SimplyHired – LinkedIn API Integration

Jobs aggregator, Simply Hired, have realised the power of using LinkedIn’s network to their advantage. Jobseekers who do their seeking at Simply Hired will now be able to see who from their network has a connection to the employer posting the job. You know the old adage about getting a job being more about who you know than what you know? Well, this has never really been truer.

Work Day 40 Years in the Future

A magazine article printed four decades ago by James R. Berry, containing predictions of what life would be like in 2008 has been republished online here, and it holds some surprisingly accurate details. Or does it??

“People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn’t totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments—on the average, about two hours of home study a day.”

What the author failed to account for here, was the rise of economic rationalism, which meant that, although folks got their jobs done quicker due to technology, companies decided that individuals could now do the job that previously two of them did…

Mr Berry also predicted that:

” The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.”

Although my itouch stands a pretty strong second place.

“Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities.”

Nice one. On the money Mr Berry (though somehow, even with all the reminders in the world, I still manage to forget my wedding anniversary!)

Seek In The Black

I couldn’t help but see the parallels here, between the company that is the leading job board in the Australia and New Zealand market place, which turns over in excess of 200million dollars per annum, and which is advocating the use of the black screen for Earth Hour on the 29th of March. I had a chuckle to myself about the irony in this, then moved on mentally to congratulating them for tapping such a wealthy and politically concerned target market – and for looking out for the environment, of course.

Easter Clean Up For Seek

I have noticed these type of ads appearing on Seek over the Easter break.

I’m not straight-up suggesting that the above advertisement is a scam, but it seems to be being used as a vehicle for promoting the URL. The site contains a few dodgy-sounding “work from home data entry” opportunities, and then some Goggle ads for ironically, “data entry jobs are scams”.The internet is plush with sites whose raison d’etre is revenue raising from ads or data collection.I think it’s time that Seek have an Easter clean-up.

My Facebook Application

This is a tough one for me.  I’m conscious of how I want this blog to be.  I see it as a forum for offering ideas and opinions.  You know, tossing stuff about a bit. I’ve been ranting for some time now about the benefits of using social networking to overcome some of the challenges of finding candidates.I followed my own advice recently and employed a company to create a Facebook application for the Onrec site.  The company I used did a great job and I’d like to endorse them, Recruitment Directory, whilst keeping in mind that the raison d’etre of the blog is not to serve as an advertising publication. I just wanted to let folks know about them so that if they choose to follow my lead, they could think about using these guys, or perhaps any number of others out there who do a similar thing.  If you are one of them and want to tell folks about yourselves, let me know in the reply.    

Don’t Shoot The Messenger

A recent decision by a US court might mean sound sleep tonight for the owners of websites.

Online bulletin board, Craigslist, was found not liable for users posting discriminatory advertisements, a US court has ruled.

“Judge Frank Easterbrook said the Chicago lawyers could not “sue the messenger just because the message reveals a third party’s plan to engage in unlawful discrimination”.

What this establishes is a discrimination between folks publishing discriminatory views and third party publishes which merely provide the forum for publication.

Besides a good night’s sleep, I took from this how exciting this new frontier we’re traversing is. In law, many of the rules that have been established so far and will be established in the future are based on precedents set in publishing generally. However, the web is a beast of a slightly different nature in regard to, amongst other things, the capacity of companies to merely provide the tools for publication. I love how this gives us guys, who are at the forefront of such an amazing tool, to shape the world we wanna live in.

Kinda makes me feel powerful…like Van Hielsing slaying the vampires and stuff…

Go Figure

New entrant to the job site space SixFigures launched recently, the brainchild of ex-recruiter Kelly Magowan and techie Karen Jenkin.

“Six Figures is a new premium job site; the first of its kind in Australia.”

Haven’t they heard of Seek Executive and The Big Chair??

An IT World Without Recruiters

If new entrant to the IT job board game Jobreel has anything to do with it, the future of employment will be “Jobs in technology from employers you know”, not from recruiters who know the employers. And I’m willing to declare upfront, that as the head of a recruitment agency, my opinion is going to be skewed toward the importance of the service that recruitment agencies provide.

Having said that, though, reckon I’m fair and reasonable enough to, at the least, initiate a discussion regarding self-recruiting by employers.I’m gonna make the Blue Poles analogy here. For those who have no idea about art, Blue Poles by Jackson Pollack was a piece of modern art purchased by the Whitlam Government in 1973 for The National Gallery of Canberra. Whitlam copped a lot of flack for the A1.3 million purchase because some folks didn’t get the complexity of Blue Poles and thought it was something their kindy kiddies at home could have knocked up.

But there was more to it than that…and so it is with recruitment agencies.We screen applications, take dozens of calls a day from folks who have “sent in their resume and just want to check on its progress” or others who “want to send a resume but would like to chat about it”, we line up interviews, one, two, perhaps three per viable applicant per job, we offer a second opinion of the appropriateness of candidates, negotiate salaries, check references and make offers to successful applicants. Kid’s games? I don’t think so. It is time consuming, energy-consuming work that requires skills in networking and people management.

Now, I know a lot of folks with pretty important roles in big corporations and each of them, without exception, complains of their lack of resources and the time demands of their jobs. Even if employers wanted to take matters into their own hands and self-recruit, would they have time?Point taken?Next up, let’s get to the nitty-gritty of what jobreel is proposing. (Read related article) Here is a job board established for employers only. Part of the pitch for why this was necessary was that recruiters view the candidate as a commodity and that jobreel will only have ads from caring employers. What? For a start, yes, candidates are a commodity to a recruiter (der), but they are to an employer too (double der), and how will jobreel ensure that their jobs come only from caring employers? The mere fact that they are willing to own up to who they are does not ensure their high rating on the caring scale, and the fact that a recruiter who is advertising on jobreel is willing to name their client does not mean that they view the applicant as any less of a commodity.

I hate this kind of ill-founded logic and spurious claims.Footnote: Blue Poles is now one of the museum’s most popular exhibits and is worth over $A150 million

Old School Meets New School

An alliance between JobX.com.au and social networking site, friendsreunited.com.au was announced today.

JOBX will provide FriendsReunited.com.au a full white label of its technology and functionality, including powering and launching the FriendsReunited.com.au jobs portal.

Good on ‘em. JobX has done the right thing in that, prior to spending squillions on marketing, it’s building some strategic alliances.This’ll help friendsreunited, too. Friendsreuinited is old school, web1.0, whereas JobX is more web2.0, giving its counterpart a bit more wizz-bang.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs Health Check.

“We think that we can create the number-two job board in Australia within 12 months, which really means knocking off MyCareer and CareerOne, and we think that we can be a third of the size of Seek within three years.”

-Guy Sigston (smart company magazine, 20 Feb., 2007)

It’s nearly a year on for Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Call it an early happy birthday present if you like, but I reckon they’re about due for a little health check.Let’s start with the positive. The site has pretty good functionality. It remembers the user and returns the upon entry to their last viewing point. Handy stuff. And not that it really matters so much, but the site is aestetically slick and easy to navigate – a welcome break from some stuff I’ve been looking at lately.Okay.

On to Guy’s quote. See, the problem is, if you’re going to go to the media with big claims, you wanna be pretty sure that you can see the claims through. Based on this idea, Guy Sigston was pretty…um…stupid. Sure, you left Jobs, Jobs, Jobs rather “abruptly”, but you’re back now and I reckon all the hooha is no excuse for not making good your inflated promise, Guy.

Let’s have a look at how things are tracking…According to Hitwise Australia February 08 market share, Seek holds 25% of the market, and CareerOne and MyCareer, 8.7% and 7.3%, respectively. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs has NOT EVEN 1% OF MARKET SHARE. I don’t wanna kick you when you’re down, and frankly, I wouldn’t be expecting much more than what you’ve achieved in such a short time. The thing I have an issue with is your public escalation of expectations. Don’t tell folks that you’ll be number two in a year, don’t tell folks that you’ll be a third of the size of Seek in three years, unless you have a bloody good plan for how this will be achieved.Say we let ‘em off the hook for the Guy comment. Say we’re in a benevolent mood and we’re prepared to allow a pretty humungous margin of error…where do we go from here?

Archie Mills, my friendly telesales rep. from Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, led me to the answer to this question. Archie was pretty keen to get my business by setting up a meeting with one of the sales team. I’m pretty busy, though, and won’t go to meetings unless I’m pretty sure it’s going to be fruitful for me (this is the reason I’m self-employed, goddam). I asked Archie for some info about the job board and he sent me an email, jam-packed full of claims. Most of them were pruely propaganda. For instance, “We offer better value”. Der, Arch. Then there was this one “57% growth in the past two months” That one bugged me a bit, considering that January is the comeback month for job boards. I wanted clarification on that point, “How does this compare with the growth of the competing job boards” and “What is the source of the statistics”, I asked my new friend Archie – twice. No reply. That was a few weeks ago.

Looks like Jobs, Jobs, Jobs is up to their old tricks again.

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