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Most Embarrassing Career Moment

TORONTO - If it weren't Friday, I wouldn't post this.  And if we didn't all have careers, I wouldn't post this.  But it is Friday, and we all do have careers, so I thought I'd share with you one of the all-time great "Most Embarrassing Career Moments" (Bill Buckner notwithstanding).  This goalie is never going to live this down: Shorthanded, 197 feet.

Chin up.  Whatever bad happens in your career today, it probably won't be accompanied by a LOUD siren and laughing spectators before being downloaded to death on YouTube.

Watch the entire video.  There's a great view of the shot at the end.  Poor guy.

KEY LESSON:  Notice how the goalie instantly regains his composure and gets right back in the net.  Within thirty seconds of this total fluke, he's stopping pucks again.  There's a word for that:  "PROFESSIONALISM"

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Do you need a resume? Google thinks so.

PALO ALTO, CA - Recently, Seth Godin (of whom I have been a big fan for years, and whose Boxed Set I bought the week it was released) suggested that the best jobs don't require a resume.  Seth knew his comments were going to be controversial, and his post was music to the ears of his fans -- many of whom blogged their hope that he was right.

As a follow up to that conversation, a buddy of mine has been approached by Google for a great job ... a world class job ... a job people would kill for ... one of those jobs that don't get filled by people emailing in resumes.  Ever.

And guess what?  The first thing Google's internal recruiter sent my friend was this link explaining how to prepare a resume for Google.  It's a requirement.  Who knew?

Now, I'm not trying to say "I told you so" with this post.  But we all know that Google is one of America's Top Employers.  Evidently, a resume is as important to getting a job with Google as having a license is to driving a car.  It's like that everywhere.
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Bad Idea: Facebook's Honesty Box

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How to Write a Resume

SILICON VALLEY - I just saw an interesting story on Beet.TV about a new company called HowCast.com, which produces and distributes "how to videos" on a range of topics.  The company was founded by two former Googlers, and they've already raised $8 million -- an amount equal to 32 months of opex at a steady burn rate of $250K per month (ignoring revenues, additional equity investments, and tax implications).

I'm no VC, but that seems like a bunch of money.

In any case, it's an interesting concept -- and some of HowCast's content is excellent.  Of course, the challenge will be producing and updating enough credible content to keep the site relevant.  And for whatever videos HowCast doesn't produce in-house, they'll need editors to determine which user-generated content is accurate and entertaining enough to air on the network's 1400 categories.  Think "channels."

"It's a floor wax AND a desert topping!"

Imagine: The technology AND the content have to be remarkable -- or else viewers could simply seek "how to" content on YouTube, which is probably trying to subvert HowCast's concept even as you read this.  It's like two business models rolled into one: Production/Editoral and Distribution.  A hybrid.  Their blog tells more.

After seeing a number of clips on HowCast.com, I'm not real sure that user-generated content will be differentiating enough.  After all, user-generated content can be posted anywhere -- so by convention, it's undifferentiating.  Not to mention spotty.  And it's not like alternatives don't exist:  Aside from YouTube and Google Video, there's already HowTo.TV and SoYouWanna.com.  All of which ups the pressure on HowCast to create remarkable content in-house, or through a network of trusted third-party producers.  Sounds expensive and altogether unproprietary, unless I'm missing something.

"Often wrong; Never in doubt ..."

Best case scenario:  I'm guessing that HowCast becomes a garden variety "world class" programming business -- like HGTV or the Food Network.  From a marketing standpoint, you can expect to see HowCast rely heavily on paid search, unless their content earns Wikipedia-like respect in the organic rankings on all "how to ..." search strings.  PR, social media, and WOM will factor -- but those are unpredictable when you're trying to impress your VC's.  Alliances will matter a lot, so I expect HowCast will add a top-flight VP of Corporate Development later this year.

How to Write a Resume

Anyhoo, check out this surprisingly accurate video "How to Write a Resume."  I really like the bit about mapping your resume to what's on the job posting.  Good advice, cleverly presented.  If every HowCast video is this good, then you'll be hearing a lot more about these guys in the future.

Now, let's see: That's 1400 "How to" categories x 10 "How to" clips per category ...

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Monster.com Using Pop-Unders

BOSTON, MA - Perhaps Joel Cheesman has already covered this, but tonight I noticed that Monster.com has resorted to using pop-unders on routine job searches.  If you don't believe me, click here for the screen grab of my user session.

Dudes, this is so "MySpace."  I can't stand pop-ups / pop-unders, and I'm sure many of my target candidates feel the same way.  This totally denigrates the Monster user experience, and it comes at a time when I'm renewing my annual job board contract.  I'll likely drop $10K on a major job board in the next 60 days.  Or not.

I like Monster for its candidate depth, but this kind of stuff has me wondering whether a high quality candidate would post their resume on Monster in the first place.
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Contingency Recruiting: "The Rushmore Effect"

CHICAGO, IL - Recently I undertook a contingency-based executive search for a Chicago-based ecommerce company.  Without being long winded here, the client's standards were really high.  But mine were higher.

Throughout the process, the client asked me to "increase the flow" of candidates -- but I refused to exceed my limit of four A-players at a time.  Like Mt. Rushmore ...

It's not that I couldn't submit dozens of average candidates.  It's that I simply didn't want to, and on a contingency-based search, clients are going to get what I want them to have.  Contingency clients use multiple recruiters for their projects, and if I'm one of, say, three recruiters chasing a search -- then I know that the client can get average candidates from my competitors.  And it's not my job to build the hiring company's database.  After all, until I close a search and they pay my invoice, I'm working for free.

I realize this makes me sound difficult.

But it's just good business.  I can't build a stellar reputation by submitting candidates who are marginally better than what the hiring company could get through Monster or from an unspecialized recruiter.  I need to win each search in a total BLOWOUT, and I can only do that by working with highly specialized rock stars and then learning to tell their story in a way that engages the client.

"Some days you get the bear.  Some days the bear gets you."

Most companies don't want to pay their contingency recruiter anything.  Seriously, most don't.  Especially in a nervous economy.  Twenty percent is a lot of money, so my candidates have to be soooo much better than my competitors' that hiring my candidates is a complete no brainer.  My candidates are an extension of my value proposition, and my fee must be lost in the rounding of the value that they will create for the client.  Otherwise, I'm wasting everyone's time.

All or Nothing

So, it's my job to source and submit the best and brightest candidates and then prepare them for anything in the interview process.  Which is why I will bury my candidates in market research, company briefs, industry forecasts, and the latest ebooks on SEO, SEM, email marketing, affiliate marketing, online merchandising, usability, web development, database marketing, CRM, web analytics, TV 2.0, and more.

And it's not uncommon for me to set up phone calls between my candidates and executives or consultants who have either worked for the hiring company or have an inside knowledge about the company and its competitors.  The exchange of market intelligence can get pretty spooky -- and it almost always amazes the hiring manager.

I want need my candidates to have an unfair advantage.  Because that's how you win in my business.  More importantly, that how my client's can win in theirs.

UPDATE:  The HR Capitalist, Kris Dunn, has an interesting take on my post.  Check it out here (along with my comments).
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Microsoft + Yahoo ≠ Google

SEATTLE, WA - Anyone who has followed this blog knows that I am a huge fan of Warren Buffett.  The clarity of thought.  The common sensibility.  The ability to see both the big and the small picture.  He's the man, and everyone knows it.

It follows, then, that I'd be a fan of Roger Lowenstein, who wrote the ultimate book on Mr. Buffett, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist.  My copy is dogeared and highlighted and post-it noted to death.  Like Mr. Buffett, Mr. Lowenstein is an excellent student of value investing -- and he shares with Mr. Buffett a clear-headed way of sizing up mergers and acquisitions so that anyone can understand them.  Even me.

Microsoft + Yahoo ≠ Google

So without further ado, here are a few choice nuggets from Mr. Lowenstein's article entitled Microsoft + Yahoo ≠ Google in the April 2008 issue of Smart Money magazine:

Assuming that [the deal gets past the antitrust regulators], it does not need emphasizing that $45 billion is a lot of money.  It is a sixth of Microsoft's market value, and it is 68 times what Yahoo earned in the most recent four quarters.

If Microsoft is buying Yahoo's earnings, it is overpaying for them.  If, on the other hand, Microsoft is buying the latent potential of the 14,300 web engineers and others who work for Yahoo, the takeover price is enough to hire an equal number of even more talented people, pay them $200,000 for each of the next 15 years, and have a few billion left over to seed their retirement and pay for a fancy health club and other perks that the twentysomethings in Silicon Valley seem to require.

In other words, if a rich company like Microsoft wanted to recreate the assets, the potential, and even the brand of a Yahoo -- it could do so for a lot less than $45 billion.

As usual, I appreciate Mr. Lowenstein's perspective -- but from a staffing standpoint, I'm not so sure that Microsoft has the option of actually hiring 14,300 "even more talented" people and paying them $200K, etc.

I mean, seriously.  I'm a recruiter.  Do you have any idea how hard it would be to just "conjure" up a company, as Mr. Lowenstein suggests?  The sourcing, interviewing, testing, relocation, and on-boarding logistics would be nearly impossible -- not to mention outrageously expensive.  I can envision the run-up in salaries as the new company tried to acquire wave after wave of the internet industry's best and brightest people.  Not gonna happen.

Which means that Mr. Lowenstein's comparison is an academic one.  IE, bullshit.  And Mr. Lowenstein knows it, which is why he goes on to say that "The only alternative rationale for the merger is that Microsoft is betting on that often-difficult to realize ideal: synergy."

Mr. Lowenstein is being kind when he says that synergy is "often-difficult to realize" in M&A.  Back in the 1990's, I read a book called The Synergy Trap by Mark Sirower of Columbia Business School.  Without being overly dry here, Dr. Sirower studied the impact of M&A activity on the stock prices of publicly traded companies and found the "synergy premium" to be a total waste of the acquiring company's cash.  With very few exceptions.  And there was lots of evidence to substantiate his claim.

Bottom line:  If I'm Eric Schmidt of Google, I'm hoping and praying that the deal goes through.  If you thought Microsoft was a monopoly five years ago, wait until you see Google five years from now.
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Seth Godin: "If I were a recruiter..."

NEW YORK - Seth Godin has an interesting post today called "The needle in a haystack problem."  Seth has been having trouble with the interface between Gmail and Apple mail, and he has been searching online for help from others.

According to Seth, "Forum posts have not been successful at troubleshooting this. I have no doubt that this blog post will find the person insightful, smart and kind enough to tell me what to do."  But Seth asks the obvious question, "What if [I didn't] have a popular blog?"

When a problem like the one Seth has becomes "less interesting" for the techies who can solve it, they lose interest in surfing the forums and the listservs that would provide the best answer.  In other words, the best answers, the best referrals, the best everything in online forums comes from the edges -- and those people like interacting with others on the edges.  When the channel becomes less edgy, they leave.  Next, the quality of the forum goes down -- and everyone heads for the door.

Seth Godin continues ...

Let's say, for example, I was an executive recruiter.  Surely, I would benefit from interrupting every person on the planet to advertise a great new job.  But I couldn't do it every day or every hour...

Part of the success of Facebook is that for your group of friends, you do get that ability (at least until they stop being your friends).  But the laws of information make it clear that it doesn't scale. No, there isn't an obvious answer.  But yes, it's a universal problem. Worth a think when you get a chance.

Here's my take as a card-carrying executive recruiter:  You have to do things that are edgy and risky and counter-intuitive.  For example, I have a job board called OnlineRetailJobs.com, and I advertise it very heavily both online and off.  My wife thinks I'm nuts.

On the face of things, I am losing huge money on it.  For example, I am handling searches now for two clients who have posted jobs on it -- and if the winning candidate is sourced directly through the job board, I lose a 20% commission.

So why do it?  Because the labor market is dynamic and interconnected and my candidates and clients will find each other anyway.  They do not operate in a vacuum.

It makes MUCH more sense to drive people to a job board that showcases my commitment to the ecommerce industry and links to my blog.  In a sense, it "credible-izes" me to my market, and I think that these soft benefits outweigh any opportunity costs there might be.

TRUE STORY:  I have become so credible among online retailers that TWICE last year I closed searches involving candidates who had applied directly to my clients and were rejected.  It was only after I interviewed these candidates and explained specifically how each could grow the clients' online business that their candidacies were resurrected.  Technically, the clients owed me nothing -- but most people are fair, and they wanted to pay me something for my expertise.  It was a win/win/win: The only acceptable outcome in an efficient market.

I also have a Linked-In group which online retailers and passive job seekers can join.  The group has nearly 500 members -- and it may be costing me money by taking searches out of the market.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that my "click to join" button is on the Linked-In bios of 500 (mostly) A-players in my marketplace, and the icon has become a branding element for my job board.  It has greatly improved my "signal to noise ratio" within my target market -- and I have become one of "the" go-to guys for ecommerce on Linked-In.  I couldn't buy that kind of credibility and trust -- but I can accelerate it by disintermediating myself.

So it's about trade offs and about being known as a community facilitator -- rather than as a parasite who simply lives off the asymmetric information provided by the friction in the market.  In a sense, I'm in the karma business.  We all are.

After all, you get as good as you give.
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Insta-marketing!

LEEDS, UK - Today I discovered a great new band called The New Mastersounds.  Their stuff is of the MGs and Meters instrumental variety.  Funky.  Supa fuhnkee.  I'd love to hear Amy Winehouse backed by these guys...

Anyway, the band is currently touring the east coast, and as I perused their site, I was struck by their use of maps, downloads, copyright permissions, and DIY club posters.  They make it so E-Z for their fans, vendors (i.e. club owners), and mainstream media to support them.  Especially for club owners who need to promote the band's upcoming gigs at their venues, it's like "insta-marketing."  Lots of ideas to swipe on this site.

PS - When I went to include links to this post, I Googled "wikipedia" and I got a SEARCH BOX in the Google SERP!  Watch what happens when you enter a string into the box.  Gee.  Somehow, I think this diversion of traffic goes beyond having "just another SERP" on which Adwords can appear.  Don't you?  I mean, it's not as if we are talking about a ton of traffic that Google is siphoning off.  Are they making a statement with this tactic?  Seriously, I'd like to know your thoughts.
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