out of context, and then can become punitive," said Fertik.

While ReputationDefender.com caters to individuals not employers, DefendMyName.com services both camps.

The two-year-old Portland, Maine-based company, a division of QED Media Group, will conduct an online cleanup for any size client, from individuals to large corporations. Some clients are companies seeking positive brand image online.

Using proprietary technology, company founder Rob Russo said DefendMyName creates links to promotional sites and blogs on clients in order to bury negative search engine results.

"Online searching has taken on an essential role in the corporate world when people are scouting new employees. It is becoming an actual part of the hiring process along with a criminal background check," Russo told Reuters.

But it is not always to job seekers' disadvantage that potential employers can check them out online.

The Careerbuilder.com study found 64 percent of hiring mangers had their hiring decision confirmed by information found online and 40 percent of managers said their decision was solidified by seeing that a candidate was "well rounded" and showed a wide range of interests."

Beth Murphy, an advertising assistant in New York, whose boss admitted to searching her profile on Facebook.com, said being scoped out online helped her land the job.

"In seeing my Facebook profile, they thought I seemed like a well-rounded person. They saw pictures of me doing service work in Africa immediately followed by pictures of me hanging out at a football tailgate," she told Reuters.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jason at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1st Annual CareerMetaSearch.com Recruiting Industry Disruptor Awards

Click Here To Nominate

I was reading the latest Business 2.0 magazine, and the issue was dedicated to the most influential people in regards to Web 2.0, and the article got me thinking about recruitment and who the movers, shakers, and disruptors are in our industry. I don’t like the word influential, as I believe it’s too hard to put everyone into that category (no offense to the good people at Biz 2.0.) So I started brainstorming the idea with my business partner Snoopy the beagle (yes my dog) and realized I needed the help of my vast reading community.

Here is your challenge, if you choose to accept it. CareerMetaSearch.com is launching the 1st Annual Recruiting Industry Disruptor Awards. The awards are open to any product, or influential person in the space you feel has disrupted the space to change, enhance, make better, or just make interesting. One award will be given for each category. You noticed I said award, as we are all winners. We encourage you to vote for new nominees and new categories, as we need some help with this. We will be finalizing the date, place, and time to announce the awards, so stay tuned.

I have created some categories, and placed people I felt may be a good fit for the category, and the distinction of being a recruiting industry disruptor. Please click on the link to view the categories and people, and to add new people and categories.

Any company’s people or vendors that would like to donate prizes, and or gifts, please contact me directly to help sponsor the awards. Thank you.

Click Here To Nominate

Posted by Jason at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Every week I receive 3-5 emails about companies that can do my sourcing for pennies on the dollar or you will see a pay per click ad that says hire a recruiter for $1000.00 per month and it got me thinking from our customers perspective why they hire us and not someone else.

I thought I would share some insight on how to pick your next name sourcing, resume database mining or candidate profiling company and be happy with your results.

1. Cost – We all know the expression you get what you pay for but in this case buyer beware. If you ready to send your sourcing overseas then get ready to do a lot of quality assurance on the work that is sent back. Labor is cheap overseas and yes that’s what you get is labor. You aren’t getting a qualified person that understands your needs, you’re getting a person that is not thinking and just taking direction. If you go this route be prepared to spend time on your results.

2. Experience – Before selecting the company find out what type of experience the actual sourcer has? How long have they been in recruiting, do they know the industry or do they know the lingo? Can the caller understand them or do they have an accent?

3. References – Have the company provide references to you that you can qualify. Most of our business is repeat business and it’s because of the quality of work. So make sure you can speak with someone that will vouch for the company and the quality they provided.

4. Time Expectation – Unlike going to Monster and sourcing resumes Name Sourcing and Name Profiling take a little longer. Make sure you know what your buying and the time line in which it will be delivered. Our Name Sourcing doesn’t take as much time as Name Profiling but when we conduct our Name Profiling we make sure that our clients understand that it could take as much as a month to complete the entire project.

5. Years In Business – Find out from the company you are reviewing how long they have been in business. This will give you an idea on their quality. I have seen companies come and go and it’s because of the their quality, client satisfaction and employee turnover.

These are just a few of the things to keep in mind when sourcing for a sourcing company. I hope that they will help you understand who where and what your buying.

Cheers.

Jason Gorham
CEO
Sharkstrike.com

Posted by Jason at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I met with a client today and it dawned on me that most clients don’t where their work is coming from. Most recruitment marketing agencies or recruitment advertising agencies are just outsourcing their work. Don’t get me wrong not all of them are of this practice but I have been on both sides of this, from getting the client and then going through a recruitment advertising firm to finish the work or that the recruitment advertising firm will come to me to quote their work.

This isn’t a bad practice it’s just a practice that you as a client should be aware of. Not only are you paying a premium to that agency to manage your account but your also not sure where the work is coming from. Also if there is a problem with the work you go to them they go their outsourcer. Most of the time the work that is outsourced has a mark-up placed on it whereas if you did a little digging you could have dealt directly with the resume sourcing company or name sourcing company.

So here are a couple of questions to ask prior to engaging a recruitment marketing company to handle services for you.

1. Do you outsource any or all of your work?
2. Can I contact the company directly or receive references from the company that you will be using?
3. Will I receive a discount if you’re not completing the work yourself?
4. How long have you been using this company and will the work be completed in the United States?
5. What qualifications does the outsource company posses if any?
6. What percentage of your work do you outsource?
7. What in-house resources do you have to perform this work?

These are just best practice questions to ask an recruitment advertising agency, as with CareerMetaSearch or Sharkstrike all of our work is performed in-house including video, name sourcing, interactive marketing and resume database mining. Buyer beware.

Posted by Jason at 4:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So you want to move into the pay per click game but not sure where to start, well I think I can give you some insight about the game.

I recently received a quote from a competitor and found it both very insightful as well as very sad. The quote was to perform pay per click management for a client and their jobs and to send traffic to the clients website to generate more candidate flow and receive more applications. The quote just so happens to coincide with another company that we are talking to that is using this recruitment advertising agency to handle their pay per click campaign and they are only generating a 2% conversion rate (which by the way the client though was very good). It got me thinking about writing this article and how much the general public understands about pay per click, the metrics and how effective it is, should be or could be.

First let me start by saying that search engine marketing is a very tricky, time consuming art that I would recommend not going at it alone if you have never done this before, unless you have hours to review bids, landing pages and website analytics. The whole thing is more of an art than a science and I have been doing this for the past 4 years and the game changes every day. The keywords change, the pay per click platforms change, the way ads are displayed change, so it’s an ever changing evolving world.

Let’s start with my potential client above. They thought that their conversion rate was high however in one of our campaigns we have received an 11% conversion rate and I have heard from Yahoo people that a solid ppc conversion rate would be 6%. So why is theirs so low even with a recruitment advertising company managing their process, they are supposed to be the experts right? Well I don’t know the exact answer but here are couple of things to consider.

PPC management is like soup. If you go to the store and buy a can of Campbell’s get home open it up and dump it into the pan, heat it up and then eat it than I would consider you a novice in soup making. The same as in creating an account on a ppc engine putting your credit card in and start advertising with little to no results. Now if you went to the store and bought broth some carrots, some beef, some spices and kept checking on the soup, tasting it adding to it, and boiling it longer you would have a pretty good soup. The same with ppc management, if you added the right keywords, the right ad copy, have the right landing page, with the right message and an easy to use form to capture candidates you would have a pretty good ppc soup. However most people don’t’ have the time to make a great soup and that’s why they should outsource their soup making.

Here are a couple of things to consider when outsourcing your recruitment advertising pay per click management.

1. Understand what your goals are going in. What is it that you want to get accomplished? Do you want to just test this, do you want to see real results, or do you just want to get more brand recognition?

2. When selecting a company to handle pay per click management, understand what their expertise is in the industry, what types of tools will they offer you and get references of clients that have used their service.

3. Put Your Money Where Your Knowledge Is. When we do just pay per click recruitment advertising we offer the client a money back guarantee on our set up fees if we can’t either increase their conversions or reach a agreed upon conversion goal. You should expect the same from your vendor. We have gone as far as to offer a pay per hire model to our pricing….you win we win.

4. Reporting. Your outsourcing partner should be able to provide reporting to you on what has worked and what hasn’t. Also make sure that they explain the reporting to you as this is valuable information to understand where your candidates came from.

I hope you found this article helpful. If you would like to run a ppc campaign yourself here are some recommended readings. If not, give us a call we can help.

1. I'm Not a Click. I'm Not a Keyword. I'm a Person by Kevin Lee, ClickZ Experts , 01-12-2007 . Microsoft adCenter is leading the way among major PPC search services in providing profile-based segment targeting capabilities. Although the implementation is a bit clunky, segmenting PPC campaigns can produce excellent results. Expect Yahoo and Google to follow suit.

2. Search Scent in the Search Engines by Kevin Lee, ClickZ Experts , 01-19-2007 . Discussion of ways to reinforce the relevance of your landing pages to the exact search terms that brought the visitor to your site, allowing them to follow the "scent" trail from search through to conversion. Dynamic landing page customization, and attention-getting formatting possibilities.

3. The Value of Online Traffic by Bryan Eisenberg, ClickZ Experts , 01-19-2007 . It's conventional to complain about the ever-rising costs of buying online traffic through pay-per-click search marketing, or even organic search optimization. This less conventional opinion suggests that online traffic is a way too cheap, and that traffic cost inflation will lead to better marketing and ROI.

4. To PPC Or Not? How To Decide by Julie Mason, Media Post , 01-30-2007 . Although "age-old" might be a slight exaggeration, Mason believes the question of whether pay-per-click (PPC) or non-pay-per-click (N-PPC) has no definite answer. Discusses types of campaigns better suited to each type of search advertising.

5. The State of Search Engine Advertising: Reality and Alternatives by Mel Strocen, SiteReference , 01-25-2007 . Argues that advertisers should be abandoning PPC in droves because of (1) cost, (2) click fraud, (3) lack of accountability. Then he gives alternatives to PPC -- organic SEO, paid inclusion, cost per action, and pay-per-percentage.

Posted by Jason at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Account in Review Following Disappointing Super Bowl Ad Showing
By Jeremy Mullman

Published: February 23, 2007

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago, has resigned as CareerBuilder's agency of record after a five-year run that saw the online jobs site surpass rival Monster in total listings and online traffic.

In an internal memo issued today, the agency's president, Peter Krivkovich, said CareerBuilder put its account up for review after the agency's Super Bowl ads failed to rank in the top 10 in USA Today's viewer poll.

'Our total astonishment'
"To our amazement, to our total astonishment, all that astounding business success was less important than one poll," reads part of Mr. Krivkovich's memo. "C-Kers, we have to tell you -- in our entire history, hell in the history of this crazy thing called advertising, I'm not sure there has ever been any thing as baseless or as unbelievable as that. It's so ludicrous and they are so serious about that poll it's almost funny."

A Cramer-Krasselt spokeswoman confirmed the resignation, but wouldn't elaborate. A CareerBuilder spokeswoman confirmed that the account is in review, but wouldn't comment further.

CareerBuilder this year scrapped its popular "Office Monkeys" campaign, which focused on "working with a bunch of monkeys," for a new effort, set in a jungle, that attempted to highlight other things people don't like about their jobs.

CareerBuilder spent $58.7 million in measured media during 2005, and about $41 million through the first nine months of 2006, according to TNS.

Krivkovich's memo
Mr. Krivkovich's memo, summarizing his take on the split, reads, in part: "They wanted us to make them famous; we did that in spades (brand awareness up by 64% -- even Millward Brown, the venerable research firm, said their brand-building model couldn't explain such incredible growth). But the TV ads did not make the top 10 in the USA Today poll -- a poll that everyone knows doesn't mirror results (see the continuing Bud sales decline for one!) -- they just told us they will do a creative review."

"'Wait a minute,' we said, 'what about the incredible growth that is going on, the shares, the revenue, the awareness, the two best internet sites ever, the massive buzz, etc, etc.? What about all of that? That's huge.'

"'Yes,' they responded, 'but you [C-K] didn't get the top 10 in the USA Today poll.' 'Hold on ... we crushed every possible business metrics/barometer for success. Out of all the metrics and polls, it's all about this one? You have to be F'ing kidding, right!?'"

"'No, that's it. It's because of the poll.' That was about the extent of the conversation."

Posted by Jason at 8:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our Sharkstrike division has picked up since the first of the year in the name generation and name sourcing products and I wanted to share some insight that customers may or may not be aware of.

I believe that name generation and name sourcing are a great way to reach passive candidates however it needs to be understood as well as the client needs to be on the same page to make sure their expectations are met and the quality is delivered to the client.

First let’s start with what a name sourcing or name generation are not.

• Guaranteed hiring tools
• Contingency recruiting
• Pay per hire tools
• Quick Hire/Quick Fix Tools

Second let’s discuss with name sourcing or name generation tools are:

• Cost & Time Saving Recruiting Tactic
• Candidate Pipeline Generation
• Smile While You Dial Tool
• Engage, Promote & Close Tool
• Right Skill, Right Candidate, Right Company Tool

If you are looking for a sourcing tool that will get you the right person, from the right company, with the right title at a fraction of the time, cost energy and effort than name generation is the way to go. You also have to keep in mind that you will have to contact these people, get them enticed, interested, invited and closed as they are a true passive candidate that isn’t out looking for a job. So it will take a little selling, phone dialing and conversation time to accomplish this.

The other way to go is with name profiling. Our name profiling product takes this to the next step. We identify, contact, engage and present to our clients not only the name but the interested people as well. The product takes more time, costs a little more money but will also get you one step closer to hiring the candidate. One of the misconceptions about this process is that the recruiter from our client will get on the phone and interview the person and the candidate will take the job. One thing to remember is that this candidate was happy working in their job and was contacted by a name generation service out of the blue to see if they would switch positions. So needless to say they may want to think about it. It’s our goal to get these people hired and our % of interested parties on the name profiling is very high, you just want to make sure that all expectations are met and the client understands the product and what it is and is not prior to start working.

Posted by Jason at 6:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google has stepped up its role in the recruitment advertising space including hiring a dedicated sales manager and the creation of a presentation to target potential customers. For those of you that were considering using pay per click advertising and aren’t familiar with google and its inner workings let me share a personal experience with you.

As our model and business relies heavily on the search engines to push ads out to reach passive candidates we are a heavy user and that includes financially as well. So that you would think for the amount of money, time and longevity of our relationship that we have had with Google (not withstanding the amount of money that Google has) that we would get quality customer service from an account manager.

Think again. Here are a couple of things you may not know about Google Customer Service.

• No Phone Number To Call

Have you ever tried to call Google? You can’t. They don’t provide one, they don’t want to talk to you, hear your feedback or deal with your problems. Just send money.

• Chat ID Just Installed

To offer some level of customer service Google now offers a chat id. However every time you chat with someone they give you a canned response, they ask you the same questions that you had answered three chat sessions prior and finally the dreaded “we will contact you back shortly” In my case shortly has been a week and counting.

• Minimum Spend

Google does offer an account manager to customers that spend at least $5000.00 per month with them. That means anything below this number you have no direct contact with the company and now your back at the above mentioned points.

• No Managers On Duty

After repeated calls and contact with Google (which by the way takes days to get any type of response) I thought I would speak with a manager. Boy was I wrong. With all the money that Google has I was told repeatedly that their was no manager available to take my call and then I was hung up on.

So in conclusion if you choose to deal with Google than I caution you as to if you ever have to deal with a person, get a question answered or have to correct something with your account because you will be out of luck. It’s amazing how a company can make so much money and still not appreciate a customer or know how to handle customer service.

Posted by Jason at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I read today on ERE.net which referenced the article on the Seattle Post Intelligencer about Jobster layoffs, new CFO and essentially the deflating of Jobster. First I’m not happy seeing people being layed off, companies going under and not succeeding as it’s very difficult to run a company get funding and grow, however in this case I believe it was only a matter of time. A couple of CEO’s in the community knew the day would come and it has.

Why did it happen? Let me help shed some light on this, this is my personal opinion on what I have learned from the past 3 years of owning my own company and building it from scratch without any funding.

• Money everywhere.

Jobster isn’t that different from every company from the dot com era, get money, spend it fast. From my understanding they have 145 employees new office space and I can’t remember the last time I didn’t see any jobster marketing.

• You played now pay.

Anytime a venture capitalist (some know them as vulture capitalist) give you money it comes at a very high price. This price includes 3x the amount back they gave you, they run the show and they don’t take no for an answer. Even though it’s your business, your background, they run the show and run it for all it’s worth.

• Buy don’t build

With the amount of money and funding that Jobster received they really should have been on a buying not building spree. There are plenty of companies in the space that have great technology, people, customers and more importantly revenues. New website, and product development takes time, let me take that back it takes more time than you initially thought it would take.

• Stay focused

Companies start out with a great idea and then as they grow get diluted with partners, partnerships, new products, tasks, hiring, management and the list goes on and on. Jobster launched with one product and when that didn’t sell they then changed their stripes, again, and again and again. If your potential customers can’t tell who you are what you do and how you do it then how do you grow? (Guilty as charged)

• Don’t Hire Fast

We are growing and that’s a good thing, but don’t forget that old adage “growing pains” it’s a good problem to have but let me remind you of this. For every person hired it takes one more person to train that person and to do a knowledge transfer for them to be efficient and contribute to the company. Meanwhile that first person has to still complete their job so this is a very delicate balance.

Hopefully jobster is able to realign, get more customers and be profitable by 07. Hind site is 20/20 I wish them all the best.

Posted by Jason at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The three things combined that made me want to write this article would be in no specific order.

1. The interview with the CEO of netflix.
2. Lou Adlers article on ranking candidates.
3. A commercial for a new vacuum by Black & Decker.

You must be saying, wow those are three things that have absolutely no connection to the recruiting industry, the title of this article or the price of tea and china. Well my friend, you’re wrong, and here is why.

For the past three months, we have been examining, and I mean examining, our pricing model, the recruitment industry, the players, the percentages, and we’ve really being involved in deep conversations. We are also talking with potential clients about their platform budgets for next year, what they have used in the past, and decisions on what they will be using in the future. This last piece begins our leader or followers conversation.

2007 gives new opportunity to clean the slate and to choose if you want to lead the recruiting community, instead of following. The leaders would be people who are bucking the system, not relying on one tool and/or site to give them the holy grail of candidates and the thinkers outside of your current model and or structure. I would consider these people the Level 5 people Lou Adler spoke about. The other portion of leading is going out and researching new tools and methodologies, not only researching them, but implementing them. I find a lot of clients who I talk to want to do it but very little of them actually pull the trigger and make decisions on it.

As we begin the journey into 2007, we will learn more about candidate behavior and/ or the real value that vendor tools, relationships, and ROI will bring to the table. Another thing a leader does is constantly evolve change and admit mistakes. While watching the six minutes piece on Netflix, the interviewer asked the CEO how to find the phone number to their customer service. After several painstaking minutes, he was unable to find the phone number. You have also heard about now downloading movies directly to your desktop (e.g. Vongo, Apple) well he is aware of the pending threat to his business, and will start offering this service as well.

And lastly, the vacuum commercial. It amazes how many vacuums are out there. It also amazes me how many times we just take the same old product and stamp it “NEW”, “ENHANCED”, “NEW AND IMPROVED” or we just completely remake the product and sell it again. As was the case with the new Black & Decker vacuum that I saw advertised. First, it’s a vacuum, and we know they all suck (no pun intended) but this new vacuum is great because it has an attachment that now is specifically designed to get the dirt out of lights that are hanging. So now I have an old idea, (the vacuum) with a new twist (the want for the lights) with an old twist (I have a vacuum with an attachment that works just the same) In this case I would classify Black & Decker as the follower, they have no innovation, little to no return on investment from the new product, and haven’t solved a problem, as you already own a vacuum.

So for 2007 will you be?

A. The CEO of Netflix
B. The vacuum
C. None of the above

Posted by Jason at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the past couple of years I have been saying the same old thing, people don’t spend time on job boards but they do spend time reading about their industry, job and job related information. My claim was then backed up by our reporting and our clients that were using our methods to capture passive candidates as the search engines gives us this reporting. It’s not as refined as it could be and there is some disconnect from which sites people came from and how they found us. However at this stage it is much more effective and highly targeted enough to serve advertising on a one to one relationship. What this means is we are serving our job opportunities to the right people as they are reading about their job.

It was until recently that I found and downloaded a presentation that solidified our passive recruiting and or message and the following are the results to this effect.

94 million US people use the internet per day. Of these people this is a breakdown of where they spend time online:

• 77% use email
• 63% use search engines
• 46% get news
• 29% do job related research (27million people)

If you notice on this grid you won’t see a percentage of people that spend time on job boards as it doesn’t even hit the radar. So if your looking for passive candidates then you need to be where they are.

Posted by Jason at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I spent the weekend in fairy world with my niece..sorry Disney World I picked up the Wall Street Journal to see two stories about Yahoo. One was about the company not having any focus and being spread to thin (thus the name of the internal - the peanut butter manifesto) and the second story was about Hot Job partnering with 150 newspapers to distribute job ads.

Is their no innovation left in these companies? Aren’t we moving away from newspaper readership as it descends and is documented time and time again? As these sites are losing market share, market dollars and are struggling with new Web 2.0 tools like our Push Posting 2.0 they are trying to stay in the game however newspapers, mass marketing and a mass audience are not the way to go. The way to go is a targeted granular approach and utilizing tools to reach passive job seekers. Last count their were 40,000 job boards for active candidates, however companies and recruitment advertising pay for performance like ours will only grow and prosper.

We aren’t a fit for everyone as the HR generalist and the people that don’t study the market, bonuses aren’t attached to budget and just don’t get it will continue to poor countless dollars into these media giants to produce clearinghouses of under qualified, mismatched candidates. As companies continue to grow merge and become more global the one thing that will continue to stand out will be their people.

More and more companies and recruitment agencies will continue to gravitate to a pay for performance model and or methodology and these are the companies that will win out, because the company with the best talent wins.

Posted by Jason at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the recent Kennedy Conference, the question came up how many people are unhappy with their current applicant tracking system, and almost every person in the room raised their hand (approx 80 people). This questions, and or response, are nothing new. I have seen this question and response to this at numerous conferences in the past. First, this article isn't written to bash vendors, or the people that purchase them, but to educate.

I can image people are very happy with their systems, and or vendors, however, the majority rules in this case, so with that being said, STOP BUYING Technology and START BUYING a solution. You may ask yourself, Jason, what does this mean, do you offer a technology? The answer is, yes. However, it really surprises me how many people are in the space/industry who are technologist and haven't spent a day in the life. They haven't held a staffing, recruiting, or human resource position, but will offer a technology that will solve your recruiting- hiring problems. Products are built by two people. One is the technologist who has a technical background who can build a technical system and in theory and or in technology lingo will solve and or address your problem and or issue. The other is a problem solver, like me. You see I’ve been there. Having spent 10 years in the recruiting/staffing space, I set out to solve a problem. I was tired of the lack of ROI the products produced and the quality I received from the company who provided the technology. I was also tired of the sales person who was more concerned with the sale, instead of the outcome because, that's the way they are compensated.

I met a gentleman from the conference who came up to me and said, “we don't need another vendor, we need a partner.” I said amen finally someone who understands the difference. A solution solves a problem, a partner works with you to solve that problem. Not someone that says, it should, would, or could. When you’re spending more time fixing, doing Q & A, and or helping the company refine their Technology, you’re not a customer, but you have just rebuilt their next version and or release of their software, so they can turn around and sell it to you.

So I encourage you before you plunk down that next big pile of cash ask yourself....Am I buying a Technology or am I buying a Solution?

Posted by Jason at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kennedy Information Conference & Expo.

Once again Kennedy impressed me with the number of attendees, hospitality and gracious to not only me, my friends but listening and providing quality content that the audience wanted. I try and get as much feedback as I can from people attending not only from my speaking engagement/session but how the conference is overall. As a current and former conference attender I think it's very important to get the value out of something that you pay for.

As far as my panel and presentation the people that I spoke with seemed to enjoy it and even liked the fact that the banter that I and Jeff Benrey from Trovix had between each other as I speculated that resumes will be going away and passive candidates will have more of profiles and he felt that resumes would never go away. For those that were there in person please feel free to add your comments if you liked the presentation and what can be done to add to it. As long as people walked away with some knowledge and I opened their mind up as well that's all I can ask for and hopefully Kennedy will give me my own session so I be myself.

Okay enough about myself, I got the chance to meet some great new people see some old faces and but of course have some cocktails on the house provided by Recruiting.com and thank you to them for that. One of the people that I got a chance to rap with is Jeff Hunter from EA. Jeff is a great guy and I really appreciate what he is doing with his unconference and adding value to the recruitment community. It's people that care like Jeff that allow us to grow, expand and turn from good to great recruiters. If you get the chance get out to san fran and check it out. I'm sad to say I won't be there as I will be in London speaking at that time, so make sure you take notes so I can quiz you.

It's usually at this point that I give my thanks and un-thanks but I think I'm going to shake it up a bit this time. This time I'm going to give you....

What's Hot & What's Not from the conference

What's Hot:

Passive candidates are hot and not only because our core business is focused on them but the whole conference spoke about this. Presentations from Steve Lowisz on a How To Guide for attracting and hiring passive candidates and Peter Weddles presentation on Blink recruiting spent a lot of time on passive candidate recruiting. Let's face it if your not playing in this sandbox now you better start, the war on talent is getting heated by the day, with these people you can increase your quality and decrease your days to hire.

What's Not:

The number of companies not blogging. In my session I asked how many people were using blogs to recruit and no one raised their hand and I mean NO ONE. I then followed up with the question why aren't you and the main reason was legality. Folks let me make this real simple that companies with the most to lose are blogging so can you. Companies like Skype, Microsoft and Intel just to name a few are blogging than it should be on your recruiting agenda to do so as well. We create blogs and get them indexed into search engines usually within a month.

What's Hot:

Companies and recruiters that will take information they learned from the conference go back to their companies and or bosses and implement it. It's easy to come to conference agree with us and take notes....action...action...action is the hard part. Your boss was nice enough to spend the money on the conference and wants you to learn more now show him he was write and put a plan of action in place.

What's Not:

Not having the decision makers with you at the conference. I have yet to meet one CFO, CEO or COO of a company at these conferences that have been dragged by their recruiting department. The company with the best talent wins and in order to get the best talent you boss needs to be in the know along with you. C levels don't have time to spend with you to listen about the conference but they do have time to learn about how to save money, get the best talent and becoming a pillar in the industry. What's better than be in an “Echo Chamber” (thanks to paul from indeed for that piece of whit) with other people saying the same things but to have your boss get reinforcement from industry leaders and look to you and say your right we should be doing these things. When they say to you how can I afford the time to go to this.....ask them how can you afford not to? When they are in their board meeting and they can say here is our R&D budget and this is how we get the best people to put the budget to use.....you can't get any more effective than this.

So that's it for now, if you were at the show I hope you left with knowledge. If you weren't there you should be.

Cheers.

Posted by Jason at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This maybe a little old but I recently found out about CATS. CATS is an open source applicant tracking system that is built on a Lamp platform that consists of Linux, PHP, and MySql. The product is also licensed through the open source license by Mozilla.

As far as I can tell the company launched in February 2006 and to date 4900 people have downloaded the product. The product has modules to it that currently consist of a calender, activities, job orders, candidates, clients, contacts, reports, settings and feedback.

What Does This Mean To A Vendor Like CareerMetaSearch.com?

We have recommend the product to one potential customer. As the product is open source we will work with our client receive job openings and to also export or drive candidates to their openings with the CATS system.

What Does This Mean For Clients

For years companies have complained and still continue to complain about their ATS vendors, system implementations go wrong, getting a basic system and having to pay for upgrades, systems not working correctly to what was sold to them. ATS seem to not have done the job correctly even to the extent of getting jobs to our site, and thus we offer clients our Boomerang product which gets implemented within a week to avoid the hassle of working through the ATS vendor.

The CATS system will now allow employers the flexibility to have it their way. All companies have to do is hire a php/mysql developer and create their ultimate applicant tracking system. They can add modules make changes and the only one to complain to would be your own developer.

Now with the upsides comes some downsides. Some of the downsides include: limited documentation, no customer support, no hosting option (yet), product doesn't support doesn't support any databases except mysql, and there is no resume import function available (yet).

In conclusion, (as I type on OpenOffice.org another open source product for free) I think it's a great product and a great platform. It allows the flexibility to be able to make changes on the fly with it's open source platform and best of all it's free. I'm interested to see where the product will play, impact other companies and see what new and exciting modules will be added.

Posted by Jason at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you haven't done so, I would recommend running out and buying this month's Economist magazine - as it relates to the Search for Talent. The article covers every aspect of recruiting, retention, and the current and past states of the world workforce. Of course I was excited to read about passive candidate recruiting, as that's what our product does. But by far this has to be one of the best talent articles ever written.

I have summarized some key points from the article, but I encourage you to read and respond to the article, there are some very powerful statistics in it.

According to the Corporate Executive Board survey of 4000 hiring managers across 30 companies the quality of candidate has declined 10% since 2004 and the average time to fill a position has increased from 37 days to 51 days.

Accenture has calculated that intangible assets have increased from 20% value of companies in 1980 to around 70% today.

RHR International concludes that America's biggest 500 companies will lose half of their senior managers in the next five years or so.

The Yankee Group estimates that last year 2300 companies have adopted some form of technology talent management software and the market for the technology will double by 2009.

“Companies need to become more imaginative about recruiting and retaining talent. This includes paying more attention to passive-candidates those that aren't actively looking for a job but maybe open to seduction.

Deliotte calculates that typical America companies spends nearly 50 times more to recruit a professional on $100,000 then it spends on his or her training every year.

Every year India produces 2.5 million university graduates

The cost of an India graduate is 12% of that of an American one.

India graduates work an average of 2350 hours a year compared with 1900 hours worked in America.

You can buy almost 10 Indians for the price of one American.

University of California found that the number of incoming undergraduates planning to major in computer science is now 70% below it's peak since the early 1980's.

Companies need to focus on their Employment Value Proposition. A study completed by the Corporate Executive Board on 90 companies concluded that the rewards for managing a employment value proposition are huge increasing a companies pool of potential workers by 20%.

Companies need to spend more time to get their message out.

Posted by Jason at 2:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Lou Adler wrote an interesting piece on ERE last week that was brought to my attention by a fellow vendor. I think Lou has some good points here and some other points that I disagree with.

One in particular that I disagree with is this statement:

"New search-engine techniques are being developed by Doug Berg and others that will allow your candidates to find your jobs directly on your career site just by starting at Google, MSN, or Yahoo!. In a few years, even this will change"

Not sure where Lou has been but we own the patent to this technology here in the states and worldwide as well. Sorry Doug if you want to move toward this technology I would recommend licensing and or becoming a valued added reseller as we are happy to partner with companies and or job boards to use our technology.

Another point I disagree with in part is:

"Job boards and the concept of posting ads will become irrelevant."

I do believe the concept of job boards will go away but not the job posting ads and here is what I mean. Job boards use a traditional pull style in that they put up mass marketing and advertising and pull people through a landing page and or home page branding themselves. This concept will go away but the actual job posting won't. You always need a starting point with a candidate to gain traction show them something and gain their attention so thus I don' t think this will be replaced.

"For example, if a candidate can go directly to your website to find a job, why do you need a job board?
Worse, at a job board a candidate can find other competing jobs. Now take this one step further: if search-engine technology can be designed to ensure that only top people get sent directly to the manager (and managers know how to assess and attract), companies wouldn't need the same type of recruiters."

The end of this statement I completley agree with and this is exactley what our product and or message is all about. Our technology allows us to drill down to reach the passive candidate, it's the recruiters job to sell and or get them excited about the company and or opportunity.

Kudos to Lou for putting these out and sharing I just wished he would have interviewed me first to understand our Push Posting technology and the use of search engines since 2004.

If you would like a demostration of how our passive candidate recruiting Push Posting works click here and register.

Posted by Jason at 9:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The City job site eFinancialCareers.com, which is owned by eFinancialGroup, the publisher of Financial News, has been sold to US-based web recruitment specialist Dice Inc. for about £48m.

Dice Inc. runs a number of niche recruitment websites in the US, including a recruitment site for technology professionals and a site devoted to jobs requiring government security clearance.

Private equity firms Quadrangle Capital Partners and General Atlantic Partners acquired Dice Inc. for an estimated $200m in July last year. It is understood that Dice's bid for eFinancialCareers.com has received shareholder approval and the deal is now unconditional.

The sale is likely to net large cash windfalls for Angus Macdonald, the chief executive of eFinancialGroup, and Sir Richard Storey, former chief executive of Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspaper Group, who is thought to own a 10pc stake.

The group is also in the process of selling Financial News, the investment banking weekly, to US-based Source Media, for about £25m.

Posted by Jason at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In the competitive world of recruiting it is always a challenge to find the very best talent for your company. There are primarily two classifications of candidates that you will encounter when trying to fill your open positions,
“Active and Passive”. The active candidate has already made up his/her mind that they are leaving their present company (or they have been laid off). They are reading the newspaper want ads, they are looking at the on line job boards, and they are networking with colleagues, etc. The active candidate will usually send their resume to not only positions that they qualify but also some positions that are a stretch for their skills and experience. The passive candidate is generally happy in his/her present position, is so busy doing his job that he has no time to look around for the next career move. The passive candidate in the majority of cases becomes the best employee. You can attract the active candidate by posting on job boards and running news paper ads, but you spend hours sifting through the “Want a Be’s” and may end up with a hand-full of candidates to interview. When you find that good active candidate, you seem on many occasions, to be competing with six other companies to see if you can get them to accept your offer. The secret to finding some of the best employees is to locate “open minded” passive candidates with the specific skill sets that fits your company. Sounds like a “needle in a hay stack” type task and in many ways it is. Many of the passive candidates will come through networking, leads from current employees, associations/company directories and from quality search firms. When you work with a search firm, whether on a contingency or retained basis, make sure the firm deals in passive candidates.

As a candidate passes through your interview process, it is important to know where the applicant came from. If the candidate is an active candidate meaning you found him/her on a job board, or he sent you his resume through your web site, then the majority of your interview process can be spent in screening his skill set. But if the candidate is passive meaning he/she came as a referral from an employee or through a recruiter, etc. then at least 25% of your interview process should include recruiting the candidate to your company. You need to spend this 25% of your time having the interview team explain the advantages of working for your company and their excitement to have the candidate be part of your team. If the 75% portion of the interview that was used for screening of skills and potential fit for the position shows the candidate is not qualified, then no offer is extended. What you don’t want to happen is to spend the whole day having your people grill the potential candidate to find out that he/she is a prefect fit and then have your offer turned down because the candidate doesn’t see any advantage of joining your company. Happy recruiting and good luck in finding the passive candidates which will turn into the best employees.

About Superior Search Consultants, Inc.
Superior Search Consultants, Inc. is a small, industry specific,
search firm. We specialize in recruiting experienced engineers
and management for the Electronics Industry. This narrow focus
helps us to quickly identify the candidates that you are most
likely to hire, and cuts your interviewing time down to the bare
minimum. Our sole objective is to provide you with the very best
candidates on every search that we conduct.
We attribute our overwhelming success to our unique method
of recruiting. SSC is a true “search” firm in the sense that we
do not run ads in trade journals or newspapers. Recruitment
advertising tends to bring you the “best” of the unhappy, the
unwanted, and the unqualified. We have found that the highly
skilled, successful candidates that you seek are in great demand
and they don’t read employment advertising. We take positive
steps to identify top performers and we actively recruit them.
This yields an incredible response when compared, looking on
job boards or running advertisements and waiting to see whom
responds. Employees are your greatest asset and it pay’s to go
out and find the very best!

Contact Milt Jensen
milt@super-search.net

Posted by Jason at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

September 09, 2005

Microsoft may be softening its rhetoric against Linux and open-source software, but that doesn't mean the company is ever going to be able to hire Eric Raymond. Earlier this week, a recruiter from the software giant tried to lure Raymond, one of the open-source movement's most visible boosters, Raymond said in an interview Friday.

On Thursday, Raymond received an e-mail pitch from a Microsoft recruiter asking him if he'd be interested in discussing a position with the software company.

The open-source advocate said he never gave the offer any serious consideration. "I thought it was an utterly ludicrous offer that deserved nothing but a ludicrous response," he said.

Raymond, one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative group that defined the term "open source," has been a constant and very vocal critic of the software vendor. He has also published a number of confidential Microsoft memos, dubbed the Halloween Documents, which have shed light into Microsoft's campaign against Linux and open-source software.

In an email to the recruiter, later posted on Raymond's Web site, the open-source guru rejected the offer with glee.

"What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy?" he wrote. "I’ve in fact been something pretty close to your company’s worst nightmare since about 1997."

Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said he has not been approached by Microsoft recruiters, but he was critical of Raymond's response, which he said would discourage dialogue between Microsoft and the open-source community.

"It probably was just a mistake on the part of some headhunter who just didn't know who (Raymond) was," he said via email. "It just makes it even harder for people to even approach the other side, when they then end up having to worry about... public humiliation."

In fact, Microsoft has had some success hiring from within the Linux community. Earlier this year, it hired Daniel Robbins, the founder of the Gentoo Linux distribution, and in 2003 it hired Bill Hilf, a former IBM Corp. executive with an interest in Linux, who now runs Microsoft's Linux lab.

Though Raymond actually spoke at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus about open-source software in 1998, he said he has had very limited interaction with the company since then, and had never before been approached by recruiters.

Apparently, Microsoft is not the only company interested in talking with Raymond, who said he was also recently approached by Microsoft rival Google Inc. "I was much nicer to them," he said. "I wouldn't mind working for them."

The open-source advocate is still waiting for Google to follow up on their earlier conversation, he said.

Microsoft declined to comment.

Posted by Jason at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I wanted to say thanks to Dave Mendoza for allowing me to join him at the Jobster dinner as well as sharing value throughout the ERE show.

Dave was the well known Neil Bruce assassin that was at my recruiting technology table that I was the moderator for. Dave was also kind enough to share numerous bookmarks with me about recruiting and sourcing technology and information. If you get a chance to be at a show grab Dave and get his insight about the networking and sourcing world.

Posted by Jason at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)