Job Search Engine Guide

Job Blogging and the Golden Rule

   

Although I can’t prove it, I think treating others the way we’d like to be treated is good business … and I think it’s good blogging etiquette too.   

   

So I’m concerned about some of the messages I’m seeing:

   

“Aggregators … have all but eliminated efficient job searches … some new aggregators seem to exist solely for the purpose of mass e-mailings and the ever popular spam.”

   

“Monster is a crap product.”

   

“This incredible set of bad manners is brought to you by the likes of Jobster, Simply Hired, Indeed and a host of other examples.”

   

I understand that passion, combined with the desire to cut through the ‘noise’ of competing positions, leads us to deliver bold, even controversial messages.  Nothing wrong with that.  But bold and controversial can be pushed too far, with the resulting messages becoming unbalanced, or worse, insulting.

   

Looking at the three messages above, I’d say:

   

-          Some jobseekers find that searching a vertical is more efficient (performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort) than searching multiple niche or employer sites;

   

-          Some of the 43 million registered Monster users think the product provides value (and I can only dream of having a product that generates $1 billion per year in revenue);

   

-          Some employers and niche sites appreciate the additional traffic provided by the vertical job sites.   

   

Very few products are 100% good or 100% bad – recognizing the good and the bad is not only fair, it strengthens our message. 

   

In closing, I know I’ve stepped over the line on occasion, and will again.  I’m sorry … I’m still learning.

   

Craigslist Does the Honorable Thing

   

As reported by Joel Cheesman, Craigslist has apparently “…sent cease and desist letters to Jobster, Simply Hired, Indeed and other vertical job search engines to stop spidering their job content.” 

   

Representatives of Indeed, Jobster, and Simply Hired were with Joel last week at the Direct Employers annual meeting, so I’m sure they would have set him straight if the word on the street was incorrect.

   

This is great news for all parties. 

   

A few months ago, in a five-part series on how Craigslist Degrades Vertical Job Search, I concluded that 93% of the Craigslist ads found on Jobster qualified as junk.

   

So my question for Craig Newmark at the time was:  What good is free, if the result includes so much junk?

   

And my question for Jason Goldberg, Paul Forester and Gautam Godhwani was:  Why would you degrade the quality of your product by including content from the free Craigslist sites?

   

In the end, Craigslist does us a favor by placing a wall around their low-quality content.   

   

Thanks Craig!

   

Direct Employers Rocks

   

In a war for talent, you need comrades in arms.  With all of the players in the job space – 40,000+ job boards, newspapers, Google, etc. – ‘attacking’ with their sales pitches, one of your best defenses is membership in Direct Employers.

   

For those unfamiliar with Direct Employers, they are the folks behind the Job Central job board. But it isn’t the board that really makes them special, even though it has my favorite interface.

   

Direct Employers is special because of their membership – a group of employers, just like you, competing for talent in a tightening labor market by banding together to reduce costs, share best practices, and drive new efficiencies in the labor acquisition process.

   

After spending two days at the Direct Employers annual meeting, talking with employers, observing the camaraderie, and being blown away by the great insights that were freely being shared among the members, I’m at a loss for words to convey how impressed I am with this organization.

   

If you’re a medium or large employer, you should really consider joining Direct Employers.  You’ll save money, you’ll increase your success rate, and they’ll help you build your employment brand.

   

War is hell – why go it alone?

   

Navisite to Continue Free AJB Services

   

Per their press release:

   

“NaviSite…today announced that the Company will continue to operate the America’s Job Bank (AJB). NaviSite will continue to offer services to its clients, constituents, employers and job seekers without any interruption in service and at no charge when the funding for the AJB program ends in July 2007.”

   

The company has a new address at www.americasjobbank2.com that retains the look of the current AJB system.

   

Per Denis Martin, NaviSite CTO and Managing Director of the AJB program, “NaviSite has designed, developed and operated America’s Job Bank’s website for more than 10 years – we know the system inside and out.  We have the unique combination of infrastructure resources and expertise to enhance the current system and effectively grow the employment services component of NaviSite’s business.  NaviSite understands the specific needs of State government, including specific data exchange, compliance and reporting requirements that we’ve worked hand-in-hand with these organizations to define and build.  We plan to offer States and other organizations the ability to customize and integrate this platform with their own systems - an approach that was previously difficult to accomplish within the constraints of the public government’s processes and procedures.“

   

NaviSite is reaching out to AJB users to inform them of the continued service at no charge and is working with the National Association of State Work Force Agencies (NASWA) to include their membership in the program.  The Company is finalizing plans to ensure a seamless transition, while defining a roadmap for new functionality and features that will be released as part of the continued service.

   

Concluded Martin, “NaviSite will continue to provide the America’s Job Bank user community with value-added services – based upon a flexible, scaleable solution and deep knowledge of the data and needs of end users.  Our goal in the coming months is to assure current users that they can plan for business as usual, while continuing to receive the high levels of service and increased features and functions in the near future.”

   

No question that NaviSite knows AJB and has the support infrastructure to continue providing AJB-like services.  The question is this:  Will States share information, collected under a publicly funded employment program, with a private for-profit firm?  When AJB was funded by the Department of Labor and managed by the State of New York, sharing information was no problem.  Now, I wonder.  Working with NASWA is a smart move, but I wouldn’t bet on mass adoption by the States.

   

The End of the Big Job Boards

   

Remember Commodore computers?  Wildly successful in the 80s, they built their success on the principle of vertical integration – the aggregation of all production processes in the supply chain under a single firm.  Commodore designed and manufactured their own components; and their Commodore 64 personal computer became the best selling single computer model of all time.

   

Vertical integration works in markets where the components for success are not readily available from other vendors.  Often, a disruptive innovation is at the core of the vertical integrators strategy.  The budding personal computer market of the 80s was perfect for Commodore’s business model.

   

As markets mature, specialists enter with the ability to deliver individual components at lower cost; and with singular focus, specialists often out-innovate vertically integrated firms.  So it’s no surprise that Commodore’s star faded and was replaced by companies like Dell – assemblers of components purchased on the spot market from specialty suppliers. 

   

This changing-of-the-guard, from a few vertically integrated firms to a market full of specialists, delivers greater value to consumers in a circular fashion – specialty firms offer lower component prices, and just as importantly, they absorb a portion of the capitalization required to produce the final product – thus the barrier to market entry is reduced and more specialists enter, placing additional downward pressure on prices.

   

During the 90s, large integrated job boards (Monster, HotJobs and CareerBuilder) flourished, leveraging the budding Internet (another disruptive innovation) to deliver lower-cost recruiting options that undercut newspaper classifieds.  But as the electronic recruiting market has matured, new specialists are emerging to deliver customer-focused innovation at much lower cost than the big job boards.

   

In the long run, the big integrated job boards will fade away, replaced by specialty firms assembling and delivering custom recruiting solutions that meet individual employer’ needs at a price far below the old model.  Yes, there is room for everyone, and a name like Monster may live on, just as the name IBM lives on.  But IBM, considered the father of the personal computer, is no longer in the personal computer business.

   

Predictably, as markets go through this lifecycle, from a few vertically integrated firms to a sea of specialists with disruptive business models, there is much gnashing of teeth.  The losers cry foul.  No matter – consumers choose the winners and losers.

   

John Sumser is Wrong

   

John, you’re kidding right?  You don’t really believe your analogy comparing job search with lawn mowing, do you? 

   

Your arguments don’t make sense to me:

   

-          Indexing information for search is not the same as purloining copyrighted material;

-          Vertical job boards do not act like gang members;

-          Attributing information from your site to you is not disrespectful;

-          A business model based on broader coverage of the market is not limited to firms unable to muster a real sales force;

-          Providing additional free advertising for your content is not vandalism.

   

Here’s an alternate analogy – your argument is similar to the response of a small business when Wal-Mart comes to town.  Is Wal-Mart good?  Millions of consumers think so.  Yet some small businesses can’t compete.

   

So John, we all need to compete in the market as defined by consumers, or prepare to be forced out – that’s the way free markets work. 

   

That said, manners are important.  So if Simply Hired has ignored requests to cease indexing your content, then by all means call them out.  But painting all vertical search sites with the same brush just doesn’t seem mannerly. 

   

Netflix Offers $1 Million for Improved Predictions

   

Netflix is curious … to the tune of one million dollars.  If there’s a better way to help customers find the movies they’ll love, then it could make a big difference to their customers and their business. 

   

So Netflix is offering $1 million to anyone who can improve their prediction accuracy by 10%.

   

I’m stunned.  In an industry where the average transaction is under $20 per month, Netflix is willing to pay seven figures for a 10% improvement in match accuracy.  Incredible!

   

What’s the value of the average job placement?  Even if an employer uses Craigslist or Google Base, where job ads are free, the time investment to place an ad and screen applicants is far greater than any transaction in the video rental industry.

   

Yet when was the last time you read about a job board’s major investment in search/match accuracy?  With the exception of Career Builder, who licenses search technology from FAST, other job sites seem content to roll their own relatively simplistic search … offloading the job of sorting through mediocre results to employers and job seekers.

   

With millions at stake, a major player in the electronic job market will eventually seize on search/match as a key differentiator.  Imagine the press coverage, customer interest, and the speed at which a firm could vault into the lead if they employed the concept demonstrated by Netflix?

   

Bravo Netflix … a brilliant idea!

   

Monster Beta Job Search – Improved but Flawed

   

Monster no longer dominates the U.S. online recruitment market – Career Builder has passed them in revenue, job postings and traffic – but Monster has deep pockets and a dedicated R&D team.   So don’t underestimate the power of a wounded Monster.

   

Innovation is a surefire way to disrupt the status quo; so if Monster can leverage their R&D spending to jump ahead of competitors in the areas of search relevance and user productivity, then perhaps they can reestablish their dominance.

   

Enter the much-improved Monster Beta Job Search.

   

The user interface is clean and flexible, plus it scores well on the use of standard usability principles. Definitely first class.

   

The addition of filters on the left mimics other sites, but it is still a helpful addition. And Monster becomes one of the few sites to offer a filter by occupational category – a key to improved relevance and productivity.

   

Weaknesses remain however:

   

1)       The occupational categories used by Monster are non-standard, poorly defined, and overlapping.  In the example above, there are separate categories for information technology and computers, software – aren’t computers and software part of information technology?  I have no idea what distinguishes one category from the other.  And if I’m confused during the search process, was the employer any less confused when assigning a category?  When will a job site turn to the combination of a proven occupational taxonomy and expert code assignment?

   

2)       Keyword search manipulation is not transparent.  Monster deserves props for going an extra step to help job seekers – when a search string finds no results using the default ‘AND’ operator, Monster reruns the search using the ‘OR’ operator.  They just don’t tell you when they’ve done this.  So in the example above, I’m seeing an ‘Accounts Receivable Clerk’ as the most relevant result for my ‘Ajax Software Guru’ search.  Definitely confusing.

   

3)       Coverage is limited to ads placed on Monster – somewhere under 1 million ads, and probably closer to 500,000. Monster doesn’t publish this metric because it would be hard to reconcile with their advertising claim of providing “access to the largest database of jobs”. So even if Monster does develop the best search engine, they’ll still only be offering access to 20% or less of the online job ads. 

   

An improved search experience is always welcome; and even with the current flaws, Monster’s new beta job search is improved. What I see so far won’t be enough to change their market fundamentals though – they’ll continue to see declining market share for as long as they charge premium prices for less than premium results.