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Dave Carvajal, Blogger

I'd like to extend a hearty "welcome" to long-time colleague and start-up blogger Dave Carvajal. His first post on In the Arena includes one of my favorite quotes: It is not the critic who counts...

Dave was a co-founder at HotJobs and hired me as a summer intern in June of 1999. We've been working together since, and I can attest to Dave's greatness. He is a fantastic judge of people and talent, and his infectious energy has helped both HotJobs and TheLadders grow into the companies they are today. Best of luck on the blog, Dave!

Good Advice for College Students

Good advice from Charlie O'Donnell over at Path 101: 10 Things Every New College Graduate Should Do to Find a Job

The one thing I would add is that you shouldn't wait until the end of your senior year to start doing the things he suggests. You should start doing this towards the end of each year of college, so that you can get summer internships as well. Whether summer internships turn into full-time employment after school or not, they can be a fantastic way to learn what you like and don't like about different types of jobs.

I worked at HotJobs in the summers of '99 and '00 before joining full time in the fall of 2001. Those small summer tastes of internet startup whetted my appetite - and here I am nine years later, proudly looking back on four and a half years of startup success at TheLadders.com.

So, new college grads - and college students of all ages - take heed of Charlie's advice.

TheLadders in the New York Times

Well, the New York Times is publishing an article about the high end job search Monday morning:Listing Top Jobs but Charging Candidates to Seek Them - New York Times

It's extremely gratifying to see TheLadders getting some recognition from the Times for our new approach to the job search.

Love the Customer

Here at TheLadders, we are very focused on loving the customer. Our CEO, Marc Cenedella, used to do a lot of business in Japan, and he brought back this phrase: "Okyaku-sama wa kami-sama desu", which means "The Customer is God." We try to keep that in mind for everything we do.

The most visible way to see that is to interact with our fantastic Community group, as Rob O'Regan discovered this week:

The Right Way To Do Customer Service

Proactive, friendly customer service. No muss, no fuss. What a concept! I will certainly use their service again, and I will recommend TheLadders.com to my friends and colleagues. This is customer service done right.

Thanks for the kudos, Rob!

Jobster Calls Out Monster

Kudos to Jobster's Jason Golberg for calling out Monster's "crap product." Video here.

The amount of ads the job seeker has to fight through on Monster is just ridiculous. Sure, the business is doing well, but they're abusing the job seeker. It may help them make money in the short term, but it's an AWFUL experience.

(Hat tip to Joel Cheesman for the video and for standing up to the man)

Pat on the Back from Robert Wilson

In Job Boards Worshiping False Gods, Robert Wilson reminds us that many jobs boards are really advertising publishers and points out that "there is a great deal of money to be made off the inefficiency of search – and very little motivation for advertising publishers to improve relevance." Good stuff, but not as good as this gem:

Thankfully, organizations like TheLadders, Jobster, and JobCentral are building successful businesses by improving the labor exchange. If you’re an employer or a jobseeker looking for a true ‘matchmaker’ in the labor exchange process, then these three organizations should be at the top of your list.

Thanks, Robert!

Better Job Search

In his post, Irrelevance of Job Boards, Robert Wilson complains that Indeed, SimplyHired and CareerBuilder send him totally irrelevant jobs in their Job Alerts/Scouts:

Below, you will find the top ten jobs emailed to me today by three scouts for ‘auto sales’ jobs in Boston, MA. Not one of the 30 is selling automobiles! Somehow, the job boards interpreted ‘auto sales’ to mean I’m looking for a job as an engineer, a mechanic, a pharmacy manager, a business analyst, a trainer, and a customer service rep.

As a curious guy, I wondered how we stacked up. So, I performed a quick search on SalesLadder for "Auto Sales" (login required). Here are the top three results:

Dealer Account Sales Rep
"...develop and support business relationships with both dealer and credit union clientele in the indirect auto financing industry..."

Sales Manager II
"...responsible for selling Progressive's Commercial Auto product..."

National Sales Representative
"...expand their US presence to such areas as large drug stores, 24 hour stores, office stores, auto parts stores and similar retail stores..."

Not bad, considering we're focused on jobs that pay $100k+. The top three results aren't really selling cars, but they are sales jobs related to the auto industry. Can't really complain about that. So, in this informal taste test, I'll give the edge to SalesLadder, where you'll find a better search for sales jobs.

Nobody Home

Robert Wilson asks, "Is Anyone Home at HotJobs?"

My guess is "no". The entire Product department has been turned over since I left HotJobs two years ago, and virtually everyone in the Marketing department jumped ship (or was forced out?) within the last three months, as I understand it.

Like Marc said,

...it's sad that the energy and optimism of this e-mail haven't been justified by subsequent events. HotJobs has dropped to a distant third. 9 out of 11 of the top people at HotJobs were gone within 6 months, and the remaining stragglers have now left. And the place has lost that old HOTJ feeling -- the manic, exuberant, juvenile atmosphere of "hey, let's put on an internet company!"

I had drinks with one of the new HotJobbers the other night, and none of the history has been passed down. None of the tradition, none of the pride or legacy, none of the crazy celebrations, none of the misguided sense that we deserved to be #1. And so it's sad to see that loss. Because what's been lost isn't just the spirit of HotJobs, but a beautiful, inspiring example of the entrepreneurial best in all of us.

And for that, we are all the poorer.

I hope I'm wrong, but it looks like Yahoo's just letting HotJobs die.

Scott Barker, Local Celebrity

The White Rhino Report - Acknowledging Good Customer Service – The Ladders and Scott Barker

I just wanted to offer my view on the effectiveness of The Ladders. I tried an experiment over the course of the last month. I posted a job for a Sales Executive in the Software/Market Research space - and I did parallel postings on The Ladders and on Career Builder. The difference in response was dramatic - higher yield and more qualified candidates from The Ladders than from Career Builder.

In addition, I have had numerous conversations with Scott Barker, who is the consummate professional and representative and is a delight to work with. I will be using them much more extensively in the future.

Good Question from Sumser

John Sumser's take on the WorkZoo-Jobster merger/acquisition:

If networking for referrals was the promised land, why in the world would additional job content be required? Certainly, scraped job content is the exact opposite of what Jobster was peddling just a couple of months ago.

(If that link is dead or no longer showing the right article, try this one)

A Monster Punch in the Gut

Bad news for Monster's Government Solutions' QuickHire: DHS Scraps Web Hiring Vendor

However, in the formal "termination for cause" notification, Elizabeth C. Heitz, a contracting officer for Customs and Border Protection, said Monster had failed to correct problems: "The system failed repeatedly. Specifically, employees accessing the system were involuntarily exited from the system or were unable to access the system at all. . . . During the failures, the system 'froze' and then displayed an error message."

Dream Jobs

"...your idea of a dream job changes over time." -Tom Colicchio, in a Fast Company piece on Dream Jobs

It's an interesting collection of thoughts from four people living their dream jobs.

Jobster buys Workzoo

Jobster buys Workzoo

With the WorkZoo acquisition, Jobster is the first company to integrate vertical search and social networking into a purposeful employment service.

Eh... I'm not so sure about that. Despite today's article in the WSJ that mentions companies using Jobster, the whole idea seems somewhat flawed. Marc's got a much more complete thought in his post, WorkZoo acquisition: not a good sign for Jobster

Amen, brother.

HotJobs' Official Announcement

MercuryNews.com | 07/12/2005 | Yahoo to `copy' jobs to beef up its listings

Yahoo's online job division, HotJobs, plans to announce today that it has taken the bold but controversial step of finding more job listings for its users by copying them off the Web sites of employers.

This new service first got attention last week, with a smattering of mixed reviews.

Joel Cheeseman says, "The job board model as we know it today doesn't work." Dave McClure, Director of Marketing at SimplyHired, also likes the direction of the new Yahoo!Hotjobs offering, but in the comments to Joel's post, he disagrees that this is the death knell for the big Job Board business, "I don't believe that Monster or CareerBuilder are going away anytime soon."

My own boss, Marc Cenedella (president of TheLadders.com -- the definitive source for executive jobs) weighed in with a couple posts:

-> "It is all well-meaning, but mostly misses the mark. This is not the death of job search engines, but is the death of HotJobs business if taken to its logical conclusion."

-> "Isn't it colossally difficult to get people to pay for the exact same something you're now giving them for free?"

-> "I feel bad for the HotJobs salesforce because it won't take long for recruiters to wonder 'why the heck am I paying for listings when I can them for free?'"

And be sure to check the comments section on this post from John Battelle's SearchBlog. With posts from Cheeseman, Cenedella, McClure and Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com), it's a can't miss who's-who of job search gurus. The key comment there is from McClure, "great search is about RELEVANCE."

Overall, I'm not quite sure I like the new HotJobs offering. The relevance is lacking (thousands of paid listings appear before more relevant web results in many cases), and the threat to the core business must have the sales folks squirming in their seats. Tough to run a business if the heart and soul of the company isn't behind it.

Has anyone heard from the HJ sales force? How are they taking the news? Are any of the stars even there anymore, or have they read the writing on the wall?