Seek Feeding The Hippo

First it was Linkme, see article here, now it’s Hippo. Hippo is now advertising, see job ad here, for sales staff…on Seek (and CareerOne). I say, back yourself, Hippo. Put your ads. on your own board. Jeez, Louise.

Network Your Way Through Christmas

For the jobseeker and employers, Christmas is a quiet time. Thoughts of changes and restructures (and all those jazzy keywords that mean positions are available) are put on hold until post-festivities. job boards continue to exhibit their wares, of course, but activity tends to slow a little.

Sites like Hoojano and 2vouch will help provide more choice of 24/7 access for the recruitment industry into the future. In the meanwhile, however, there is always LinkMe.

Here’s my suggestion: subscribe to LinkMe over the break. While it is true that movement in the job market is put on ice for a bit, the new year brings with it a bunch of changes to workplaces that recruiters and jobseekers can take advantage of.  So now, more than usual, is the time for networking.  And the opportunities won’t arise from the mitigated job board activity. They’ll come from more passive means like networking sites.

Space Farming?

First LinkMe tested the waters by advertising their internal vacancies on Seek. These ads were swiftly removed by the latter.

Now this job listing on MyCareer (one of forty-four).

What’s interesting about this listing is that - Apply Now - the company placing this job on MyCareer on behalf of their client is a job board also.  See about us>

The official line is that job boards don’t allow other job boards to advertise on them. Why would a company facilitate the operation of its competitor?  Probably more to the point, however, why would Apply Now want to support its competition by giving it business?

Here’s an even stickier point.  While the principles of certain terms of business within the realm of the internet have yet to be precisely defined, it’s arguable that this sort of corporate behavior could be catagorised as Space Farming.

Fairfax has a clear policy on this subject.

* Third Party Advertising: Fairfax will not, under any circumstances, accept third-party advertising (also known as “space farming”) in any advertisement, including inserts, tip-ons, or other forms of separate publications inserted into or attached for distribution into the publication

Is Fairfax permitting this sort of on-selling of its advertising space? (Apply Now rates here)

The ‘Apply Now’ button links directly out to Apply Now’s external application form. Surely an employee at MyCareer had to notice something was smelly when they set this external apply link up??

Or with the cost cutting going on at Fairfax they might be grabbing any advertising dollars that come along…

Linkme New Home Page

The team at LinkMe have been busy little bees. They have given the home page a face lift.

There is no doubt that the message to users is simple. LinkMe is not a job board - upload your resume and let employers/recruiters find you.

Although the job search feature is not easily visible on the new home page it is there and has had some attention by the tech team. It even passed my “Account Manager” keyword test.

All up, this simple approach works well here.

Seek Delivers

There’s good money still to be had in the traditional job board model. If you are Seek. They finished the financial year with total sales up 34% to $210.2 million. Nice.

Not hard to see why. Even their competitors are advertising with them…

Spread the Word about LinkMe and Get Rewarded!

LinkMe is offering $500 to folks who set up an interview with an employer who has a role in offing. (See details here). This is one of those things that, on the outset, appears reasonable.

“Great! ” reads the well-connected individual who is always open to new and exciting business ventures (and perhaps sells a little Amway on the side), “here’s a unique opportunity to make a quick buck.”

Here’s where I challenge you to look a little deeper; to engage your understanding of human behaviour, Australian culture - all that. Well-connected individual has a chat with Human Resources Manager (or whoever is in charge of finding employees within their company). Part way through the chat comes what is known in the sales industry as “The Permission”. It goes something like this:

“May I pass your details onto LinkMe so that they can contact you regarding this position. They may be able to connect you with passive candidates who you would otherwise not be able to find.”

Human resources Manager suspected that the well-connected individual smelled slightly of Amway - but now they are certain that what was perhaps a lingering aroma is a fully-qualified stench. The meeting is called to an abrupt halt with promises that the Human Resources Manager will “get back to” the well-connected individual.

Get the picture?

Figure A: Well-Connected Individual

Directing Traffic

Statistics are king in businesses such as online job boards, where success or failure is measured by the amount of traffic to a site.However, there are two methods of collecting data used by the online recruitment industry in Australia.

The industry standard is the panel-based methodology used by Nielson/NetRatings. This tracks data from a panel of about 400 consumers. They report the stats to the market on a monthly basis. As data relies on subscription at a fee, several of the smaller job boards, such as JobX and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs do not participate in this form of data collection.

Alternatively, Hitwise Australia collects data directly from ISP networks. Stats from Hitwise are updated on an hourly basis. The data from this method is therefore more raw and “real-time”. It gives the stats-geeks a chance to analyse the comings and goings of consumers, peak times for views etc, providing an excellent opportunity to better understand consumer practices. Hitwise data is not reliant on individual job board subscription, as is the case with the NetRatings data. However, this data excludes any information from the Telstra ISP networks.

First up, let’s all agree on this: before any one method can be considered the industry standard, it should include data from all possible sources. Therefore, both methods currently in use are deficient in this regard. Hitwise, for its exclusion of Telstra data, and NetRatings for its exclusion of minor job board data.

Arguably, the effect on the data purity of these two deficiencies differs. The NetRatings data gives us no indication whatever of the popularity of the minor sites. It is merely indicative of the popularity of the three main players, Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer. However, the Hitwise data, while excluding a whack of info from the Telstra ISP, allows us a snapshot of where all the industry competitors sit in popularity. It would be difficult to contend that a greater portion of consumers of any one site would be more likely to be Telstra ISP customers. Therefore, as the exclusion affects both the big and smaller players, while it alters quantity of data, it probably does not alter the quality of it.Whatever method of data collection one considers, if we have a look at the figures for January, Seek is the undisputed market leader.CareerOne have seen a better- than- average traffic rise than their close competitors MyCareer and have assumed the number two position. If this was due to spending more dollars on advertising then MyCareer can quickly buy back the number two spot in February.

However, when we consider the popularity of Linkme for the month, there is a conflict between the two data. Linkme have dropped off the NetRatings list with a 97% decline. However HitWise shows a rise in their traffic and rankings. This discrepency may be due to the launch of the new site in January. NetRatings is possibly still tracking the old one and Linkme have moved on.Admittedly, there are several other factors to be considered in the question of success and failure of the job boards. These include: number of c.v.’s on their databases, how many job alert emails go out each day and how good are the quality of applications. Volume isn’t always better.

However when looking at popularity alone, based on the above, we need to challenge the idea that NetRatings is the industry standard of popularity rating for the recruitment industry. But, even if we all concur that a new metric is required for the measure of popularity, will we ever be able to agree on how that measure should be derived?