Marketing Headhunter.com | Recruiters for Ecommerce

Disintermediation 101

WASHINGTON, DC -- One of the RSS feeds to which I subscribe belongs to a trade association.  The association's fall conference is coming up, and this year they have decided to bridge the gap between candidates and clients by arranging an Online Matching Program.

As if you didn't already know this about the recruiting (read "Matchmaking") business, such gaps make the market for human capital inefficient, and traditionally recruiters have exploited the assymetric information between candidates and clients for fun and profit.  As middlemen in this market of candidates and clients, only recruiters have been able to communicate openly with both sides.

But all that's changing.

According to the association's website, their Online Matching Program is their first attempt to provide online social networking for the fall conference.  With this Matchmaking Program, members will be able to:

• "Complete a personal profile, and alter it anytime
• Identify other attendees or exhibitors who best match your profile
• Receive email matches when you want and from whom you want
• Communicate or set up meetings with your matches
• View and print the appointments you've created via an online calendar ..."

In other words, if you are looking for a candidate or a job, all you have to do is discreetly notify the parties with whom you want to speak and arrange a clandestine meeting at a coffeshop or hotel room or something during the show.  Simple and effective for both sides -- and no outrageous search fee.

If the trade association's plans are any indication, recruiters are going to come under intense pressure to justify their value between candidates and clients -- lest they be disintermediated, or "cut out" of the middle.

Words to Live By:  When I was a beef trader back in the 90's, my boss often said that "People will only pay for that which they either cannot -- or will not -- do for themselves."  I wish I had that on a plaque.

Recruiters:

1. What are you doing that your candidates cannot or will not do for themselves -- now and in the future?
2. What are you doing that your clients cannot or will not do for themselves -- now and in the future?

And here's one more sick twist for recruiting firm owners:

• What are you doing that your employees cannot or will not do for themselves -- now and in the future?

You better be thinking about it.  After all, this is the MySpace Generation we're dealing with.
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Lacking self-confidence?

ATLANTA, GA -- Today was not my best day, performance-wise.  Nothing really bad happened and I'm not bummed out.  But for no particular reason I simply felt like my timing was off.  Maybe this has happened to you if you are in sales -- or are a job candidate.  Your conversations seem forced.  You're trying too hard.

Conversations get that "forced" feeling when you are too busy thinking about what you are going to say rather than listening to what is being said.  If you are getting ahead of yourself in a conversation, rest assured that you are already way ahead of the person with whom you are communicating.

People can tell when they're being tuned out, even if they never mention it.  Later they might say to their friends "That guy seems self-absorbed ..." or "That guy is full of himself."  And they're right to say that.

So I know what needs to happen.  My reputation wasn't built in one day.  Nor will it be destroyed in one day -- and neither will yours.  I simply need to ask good questions tomorrow and listen critically to the answers.  It's not rocket surgery.  It's empathy, and it's central to a meaningful existence.

The Five O'clock Epiphany

As I sat in the 5pm carpool line to pick up my kid from school, I reflected on my scatter-brained, low-octane day.  And I considered the risks of self-employment.  "What if tomorrow is the same?  What if ...?"

Then I had a moment of clarity:  Statistically speaking, even on my worst day I am more experienced and more passionate and more focused than the average marketing recruiter.  The key word here is "average" -- and I never said "talented."

So just by showing up, there's a good chance that I'm going to be no worse than average.  "Shoot to get hot; shoot to stay hot," as Larry Bird once said.  In fact, the only way I can fail is to simply not show up at all.

That's right.  If I stop trying and pack it all in, then I fail.  Otherwise, I'll fair no worse than any of my less experienced, less passionate, and less focused competitors.  It has nothing to do with talent.  It has everything to do with showing up and giving it my best shot, for God's sake.

It seemed to make sense tonight when a candidate new to the job search called me to apologize for blowing a phone screen.  His confidence was shaken.  "What if the next one is the same?" he asked.

Funny you should ask.  See you tomorrow.
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In case you missed it ...

Here are some of the week's best marketing posts from around the web:

1. Six Reasons NOT to Try to Be an Online Retailer
2. Frank Schilling Domain Roundtable Keynote
3. Like the phone book, but in a more interesting order (Okay, not exactly a post from this week.  But recent nonetheless.)
4. If Your Blog Disappeared, Who Would Miss It?
5. Analytics According to Captain Kirk

Have a nice week.

Case Study: "Using Video to Recruit"

WARREN, RI - Great news for HR departments:  MarketingSherpa has published a handy case study on using video to increase recruiting effectiveness.

Called How to Add Video to Your Site to Recruit Star Talent, the case study outlines a six-step plan for integrating video with corporate recruiting efforts.  The case study is based on Life Time Fitness and includes creative samples from Life Time Fitness' recruiting video series, plus a link to the HR consulting firm that helped develop the recruiting videos.

According to MarketingSherpa, Life Time Fitness' recruiting videos are working: "They're seeing 30% more job applications and up to 110% increase in the number of candidates who pass the prescreening process."

This recruiting case study will be available for free through August 30th -- so don't wait to download it.
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"Please Hire Me."

SEATTLE, WA -- Joel Cheesman has an interesting post today on the recent change in Jobster's privacy policy.  Joel rightly takes issue with Jobster flushing their old privacy policy in favor of a new, presumably more monetizable one.

But what interests me is that Jobster is forcing its users to declare their intentions to random passersby on the site.  From now on, Jobster users must show their status as any one of the following:

• My Group is Hiring
• Happily Employed
• Busy but Listening
• Just Looking Around
• Please Hire Me
• Here to Network
• Open for Projects

D'oh!  This is akin to forcing a married patron to wear his or her wedding band in a singles bar.

Suppose I hate my job, but I'm concerned that my company's HR department will see me on Jobster as "Please Hire Me."  Not good.  On the other hand, suppose I innocuously list myself as "Here to Network" so as not to get busted by my HR department -- when in fact I sincerely want to get a new job.  Now some busy  corporate recruiter might pass me over in favor of an openly motivated candidate.  Happens all the time.

My point is that all of this Web 2.0 stuff is making it awfully hard for candidates to sneak around on their employers.  I'm not criticizing Jobster, but ...

If I remember correctly, CareerBuilder has a function that allows users to prevent certain companies from seeing their profiles -- so if you work for Disney, you can set your profile so that Disney IP addresses cannot see that you're open to new opportunities.

Perhaps Jobster has a similar feature.  Do they?

UPDATE: This post was picked up by USA Today.
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Non-Compete Agreements

DENVER, CO -- Last night, a candidate reached out to me regarding his desire to change jobs.  He has been a top ecommerce executive at his current company for several years, and he's ready to make a change.

However, he has a non-compete agreement with his current employer.  I have not reviewed the agreement and I don't plan to, since I'm not a lawyer.  But I do have some hard-won first hand experience with non-competes, and here's what I told the candidate:

First, talk to a good labor lawyer about the legality of your non-compete.  Don't pick some random lawyer from the phone book.  Get a real labor lawyer -- preferably one who has very solid trial experience.  Your town's legal community is smaller than you think, and if you hire a well-known badass gun slinger who has fifty notches in his belt, then your employer's counsel is much less likely to pursue a showdown in court.  This is what President Reagan used to call peace through superior fire power, and it works like a charm.

Now obviously, if your agreement is legal, then by all means "render to Caesar that which is Caesar's."  But if it isn't, then you MUST pursue a future-oriented career path that leverages where you've been, what you have done, what you enjoy, and what you are naturally good at.  In my opinion, it's a sin to do otherwise.

Think of it this way:  Imagine you are a pro baseball player.  God gave you talent, and you've spent your whole life learning to play the game.  It's what you know how to do.  More than likely, your current team operates in a "Right to Work" state, like Colorado in my candidate's case.  An employer cannot prevent you from making a living in the state where you live.  You have a right to work.  So there.

Moreover, if a non-compete is invalid in ANY SINGLE respect, then the ENTIRE agreement is worthless.  Clauses in an employment contract are like stones in an arch:  If one stone crumbles, the entire structure comes tumbling down.  Re-read this.

Also:  Most non-competes are illegal because they are "overbroad."  They try to go too far in marking where a former employee cannot compete.  For example, some companies will say that "an employee cannot do business with any prospect in our database."  Yet only a small handful of those hundreds (or thousands!) of contacts are actually paying clients.  That's overbroad -- and it renders the entire agreement worthless.

Again, my personal experience is that non-competes are total BS.  Don't let your employer bully you out of your industry.  You know the trade and you probably have a ton of built-up relationship equity there!

But don't be stupid, either.  Talk to a lawyer.  There are plenty of cases where non-competes have not only been valid, but have been enforced.  Trust in God and tie up your camels, as they say.
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Credentials: Why Less is More

NEW YORK, NY -- Today, an NYC-based candidate sent me a resume.  His email signature read ...

Sincerely,
Joe Candidate, MS, PMP, CISSP, CISM, CCSP, CCDP, CCNP, MCSE, ITILF
New York, NY
Tel (212) 555-1212

I don't mean to sound uncharitable, but that's overkill.  I can see why a candidate would want to list these terms for the benefit of search engines, but in an email signature it just makes me feel stupid because I don't know what most of those acronyms mean.

Candidates:  If you are applying for a position where a single credential really matters (for example, a "CPA" job), then just list that one credential.  Less is more.
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Facebook Lounge Soundtrack

UPDATE:  Jason Peterson has started a Facebook Group for my reinstatement on Facebook.  I did not ask Jason to do this, but I appreciate it.  Actually, Jason and I don't even know each other -- but he's a regular reader of this blog.  Go figure.  (This cartoon character, btw, is my alter ego, Quippy.)

Facebook members can join here.  Naturally, I have not seen the group since I'm not a Facebook member -- but I'm envisioning a really plush online lounge with oversized pleather furniture, a roaring fake fireplace, and velvet paintings of yours truly.  Almost like a Starbucks.  For spammers.

Since it's my Facebook lounge, I figured it needed music.  You can stream the soundtrack (for free!) right here.  No smoking, please.

Thank you for your patronage,
The Management

PS -- I'm thinking of getting some "Free Quippy" tee shirts printed up -- just like the old "Free Winona" tee shirts from a few years ago.  Let me know if you're up for it.

UPDATE 2:  Kevin Strawbridge has suggested "Free Quippy" stickers.  That one's easy.

Colin Kingsbury on Facebook

BOSTON, MA -- Colin Kingsbury has a great post-up on last week's Facebook situation and some thoughts on the future of social networking.

Imagine any old-school industrial oligopoly and the power they had over their consumers: Network TV, the diamond business, the auto industry, and telecoms.  Remember what a hassle it was to argue with Ma Bell over an errant phone bill?  Did they care about you at all?

Now let's say you are a passive candidate.

Imagine that you pour your life into a Facebook profile.  Then something happens and you accidentally run afoul of Facebook's rules.  They delete you.  Permanently.  No warning.  No chance to atone for one's sins, whatever they may be.  Just instant deletion in a misspelled email that decrees "This decision is final."

Per Colin, "Facebook can and will ban anyone it chooses for any reason that suits its purposes, and without any practical recourse for the convict."  And if you have just one online profile and it happens to be on Facebook, you're erased.  Gone.  Cut off from Facebook's society.

For me, that's the issue here.

I'm not saying this to be arrogant, I'm saying this to make a point: My blog is currently ranked # 58 among the top English-language media and marketing blogs in the world.  I have not heard one peep from Facebook on this issue.  And I expect I won't.

What hope does a "normal" Facebook member have surviving an incident like this?  Apparently none.

I have just one tip for the passive candidate: Diversify.

 

Facebook to Marketing Headhunter: "No soup for you!!!"

Reactions from around the blogosphere:

1. RecruitingBloggers.com
2. Seattle Recruiting
3. Recruiting Animal
4. College Recruiter
5. Wireless Jobs
6. Facebook Observer
7. MarketingProfs
8. Brand Storming
9. Dave Mendoza
10. William Arruda
11. Palm Beach Post
12. Jibber Jobber
13. St. Louis Recruiter
14. The Net-Savvy Executive
15. The Huffington Post
16. Shop.org blog
17. Josh Greene
18. FreightDawg
19. Colin Kingsbury
20. Talent Terminal
21. Gautam Ghosh
22. John Sumser
23. Sumser again
24. Dave Opton of ExecuNet
25. HR Marketer
26. Ellen Roseman
27. Bernie Goldbach
28. Six Degrees from Dave
29. Copywrite, Ink.
30. Utah Tech Jobs
31. Jibber Jobber
32. Allan Cockerill
    

Facebook Observer: Opinions vary.

"This is spam behavior.  If they allow it for him they have to allow it for the spammers.  I’m glad they don’t allow you to do this. I have 4,200 contacts: each added one at a time." -- Robert Scoble

"While I will not dispute that this is spam behavior, I will still say that the instructions and guidelines given by Facebook are setting up folks with large contacts lists (who for the most part are probably “influencers” that will attract others to the site) for failure…and the potential backlash by these folks is rather significant." -- Facebook Observer

"The idea that Harry’s a spammer is what’s ludicrous.  Blocking his behavior is one thing - permanently banning him is another.  It’s an example of hubris.  Any other social networking site would love the addition of someone like Harry, a well-known professional recruiter with a significant presence online." -- Jim Durbin

"Facebook never told me that I had to add my contacts one at a time.  If they had, I would have. Happily.  Instead, what Facebook told me to do was invite my friends not already on their network. They even gave me a very robust email address inhaler to accomplish this task.  They never mentioned a limit. Facebook should have known that guys like us have thousands of email addresses on file." -- Harry Joiner

See full text of posts here.

Facebook VS. Recruiters

CHICAGO, IL -- Gavin Heaton at MarketingProf's has an excellent post called "Who Owns You?" today regarding the Facebook situation, and I felt like my response to John Whiteside's thoughtful question needed to appear here as well ...

JOHN:   What's interesting about this is that headhunters are, to some degree, the bane of social networks. not that they are bad people - but they make their money connecting people. I have a policy about of not linking to headhunters on LinkedIn because you find yourself with links to lots of people that are hard to use, because the headhunter wants to collect a fee for making a connection.  That's fine; that's a headhunter's business, after all. But it's not the point of a social network.

HARRY:  Point well taken, but the reality is that I pay LinkedIn north of $5K per year for the ability to send an InMail to ANYONE in their database without having to go through a string of intermediaries.  My feedback rating after several hundred InMails is >4.5 stars.  Therefore, I do not become a burden on the intermediaries between me and the desired candidate.

It's also much more discreet to "go direct" because the target candidate may not want his referring friends to know he's being contacted by a headhunter.  It's safe to say that I have forwarded many more InMails for other people than the other way around.

I give much more than I get.

And here's an odd statistic:  In 2006, candidates had a better chance of getting hired by A&E Television Interactive through me than if they applied directly through the HR department.  There are other instances where clients have given me all of their direct candidates in a search so that I could hold all of the candidates to the same high standards of interviews.  Etc.

So why do my clients they do this?

Simple:  Many of the corporate recruiters who have become my friends routinely manage 20-30 open "job recs" at once.  That's about 3½ times the normal search load of a third-party recruiter.  And corporate recruiters have no specialty either:  A corporate recruiter could be managing a search for a logistics supervisor, a retail store manager, a director of online marketing, a paralegal, and two dozen other unrelated positions all at the same time.

And that's why third-party recruiters exist.   We get paid to know who’s got game in our field of specialty (mine's ecommerce) – and we get paid to bring the best and brightest of that subset to the interview table.  In a sense, we’re like sports agents.

Back to Facebook: My understanding from Robert Scoble was that "Facebook = Rolodex."

Additionally, one of the biggest ways to monetize a social network is by enabling it serve as a massive passive candidate pool.  It's a reality of people like Jobster and Facebook doing business in a way that facilitates the formation of passive, "value-confluent" candidate communities around companies who will pay for that privilege.  Recruiters would certainly pay for that right.  Clearly, my blog has a ton of readers who would love to share greater intimacy with each other.  From my point of view, Ning.com looks pretty attractive right about now.

Although I didn't quite understand Facebook's platform at the time, I felt I needed to get ahead of the curve in my industry by being there and learn the platform as I went along.

Here's why:  Social networks aren't just fun and games to the major venture capitalists.  There is a MAJOR load of pain being carried by the world's HR departments, and the extent to which social networking can cure that pain, somebody is going to make MAJOR bucks.

However, your data WILL be MINED and targeted access to you will be SOLD to a bunch of companies.

And Facebook, I have learned, can make you disappear completely, without warning, at the slightest whiff of atypical behavior.  Then they will send you a form email saying "This decision is final."  >poof<  So be careful, or you could end up in the Facebook "witness protection program" -- and so could your data, I suppose.  It can happen innocently enough.

Note to Facebook:  Wall Street is watching how you manage recruiters and recruiting researchers.  We are happy to keep our business on LinkedIn, who seems perfectly delighted to cash my checks each year.  A social network is a market, and I say this as a former beef trader: If Facebook is going to make a market, then they need to make the market friendly to intermediaries and market-makers.

-Harry

PS - If you haven't read the tale of how I got summarily banned from Facebook, click here. A warning or some other instruction from the system would have been nice.

As LinkedIn and ZoomInfo know, I always play by the rules when the rules are POSTED.

 

UPDATE: Facebook Gets Medieval

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anthony from Facebook
Date: Aug 2, 2007 5:30 PM
Subject:  Re [2]: Warning: Your Facebook Account
To: harry.joiner@gmail.com

Hi Harry,

Your account has been disabled because you have violated Facebook's Terms of Use.

Abusing the features of the site to spam other people is not permitted.  In addition, it is a violation of our Terms of Use to use one's account for advertising or promotional puroses [sic].  I'm sorry, but you will no longer be able to use Facebook.  This decision is final. [my bold]

Thanks for your understanding,

Anthony
Customer Support Representative
Facebook

[harry.joiner@gmail.com - Wed Aug 01 11:44:42 2007]:

Hi there.

I am a new Facebook member, and I was learning your application and I realized I could invite my Gmail list to join (all 4600 of them).  So I did.

Did I do something wrong?  I thought that's what I was supposed to do.

Kind regards,
Harry Joiner
EcommerceRecruiter.com
Ph. (678) 795-0900 | 6:30am - 9:30pm EST

Facebook Bans Recruiter

ATLANTA, GA -- Earlier this week I read about Robert Scoble getting over the hump regarding Facebook, so I decided to spend more quality time with the application.  As I mentioned in my Scoble post, I have seen some smart people blog favorably about Facebook, so as a marketing recruiter I figured I had better get on board the Facebook Train.

After signing up in mid-July, my profile just sat there while connection invitations from personal friends trickled in.  By yesterday afternoon, I had a whopping 23 friends.  Not enough for a really friendly guy like me -- especially since Scoble had said that "Facebook is the modern day Rolodex.  It is the replacement for the business card."

Then last night, I realized that I could invite my entire personal Gmail email list to join my network.  In all fairness to Facebook, there are 4600 people on my Gmail list.  However, since there is no limit to the number of LinkedIn connections a LinkedIn member can have, I figured it was the same with Facebook.  Mo users is mo betta for a pre-IPO company, right?

Busted for speeding on an unmarked highway.

Everyone knows that the value of any network grows exponentially with the number of nodes on it -- and Facebook's push-button interface encouraged me to import my contacts not already on their system.  Moreover, I don't remember seeing a Facebook warning not to exceed "X" number of invites.

To the contrary, my entire Gmail address book was inhaled into Facebook's robust platform in about 20 seconds.  It even served up photos of hundreds of my contacts who were already members.

So I teed up my 4600 email addresses in the Facebook invitation application, and >BLAM!!<  Off goes my mass invitation.  Call me krazy, but again:  Given Facebook's 30 million active users, more than 50% of whom return daily, I'm thinking "Facebook is the new Rolodex."  And there is nothing in Facebook's UI to disabuse me of this notion or limit my actions.  Two minutes later I get the following email from Facebook ...

Hi,

Your account has been disabled for persistent (my bold) misuse of the site.  Please contact disabled@facebook.com for more information.

The Facebook Team

D'oh!  Kicked to the Curb!  So I respond ...

On 8/1/07, Harry Joiner wrote:

Hi there.

I am a new Facebook member, and I was learning your application and I realized I could invite my Gmail list to join (all 4600 of them).  So I did.  Did I do something wrong?

I thought that's what I was supposed to do.

Kind regards,
Harry Joiner
EcommerceRecruiter.com
Ph. (678) 795-0900

Developing ...

 

UPDATE:  Here's a great post on the 13 ways to get banned by Facebook.