Job Board Price War Shake Up?

I received this letter indirectly. A plea from Recruit Me Now.  I can’t call it a media release.  It’s a confusing piece of communication which flits from third-person to first-person (and I’ve offered in past blogs to write your bloody publicity for you – but continue to be witness to the circulation of shite).

Deep breath, Geoff (see, that’s first-person).

Back to the case in point.  Recruit Me Now has offered free job ads for recruiters (now I’m in third-person.  See the difference, Michael?).  This strategy has been used by several job boards (namely, MyCareer, CareerOne, NowHiring).  This is not a successful strategy as it devalues the service offered.

Now I’m going to offer an alternative.  Don’t you just hate it when folks whine all the time but fail to show how things can be improved?  Here it comes, Mike.  Hold on to your jocks.  What Recruit Me Now needs to do is this:  cut ties with JobX.  They’re doing a crap job anyway (also offering free jobs).  Get your shirt and tie on and have a chat with market leader Hughes Recruitment, which has more recruitment jobs than you do, and present yourself as an affiliate marketer that can send them quality apps.  Charge accordingly.  Next, spend your time marketing your site properly instead of begging for free ads.

Let me know how you go:)

Things Are Not Always What They Seem…

You might recall my article on the launch of RecruitMeNow.com.au back in April. Also, this article JOBX and Recruitment Academy Plugging Leaky Bucket.

RecruitMeNow claims to be “The first exclusive Recruitment Industry job and candidate board“.  I like that, a niche job board, a job board that knows what it’s about.  Straight to the point.  No nonsense.  This sort of self-knowledge gives me tingles.

I thought I’d do a little update on RecruitMeNow.  It’s been a while, and I’m always interested to see how new sites are progressing.  The site looks good (certainly a relief after my interlude with Groovy Jobs).  Just mucking around, I typed in a search for ‘Accounting’.  This is what I got.

Not one job in the recruitment industry…

I didn’t sleep well last night.  It was one of those hot nights, where the air is steamy.  Plus I went over my coffee quota during the day.  Point is, I’m a bit hazy-brained this morning.  But why would the site claim to be exclusively for jobs in the recruitment industry, but deliver a search result like this one.  Have things changed?

Doncha just get sick of things not being what they seem?

Recruitmenow Splashes In Seek’s Pond…

Recruitmenow, a new player in the job board wars, was recently launched by JobX and Recruitment Academy.

It was pretty cheeky of them to place this advertisement on Seek. The advertisement was not a call for staff, but a blatant attempt to poach Seek advertisers and job seekers.

It’s not logical to present yourself to the public as a valid alternative to the market leader, but then to use the service provided by that market leader to disseminate your message.

If this is your future marketing strategy Recruitmenow, then you better bring along your life jacket as Seek’s pond is very deep…

A Rose By Any Other Domain Name….

I’m a big fan of Shakespeare. I know there’ll be folks who’ll stop reading this blog right now, suddenly haunted by memories of that hazy feeling you get when you’re in English class and you can’t understand a word of what Suzy in the front row just read out from her copy Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet. But bear with me. Like it or not, good old Will had a way with words. He could string ‘em together with such elegance that even today, many of the phrases we use come directly from his pen.

Take “A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, for instance. Probably true if you’re Romeo trying to woo Juliet, but not if you’re the creator of a website. A bad name, and you could come off smelling like a pile of steamy dog-crap.

I reckon we’ve all come across a domain name or two that makes us wonder what its creators were thinking when they came up with it. I’ve recently considered, for example, Recruitmenow which sounds like a site for cat placements and hoojano. It took me two weeks to interpret the meaning of that one, at first I thought it was some sort of porn affair (run-off from Oraljobs, see my blog on that one) Gobbldegoop.

We have an innate sense of what makes for a stinker of a name, but pinning down the factors making for a good domain name is a bit harder. Webestate is getting sparser and sparser so finding a good name that is available can be difficult. Here are some tips for creating a great domain name:

Make the name meaningful: try to keep it around the meaning of the core concept of the site

Make it uniquely identifiable: while some of these points apply across all marketing, this is probably the most important to remember with a domain name. Give the site a name that will not mean that a misspelling will send it to the competition.

Make it easy to type so that people don’t have to rely on links and shortcuts to come visit you.

Make it Memorable: most folks can only remember 7+/-2 digits and the same rule applies to memory for the letters of words that are made up. Make your name easy to remember.

Give it a little X factor: Charm, charisma, quirkiness, something a little out-of-the-ordinary will help with fulfilling a few of the above criteria.

Let’s have a little fun…let’s call it Domain Names 101…check out how many domain names, just off the top of your head, match the above criteria…good times for those of us who are thinking internet thoughts at 4a.m…..

JOBX and Recruitment Academy Plugging Leaky Bucket

JOBX and Recruitment Academy has announced today the launch of the first exclusive Recruitment Industry job and candidate board including an on-line networking forum. This industry-first will be called recruitMenow, a new division of Recruitment Academy. The site will provide a space in which recruiters looking for consultants can advertise jobs, and consultants can promote themselves to recruiting companies. Kinda like a directory for recruitment consultants.

But don’t go to the space expecting to find anything. This is what’s there:

“recruitMenow will launch mid March 2008 and both JOBX’s CEO Richard Maré and Recruitment Academy’s founder and Managing Director Michael Dimopoulos believe this new partnership will accelerate and dominate this space rapidly.”

Expect a plethora of these new sites. Companies are keen to take advantage of the culture of online networking, and so they should. It is cost-effective and indeed, very efficient means of reaching out.However, this appears to be a little undercooked. I can’t see how it will gain the support of recruitment agencies, who won’t be too keen on their staff advertising themselves on the site. Also, there are a few sticky privacy issues that may arise for the consultants. For example, and excuse my loud voice BUT WHO’S GOING TO ALLOW THEIR PSYCHOMETRIC DATA TO BE MADE PUBLIC WITHIN THE INDUSTRY IN WHICH THEY WORK? Ahem. That feels better.

Further, in its media release, recruitMenow makes the claim that its site will help to address the problem of attrition within the industry. Yep, read the line again if you don’t believe it. It’s what we all wanna hear, no? I know of hookers who are more loyal to their street corners than some recruitment consultants are to the businesses they work for. And stop me now if my logic is a bit off, but how in the heck will a recruitment consultant job board, a site whose very raison d’etre is to advertise new jobs for people and allow people to promote themselves for new jobs, diminish attrition rates?

I’ve got this little mathematical equation running through my head and I’d like to share it with you, ’cause sometimes, words are confusing. Maths explains some stuff better. It goes like this:Promote new jobs to recruitment consultants + recruitment consultants leave current employment to go to new job = INCREASE in attrition.

Mr Moe, he was my math teacher in year 8. I reckon he’d be real proud of me right now.