Cape Gazette in DE talks up TooBusyWorking.com

Noted: Cape Gazette’s mention of TooBusyWorking.com in their business section: View Story

Just read “Branding Only Works on Cattle”

A book that challenges our assumptions on how “branding” works. Jonathan Salem Baskin argues that modern consumers “make decisions based on experience so what matters isn’t how creative, cool or memorable the advertising is, but how companies can directly target consumer behavior.”

I’ll be thinking about how Mr. Baskin’s theories apply to what we do in recruitment advertising in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned!

Davis introduces low-cost job marketing services

We’re relaunching our AdPronto® brand and introducing two affordable recruitment marketing services under its umbrella.

AdPronto Job Marketing works with a unique combination of job aggregators, classified sites, search engines and social media to promote a single job for 30 days to a wide Internet audience for only $165.

AdPronto Direct for healthcare uses CAN-SPAM Act compliant e-mail marketing or postal mail to send job information to a targeted healthcare occupational group within a targeted geographic area. AdPronto Direct for healthcare covers the the DC, DE, MD, NJ, PA and VA areas.

The fulfillment process for all AdPronto services has been designed to trim the expenses for creating and delivering these messages.

Customers will benefit from the low cost we have been able to achieve and from a turnaround that’s hard to beat.

Information on these new services is now available on our revised Web site.

Are Nurses too busy working to find a new job?

Although many acknowledge that we’re still in a nursing shortage, job openings for nurses are often ”hidden” from online job seekers. We recently did a study that found that a very small percentage of nursing jobs actually get posted to the major job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, etc.).

Because experienced nurses are in high demand, they’re really too busy working to look for a job using the inefficient job boards and employer career sites available. Lengthy job descriptions, unclear shift and specialty information, and poor search tools makes it time-consuming to find the right job.

At Davis, we though that we could make a difference by making it easier for nurses to find nearly all of the available employment options within the Greater Philadelphia market area (NJ, DE, PA). After much hard work and a couple of betas, the result is a new Web site (TooBusyWorking) that lists virtually all of the nursing jobs available on Philadelphia-area employer Web sites.

TooBusyWorking edits thousands of job postings so that nurses can save time when they’re looking for a job or when they’re just curious about “what’s out there.” A powerful search tool allows them to find relevant jobs close to their zip code, by practice area, schedule or employer.

Nurses have the option of contacting the employers directly or of filling a short Easy Apply form. Employers have the option of making a job a Priority Listing and can also use large interactive display sponsorships to brand their organization to those interested in making a career change.

The site employs a Google-like pay-for-performance model whereby employers pay only for results (clickthroughs and sponsorship impressions).

We’ll be launching a Blog to cover the site soon: http://toobusyworking.wordpress.com. You can also follow TooBusyWorking.com on Twitter: http://twitter.com/toobusyworking.

The site won a 2007 Employment Management Association’s Creative Excellence Award — 1st Place for Media/Publishing Recruitment Website or Job Board.

Yahoo! Microsoft Silicon Valley Talent Wars

The New York Times reports that Yahoo! ran a full page ad in the San Jose Mecury News on Wednesday, June 18 to recruit Internet Search Specialists. It’s interesting to note that when the pressure’s on, employers still turn to the newspapers to grab attention and generate hiring buzz.

Meanwhile, the Mercury News reports that Microsoft has resumed its efforts to attract Yahoo! talent. “Microsoft is currently advertising about 160 positions in Silicon Valley; 133 jobs were posted after Microsoft first announced its offer to Yahoo! on February 1.”

How popular are Google gadgets for job searches?

As a fan of iGoogle and Google Gadgets, I was wondering if any of the job search gadgets available are popular with Googlers.

A while ago, I created a tab on my iGoogle desktop called “Job Search” and added Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed and Direct Employers versions of the Google Gadgets. They automatically display jobs of interest based on the criteria I specified.

But how many “Googlers” are making use of these? It turns out that only an infinitesimal amount of users are doing so.

Here’s how the available “job and classified” search gadgets were doing in terms of numbers of users, as measured on 2/28/2008, based on what Google reported next to each Google Gadget description:

Craigslist: 85,315 (jobs+)
Monster: 6,316
Indeed: 5,698 (various gadgets)
Job Job: 5,692
Google Local: 4,831
Job Search Universe: 2,659 (Google custom search)
CareerBuilder: 1,992
Jobster: 1,708
About.com: 1,403 (Job Search)
Excellent Job Search: 1,090

Keep in mind that on the same day (2/28/2008) users of Google’s default “Date & Time” gadget numbered approximately 8,592,259 and users of the default CNN Gadget numbered 7,119,842.

It’s no surprise that the most popular gadgets are entertainment-related.  What’s the Comedy Central Joke of the Day?  821,445 iGoogle users have signed up to find out on a daily basis.

Avatars and the Job Interview on Second Life

Matt Villano writes in the New York Times about his experience interviewing for a job with with Linden Labs’ “Sandy Linden.” Read the brief article here.

Sandy Linden is really Sandy Gould, director for recruiting and organizational development at Linden Labs. Mr. Gould reminds us that Second Life “in-world” interviews are only one of many tools available to the recruiter and should be used in combination with other methods in order to properly evaluate a candidate: 

“…in most cases it’s best to use in-world interviews as one part of a recruitment process that also includes a combination of telephone interviews, videoconferences, e-mail exchanges or face-to-face meetings.”

Second Life: Cool interview tool or gimmick?

Matt Villano wraps up his article questioning the novel approach: “With all of these other methods to evaluate a job candidate, do we really need another tool?”

Monster on hiring and retention: Finding Keepers

A copy of “Finding Keepers” just landed on my desk. Written by Steve Pogorzelski and Jesse Harriott, Ph.D., with Doug Hardy, the 214-page plus book is Monster’s “Guide to Hiring and Holding the World’s Best Employees.”

Seth Godin is quoted on the jacket as saying that the book will “completely reinvent the way you think about recruiting.” OK Seth, this better not be marketing hyperbole!

If you can’t get one for free from your Monster rep (hint! hint!), feel free to buy one at your local bookstore or online, like I did.

Book link on Amazon.

Effectiveness of Voluntary Diversity Training

The Washington Post reports on a not-yet published University of Arizona study on the impact of diversity training on managerial diversity in the U.S. workplace (Read article – registration required/ads served).

The Post article, by Shankar Vedantam, starts with a ”glass is half empty” view of the findings, which makes for a more controversial headline: “Most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions…”

By the third paragraph of the story, we find out that “not all diversity training is useless.” It seems that when training is undertaken on a voluntary basis, the results are positive.

Alexandra Kalev, the research leader, sums up the findings: “When attendance is voluntary, diversity training is followed by an increase in managerial diversity…Most employers, however, force their managers and workers to go through training, and this is the least effective option in terms of increasing diversity…Forcing people to go through training creates a backlash against diversity.”

Can’t wait to read the full research paper when it’s finally published!

2008 Recruitment “Previsions”

A Happy New Year to all! 

While I catch up on projects and information after a 2-week vacation, I thought I’d list a few “previsions” of the 2008 world of recruitment advertising (in no particular order).

I don’t call them predictions because as Alan Kay said ”the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Overall, my imagination tells me that we’ll see more wildly creative use of both online and offline communications as companies renew their efforts to find the needle in the haystack that is the best of the most vital of talent among the already employed.

Specifically, I believe that the following will have an impact on recruitment advertising in 2008:

1. Web-enabled recruitment messages go mobile: This year, more and more smartphones and Wi-Fi enabled devices will be used in the U.S. This means that more often than not your recruitment e-mails will be read “on-the-go.”  While this presents a design challenge for creatives, it shouldn’t be difficult to create messages that look as good on the small portable screens as they do on laptops. Progressive companies will also develop mobile versions of their career pages and will allow interested job seekers to respond by sending text messages to their recruiters.
2. The help wanted display ad jumps out of the classified section of the newspaper and into the retail fray: With less competition and noise from other types of display advertising, help wanted ads are appearing throughout the newspaper with more frequency. Called R.O.P. or Run-of-Paper, these (more expensive) ads can catch the reader off-guard with a powerful employer branding or position-specific job message. Verizon is already using this technique in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Look for more of this kind of advertising in papers both big and small.
3. Attention spans get even shorter: The time we have to catch your attention is certainly not getting longer. Savvy recruiters will distill their message to the most powerful essence and will express it in the best way possible to grab the attention of the most qualified. This condensed message will be delivered via the most target-able and most affordable vehicles available.
4. Major job board reflux: When I entered the keywords “job search” in Google today, the unpaid or organic results came back in the following order: (1) CareerBuilder (2) Monster (3) SimplyHired (4) Yahoo! HotJobs (5) Indeed (6) JobBankUSA (7) JUJU. This tells me that there’s plenty of opportunity to challenge the popularity of the big boards without spending a lot of money on branding and advertising.
5. “YouTube” for everything…even for jobs: The YouTube generation keeps “growing up.” Google isn’t the only employer leveraging the power of video downloads to spread the word about their work environment. You can even watch videos on how improve your Google job search! (Watch Now). YouTube viewers even tolerate low production values, as long as the videos are relevant or entertaining.
6. Candidate hospitality will be more important than ever: To recruit hard-to-find talent, employers will try to bend over backwards to ensure that they provide a much improved candidate experience online and offline. Everyone can use a little Pilates for improved flexibility this year.
7. More of us discover that the “Long Tail” applies to jobs too: The Internet has made it possible for any book or song, no matter how unique, to be accessible to the individual that pines for it. Likewise, every job, no matter how unique, will be more and more findable by the right job seeker using the search engines. Thanks to the use of the .jobs domain and to folks like Google, Direct Employers, and Jobs2Web, all jobs will be accessible. Companies will no longer be limited to posting jobs only to the sites they can afford. And the rumors that Google is working on a more robust jobs initiative are already in the 2008 air.
8. Widgets: Whatever you call them, small Web applications will be downloaded with more frequency. I envision that most users will download widgets as needed and will discard those no longer relevant. I have a few on my desktop including Facebook notifications, traffic, weather and assorted dictionaries. So why not use widgets for recruitment? On my iGoogle desktop I have a Job Search tab with pre-defined Monster, Direct Employers and Indeed job searches. It’s conceivable that if you’re thinking of moving you’ll download all kinds of local information and real estate widgets. I don’t know…the Florida Keys, Costa Rica. They both sound good to me!

If I can think of more, I’ll post them as they come to mind. Now, back on earth, I wish you once more a very Happy New Year!!!