Monday, February 8, 2010

Monster takes a bite

Monster and Careerbuilder have dominated the Job Board market for years. Dice has been a niche player and HotJobs has always been a smaller player. After Yahoo's acquisition, HotJobs has been considered an insignificant player. As a large buyer of all the Major Job boards for over a decade, I can personally attest to the fact that HotJobs was in no way a threat to Monster. If HotJobs was a threat at all, it was a threat to Yahoo's reputation.
The functionality and reach of HotJobs has not kept up with it's competitors. I found it interesting that Monster would buy HotJobs with unemployment hovering near 10%. Michael Dell once said that he likes to buy his competitors once customer at a time. Monster has been doing just that, they have been taking market share from HotJobs for years.
Monster would have been better served buying Indeed.com or LinkedIn, they would have added value and diversity to their portfolio. The purchase of HotJobs makes seems to make little sense in terms financially and in terms of market share unless Monster was trying to mask its bleak future earnings potential, thanks in part to Indeed and LinkedIn.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Business Development Manager

Business Development Manager: "I am currently looking for a Business Development Manager in Philadelphia, PA. Let me know if this is a good fit for you, or let me know if you have a friend who is interested."

Friday, January 1, 2010

10 Job Hunting Tips for Recent College Graduates

You're a recent college graduate, you're eager, you're hungry, but you're unemployed. Now what?

1.Make sure your resume is posted, or refreshed, on the to major job boards(Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs), school job boards, and association sites.
2. Make sure relevant key words, including courses are on your resume in the format that they would be searched. Employers use search tools to find candidates. If you don't have the keywords if the exact way they are searched your resume may not come up in the desired order.
3.Clean up your Facebook profile. There are tools like Xobni that allow employers to quickly view your Facebook profile. If you wouldn't like a perspective employer to see your spring break pictures or your Halloween costume, make those pictures private, or remove them completely.
4. Get on Facebook for adults: Linkedin.com. Create your professional profile and connect to as many friends and associates as possible.
5. Network, Network, Network. Getting your first job on your own is harder than ever. It's better to ask your parents and relatives for help finding a job, than to ask them for helping in paying your student loan.
6. Leverage. Use job board aggregators such as Indeed.com and create search agents on the job boards so you will be alerted immediately when a new job comes up.
7. Don't spend all day searching the internet, there is no end. Allocate a certain amount of time per week (8 hours max) to searching the internet. Spend time on to other tasks such as networking, job fairs and alumni events. Searching all day, everyday, wont create any new jobs for you.
8. Consider taking other courses or getting a higher degree. Filling in the gaps in your skill set will help make you more marketable.
9. Set reasonable expectations. Disappointment is a product of expectation, set reasonable expectations and expect that it will take longer than it has for graduates of previous years.
10. Be optimistic. Having a positive outlook not only relays well in an interview it keeps you energized and focused in your search.

Fred Dimyan
is co-founder/CEO of YourLeap, Inc. Prior to YourLeap, Fred spent 17 years refining his skills and philosophy in technology staffing with several national companies. Fred has led staffing projects for several leading IT consulting firms, including Hall Kinion where he was Director of Recruiting. Fred also led recruiting projects at some of the most prominent employers in the nation, including Prudential Insurance, PepsiCo, and was a senior consultant at Gartner. Fred also served as a staffing advisor for Dice.com, the leading Information Technology job board.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Stock surge, higher than expected GDP, guess what's next?

The recent surge in the stock market has been a phenomenal opportunity to invest. Those that had the foresight and the fortitude to get in when the market seemed darkest have been well rewarded. The employment market is a lagging indicator, but at some point will turn. Companies that invest in acquiring talent early will also be the best rewarded. Many companies are already taking advantage to the best opportunity in a lifetime to get top talent in a less competitive environment.
Like a friend who lends a hand when you're down, candidates will likely show more loyalty to companies that hires them when the market is down, that one that hires when the market is more competitive. Not only do companies gain access to a deeper pool, but companies are also able to negotiate more competitive salaries when the market is cooler. This further compounds the advantage for those who act first.
The stock market has already surged, the economy grew at a faster than expected 3.5% in the most recent quarter, prompting the fed to declare the recession over. Employment, a lagging indicator, is soon to follow. Companies that act quickly have a window of opportunity to get ahead of this curve.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Recruiting Opportunity Cost

"Measure with a Micrometer, Mark with Chalk, Cut with an Axe"

Your company has made the difficult and possible risky decision of hiring. If you hire poorly, you're in deep water. If you hire a top performer, you're golden. There are few things more valuable to a business than finding top performers. This market offers the best opportunity most companies have to recruit top talent, EVER. Most companies will forgo this opportunity because their recruiting budgets are under a micrometer. They have to carefully chalk around where they will allocate their recruiting budget. What happens when the candidate pool comes up short? The cost of axing a bad hire, according to a recent ADP survey, is over $50,000.

Posting on one job board alone is often sufficient to get a pool of candidates. Sufficient does not cut it in this market. Companies can save money and further their business by maximizing their reach to candidates and hiring the very best person they can. To expand their reach, they need access to all the the major job boards, and have the time to filter through the massive amount of resumes they will receive. Fortunately there is a better solution, YourLeap.com gives its clients a cost and time effective way to access to all major job boards as well as over 300 niche job boards and give you access to over 150 million candidates.

YourLeap.com give you a cost effective option to take advantage of this rare, and possibly fleeting, opportunity to reach out to the most expansive candidate pool in recent history.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Candidate Spam

The cost of sending a resume used to be the cost paper, an envelope and a stamp. Then it went down to paper and a fax. The cost of sending a resume is now nearly free. Less qualified candidates are now able to quickly and cheaply spam their resumes - getting in the way of more qualified candidates who are trying to catch the attention of hiring managers.
Making it costly to send a resume dramatically cuts down on resume spam. Testing is one of many solutions YourLeap had implemented to help companies find the best possible talent available. They have partnered with Kenexa to use of 300 assessments to test candidates. Testing helps two fold: it assess a candidates skills while helping to filter candidates.
Those who have posted an ad on a major job board can attest to fact that the vast majority of responses to being completely unqualified. Candidates frequently send their resumes to jobs they are completely unqualified for, but since their is no cost to applying, why not play candidate lotto, the tickets are free.
By filtering out candidates that aren't serious enough to commit time to test, as well as those that test poorly, YourLeap can spend more time further qualifying those candidates that can do the job. YourLeap clients not only get maximum exposure to the best talent pool in decades, but they can now spend more time with the best qualified candidates.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

3 Tips Before You Make an Offer

Rule 1: Get excited about your position.
Before you sell a candidate on a position, sell yourself on it. A candidate will never be more enthusiastic about the position than you are. Spend some time finding out what the positives are in the position and the type of candidate that would match best for it.

Rule 2: Make sure you have a good match.
If you're working too hard to close a candidate then take a step back and ask if this is a good match.
If you feel it's not a good match, spend your time working to find a better one.
If you feel it is a good match, work to express this to the candidate.
If you're not sure if it's a good match, you haven't qualified the candidate or position well enough, work to re-qualify.

Rule 3: Pre-Close a candidate. There should be open, direct communication before an offer is presented. You should have a clear idea of what the candidate is willing to accept. Example: According to our previous conversations, if we were able to get you an offer at the responsibilities, title and compensation we discussed are you ready to accept?
If yes, you've done your job.
If no, get things nailed down before you go any further. Candidates should have a paper offer letter after they verbally accept and before they give notice to their current employer, they may also want to clarify terms of employment/benefits. There are 2 other reasons candidates may ask for written offer letters:
1)They ask for the offer letter to buy time while shopping around for other offers.
2)They are using the offer letter as leverage to get a raise from their current employer.
If you feel a candidate is asking for one of the less savory reasons, then you should hold off until the candidate is ready. A job offer is active, and can not be made to another candidate, until a candidate accepts, declines, or it expires. Putting an offer out with little or no guarantee of acceptance can severely impact your time to fill the vacancy.

Fred Dimyan
Fred@YourLeap.com

Thursday, August 7, 2008

RPO: Recruitment Puzzle Outsourcing?

Hype: When it comes to sourcing candidates, RPO's often tell you how complicated and puzzling it is to find the right candidates, and then they tell you how they can offer you the best solution. They over complicate a simple problem, and then they help you solve it. RPO's promise you the best tools and usually claim they are proprietary to just them.

Reality: The most powerful sourcing tool is universally accessible. The Internet is the most powerful, transforming tool recruiting has ever experienced. There are over 100 million resumes on the Internet and that doesn't factor the even larger amount of candidates who use the Internet for their job search but don't post their resumes. Most companies don't realize the true power of the Internet because there are simply too many resources and too many choices. Companies have to balance the job boards with the time they have to navigate through them. Ideally a company should load both sides of the scale, but those with limited recruiting budgets are constrained.

Organizations who don't have all the pieces or enough time to put the pieces together, look to outsource to companies who already have the resources in place. Access to resumes and postings on the Internet is a commodity. Companies should look for maximize exposure to this commodity, while minimizing their cost. Selecting and managing an RPO, with all the cost and risk involved, often turns out to be a more expensive, more layered way to access that commodity. RPO clients are recognizing this, in fact two of the largest RPO's, Hudson and Spherion have reported decreased revenues in their most recent earnings and acknowledged that some of their clients are taking recruiting back in house.

What companies really need is a time and cost effective way to maximize their access to all the resumes on the Internet without giving up control of the process or adding risk. Given the proper pieces and the proper time, most recruiting departments can put the puzzle together themselves.

YourLeap, based in Stamford, CT has a unique approach to RPO. YourLeap gives you whats most valuable to you without all the fluff. They don't claim to be more valuable than the job boards, they feel that if boards were used effectively, many companies wouldn't need to outsource any of the recruiting process. YourLeap industry experts post your position and search daily on all the major boards and hundreds of niche boards. The results are easy to access by logging in to YourLeap.com and viewing the pre-sorted responses from all the major job boards, as well as the hundreds of niche boards they post to. YourLeap provides this to you in an easily scalable and cost effective way.