If there was any doubt that commercial reasons were behind the move, it’s gone now. Both emails end by proposing that the companies join LinkedIn’s “Partner Program for enterprise products.” A representative for LinkedIn has confirmed that the companies would pay for this access.

While BranchOut and BeKnown got all the attention, LinkedIn also cut off access to at least four other companies. Startup mixtent and resume parsing company Daxtra are two more companies that serve recruiters that were affected. As of this morning, the import function that is the core of mixtent’s service appears to be completely broken.

Unlike mixtent, Monster seems unmoved. A spokesperson said that “LinkedIn is actually the smallest source of BeKnown network growth compared with other sources.” Similarly, a BranchOut spokesperson said that “changes to the LinkedIn API have little impact on the BranchOut experience, as it was only being used by a small fraction of our users.”

A LinkedIn representative said that they had been in contact with Monster and BranchOut since the emails, but representatives for both companies denied that they were engaged in any discussions with LinkedIn regarding restoring API access.

The full emails are below, but here’s the rest of what I found notable:

• I wrote that LinkedIn had cut off access to the API because the companies were competitive, which is prohibited by LinkedIn’s API Terms of Use. Competition still underlies this decision, but the specific trespass that LinkedIn cites is that both BranchOut and Monster intend to charge “fees for access to LinkedIn’s Content,” which is also not kosher under the TOU.
• The move appears to be preemptive, since BranchOut does not charge for access to user data at this point in time.
• Unlike BranchOut, Monster is already very much in the business of charging for access to data. However, the LinkedIn move seems preemptive there as well, since the BeKnown database is currently separate from the main Monster database. The company has acknowledged plans to merge them in the future.
• LinkedIn claims that Monster is also in violation of the TOU for sending emails via the API to promote BeKnown.

The emails were sent by Adam Trachtenberg, the director of LinkedIn’s Developer Network, to his counterparts at Monster and BranchOut.

This is the complete email from LinkedIn to Monster:

From: Adam Trachtenberg
Date: July 1, 2011 12:29:16 PM CDT
Subject: Important information about BeKnown’s LinkedIn Developer Program account

Dear Mark,

LinkedIn’s Developer Platform Program helps partner websites build the professional web with LinkedIn.  Specifically, LinkedIn’s People API allows our partners to add professional identity to their sites with LinkedIn member profile and connection data to create a richer professional web experience for our members.  LinkedIn’s Messaging API allows our partners to use LinkedIn’s Inbox to make their applications a social communications hub by letting their customers send invitations to connect on LinkedIn and messages to existing connections.

We have become aware of your recently launched BeKnown application on Facebook.  Your use of the LinkedIn APIs in connection with this product violates LinkedIn’s API Terms of Use and Platform Guidelines by, at a minimum, using the APIs to send messages to promote BeKnown.  Also, we have concerns that LinkedIn Content imported into BeKnown will be used in connection with your enterprise sourcing products, and, in effect, you will be charging fees for access to LinkedIn Content.  As a result, we have disabled the BeKnown application’s access to the LinkedIn’s APIs.

We have a Partner Program for enterprise products and, if your messaging violations are corrected, are open to discussing with you whether BeKnown offerings are a fit.  If you are interested, please contact Scott Roberts, our Senior Director, Business Development, at sroberts@linkedin.com.

Regards,

Adam Trachtenberg
Director of Developer Network

And this is the full email from LinkedIn to BranchOut:

From: Adam Trachtenberg
Date: July 1, 2011 12:29:07 PM CDT
Subject: Important information about BranchOut’s LinkedIn Developer Program account

Dear Nathan,

LinkedIn’s Developer Platform Program helps partner websites build the professional web with LinkedIn.  Specifically, LinkedIn’s People API allows our partners to add professional identity to their sites with LinkedIn member profile and connection data to create a richer professional web experience for our members.

We recently became aware of BranchOut’s imminent launch of a premium enterprise recruiting search tool.  BranchOut’s use of LinkedIn’s API to support this tool violates LinkedIn’s API Terms of Use by, at a minimum, by charging fees for access to LinkedIn’s Content.  As a result, we have disabled BranchOut’s access to the LinkedIn API.

We have a Partner Program for enterprise products and are open to discussing with you whether BranchOut’s offerings are a fit.  If you are interested, please contact Scott Roberts, our Senior Director, Business Development, at sroberts@linkedin.com.

Regards,

Adam Trachtenberg

Director of Developer Network

As we’ve reported, both services are designed to leverage Facebook’s social graph and more than 750 million users to help them find career opportunities through their friends. Until LinkedIn’s move, they had been able to use the API to give those Facebook users a shortcut in creating a resume on their own services, making them easier to set up.

As this conflict unfolds, we are going to hear a lot from each party about how they are acting in consumer’s best interests, while the other side is trampling their rights. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric though — all three companies are simply following the money and acting for their own best interests.

LinkedIn has not yet commented publicly about this situation, and its blog doesn’t even hint that anything out of the ordinary is going on. But when it does, LinkedIn will likely claim that it is protecting its users’ privacy. Who could argue with that?

But the real motivation here is something else. LinkedIn’s rapidly growing business depends entirely on its proprietary data; there’s just no way that it is going to let other companies use its own data to compete with them. In fact, the LinkedIn API’s Terms of Use, section 1.5.n., explicitly states that companies using the API agree not to “use the APIs in an Application that competes with products or services offered” by LinkedIn, something that Monster and BranchOut were surely aware of when they built their applications.

Monster’s Vice President of Product Management Matthew Mund posted Monster’s official response to the API shutdown. In it, he says:

We are disappointed by this decision. Why? It’s not good for LinkedIn users: blocking the API effectively limits LinkedIn members’ ability to import their own profile data or invite their own connections to another environment, whether BeKnown or others.

See? Monster is doing this for the poor suffering users who just want to post their data anywhere they want.

Except that Monster’s entire business is charging for access to a closed database. In the Monster Terms of Use, the company specifically prohibits anyone who would “aggregate, copy, or duplicate in any manner any of the Monster Content or information available from any Monster Site, without express written consent from Monster.” What’s good for the LinkedIn goose is clearly not good for the Monster gander.

As for BranchOut, its public position is similar to Monster’s. As the new kids on the block, it also seems happy to be getting this kind of attention, and used its response to the TechCrunch article to promote the superiority of the Facebook audience over LinkedIn’s.

This move by LinkedIn will not greatly hurt either BranchOut or Monster’s services in any big way — importing a resume was just a convenience for their users, who can still create profiles the old-fashioned way. But its a clear sign that LinkedIn recognizes that these services are taking aim squarely at its market, and that it won’t just roll over and let them do it.

Or to quote Monster VP Eric Winegardner, “game on.”

Sunday, Monster launched BeKnown, an app that lets Facebook users harness their social graph to find a new job. If this sounds familiar, its because it is exactly what BranchOut  has been offering since its public launch in January.

The growth is impressive. (BeKnown just launched Sunday, so there is no comparable chart, but right now Facebook says that there are 6,434 monthly users.)

But there’s another chart that’s also interesting — it’s the percent of those monthly BranchOut app users that have been coming back each day. And it looks like most of those new users are not sticking around for long.

BranchOut and BeKnown are both interesting offerings, but if they are going to effectively compete with LinkedIn, they are going to have to follow in LinkedIn’s footsteps and find a way to build a more lasting connection with Facebook’s users.

Except for the runaway success of soon-to-IPO LinkedIn (and arguably Indeed & SimplyHired), there have not been any huge startup success stories since the job board explosion of the late 90s. And even those successes have been more about efficiency then radical change.

There has been no lack of aspiring entrepreneurs in the recruiting space, especially in the last few years, as the startup scene has heated up. So why do we not have more success stories? More change?

Before his current incarnation as a Venture Capitalist at First Round Capital, Charlie O’Donnell spent two years as the entrepreneur behind Path 101, a startup that attempted to be a “guidance resource for your career indecision.” Today, when aspiring entrepreneurs approach Charlie for his advice on launching a startup in the recruiting space, he advises them to run, because in his words, human capital is a “bad neighborhood.” Aspiring entrepreneurs should read Charlie’s post carefully, because it presents some good reasons why they should choose greener pastures.

I’ve been observing the recruiting space for over a decade, and like Charlie, I get approached by lots of startups looking for advice. The best advice I can give — don’t make the same mistakes as the guy before you. Most startups make the same mistakes over and over again.

It’s Easy to Spot the Problems in Recruiting — but Much Harder to Fix Them

Everyone knows that recruiting is inefficient. It’s slow. It has been done in much the same way for decades. In other words, a classic target for disruption.

In fact, it’s so easy to see that hundreds of startups have tried — and failed — at most of the “obvious” ideas in the space.

Job Matching? Dozens of well-funded startups have tried. Better Applicant Tracking System? Even more. Online/Social Employee Referrals? A graveyard.

For startups in the recruiting space, it’s not enough to identify the pain points. Everyone has known most of them for decades. You need to know the exact reason why your approach will succeed where others have failed. Even more importantly, you need to be able to effectively articulate that reason to your potential customers.

Hire a Sales Force

HR is a stereotypically conservative department inside most companies, and they are now your customers. You can either spend your time trying to:

1. change the culture of an entire profession,
2. ignore it because your idea is just that powerful, or you can
3. acknowledge that the conservatism exists and treat it as just one more obstacle to overcome as you conquer the world.

There’s a strong engineering- and product-centric culture in the startup community. That’s powerful, because it creates innovative products that can become the foundations of great companies.

But in many cases it also comes with a “build it and they will come” ethos. In a market of consumers or early adopters, that may make sense. But I cannot think of a single major recruiting success story that was achieved without a very large sales force. If you can, let me know.

However many salespeople you think you’ll need, take that number and double it. Then double it again.

Immerse Yourself in the Recruiting World

As an entrepreneur, you probably have immersed yourself in startup culture. TechCrunch. Venture Capital. Pivots. Hacker News. Angels. Deadpools. Mashable. The startup ecosystem is infinitely more exciting than the HR ecosystem.

Understand that all of this is foreign to your new customers.

When you launch your product on TechCrunch, it may help you get your next round of funding. It may land you at your next hot startup.

It will not open doors to the vast majority of your potential customers.

As of the day that you found your company in the recruiting world, you need to immerse yourself in the peculiar culture of the people that are now your customers. You need to understand where they get their information, and their day-to-day challenges. Their frustrations. How their bosses evaluate their successes and failures.

But if you are serious about making your recruiting company succeed, make sure it is visible in a place where your future customers will see it. And the vast majority of your future customers are not immersed in startup culture.

Oh, and read this.

And Now for the Good News

Nobody is more aware of or more frustrated with the lack of innovation in the recruiting space then those who have made it their profession. There is a hunger among recruiters for new ideas and fresh approaches. In fact, sometimes it seems that in order to get talked about in the profession, all something needs to do is be labelled “NEW!!!”

Your challenge is in translating that hunger for the new into action. The profession has seen many companies making many promises come and go. I hope that this helps you become one that sticks around.

If the reason for the invitation sounds like PR double-speak, that’s because it is. In spite of its rapid growth, The Ladders has a real image problem in our profession — if you type “the ladders ” into Google, the first autocomplete suggestion is “the ladders scam.” The Ladders’ invitation seemed like an attempt to step beyond that and change the conversation into something more positive.

The changed conversation lasted for a whole 37 minutes, when the first caller into a HR Happy Hour online radio show being broadcast from The Ladders’ own conference room ignited the scam debate all over again. Since then, the debate has spread around the HR blogs, and it has become obvious that this criticism is a genie that will not go back into the bottle until The Ladders addresses it directly and publicly.

Here are the the big charges leveled at The Ladders, along with some thoughts on each.

Is it Ever OK to Charge Jobseekers?

The most basic accusation leveled at The Ladders is aimed at the heart of its business model. The company charges job-seekers $35 for a month of service — or less for longer subscriptions. This rubs many people the wrong way, and I understand why — it just feels wrong to profit from the misery of people’s job search, especially when record numbers of people are jobless. It feels much more acceptable to charge big corporations than the little guys desperately seeking employment.

But is that all there is to it? If you believe that The Ladders is providing a worthwhile service, then it should have the right to charge for that service. And those who do not believe it to be worthwhile should have the right to tell them to go to hell. It’s a decision that every single one of makes every day with hundreds of products and services.

In the end, this ends up being a matter of degree, much like the financial companies that provide loans and credit in poor communities. Are they taking advantage of poor people with usurious rates? Or are they providing a valuable service by providing credit to people who would be unable to buy homes or start businesses without them? There’s a line in there somewhere that should not be crossed, but it is a blurry line at best.

In my opinion, $35 is not an exorbitant amount to charge for a product that is delivering value, which brings me to the second accusation leveled at The Ladders:

Is The Ladders’ Product Delivering Value for Paying Jobseekers?

There are a lot of people out there with a beef about the actual product at The Ladders, and the sheer volume of complainers gives them authenticity.

Mark Stelzner, one of the attendees at The Ladders’ event, writes:

In the interest of gathering some market intel prior to attendance, I put out an informal request to my JobAngels network to gauge their impression of TheLadders.

The results were shocking to me but may not be to others. I received over 800 messages in less than two weeks…

… and not one of them was positive.

I can think of a lot of reasons why that would be — not the least of which is that instinctive reaction to think that charging jobseekers is shady — but that is pretty damning. I wonder how many of those complainers had actually tried using The Ladders? (Stelzner believes that most had tried the paid service.)

The main complaint that I hear about The Ladders’ paid services is that many of the jobs on the service are gathered by a spider from other websites, often without their knowledge. The vast majority are not unique to the site, and some are not truly the 100k+ jobs that the site advertises.

Exclusivity

Employers don’t give “exclusives” to websites. It’s just not the way this game is played, aside from a few high-end executive search firms. I don’t see The Ladders promising exclusive jobs in its marketing, and when you search on their site it states explicitly that they mark all exclusives. In my searches, I did not see any marked jobs — they neither claim to, nor do they have many exclusive positions.

To the degree that The Ladders expertly curates the jobs on its site (more on this in a moment), it is providing a valuable service so people do not waste their time with positions that are not at a high enough level.

Feel that $35/month entitles job-seekers to exclusive job listings that non-subscribers don’t get? Good luck finding that anywhere.

Sub-100k Jobs

I’ve heard multiple stories about sub-$100k jobs on The Ladders, and for a service whose entire raison d’être is the $100k+ market, that’s a big problem. As I stated above, a major value of The Ladders service is the curation of the jobs on its site. It undermines their brand every time someone applies for a position and finds that it pays less than advertised.

Imperfect? Highly. A scam? Doesn’t seem like it. In Nick Corcodilos’ transcript of a conversation between a Ladders customer service rep and an angry customer, the rep says:

First of all, we make no claims that all of our jobs are submitted directly to us. Many of the positions on our site are linked directly to from external job boards. Since we don’t have a direct way of knowing the pay range of each of these positions, we make an estimate based on a rigid set of criteria.

In this case, I see that the position requires a Bachelor’s degree and five years of experience. This is well within the experience range of a Marketing Manager who expects to make $100k per year.

Clearly that isn’t the case with this position and I thank you for letting me know about it as I am definitely going to remove it from the site immediately.

People running a scam would not remove the job post.

I spoke with The Ladders Vice President of Corporate Communications Lou Casale today, and he pointed out that the company has two full time employees dedicated to vetting the jobs that they post on the site. Still, I’d like to see The Ladders make changes to address this specific criticism more forcefully, because the presence of sub $100k jobs on its site is a major flaw in its model, and it clashes with what its core services purport to be.

Can 200,000 Customers Be Wrong?

Of course they can. But people vote with their dollars, so this question goes to the heart of the controversy over The Ladders.

The company has built an $80 million business mostly from jobseekers paying $35 a month. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, there are between 200,000 and 300,000 job-seekers paying for the service at any given point in time. That’s a lot of people. As an experiment, I created a paid account at theladders.com and then cancelled the service. The cancellation process was easy and painless, which is not the experience I would expect from a service trying to lock in unhappy customers.

When people have a beef, they can be counted on to complain loudly. When people are satisfied, they tend to … well, be satisfied. The Ladders is a subscription business, and unsatisfied customers do not renew subscriptions. From the numbers, job-seekers appear to be coming back for more.

Full Disclosure: The Ladders did not pay my T&E for attending their event. Like many companies in the recruiting industry, they periodically advertise on ERE.net and at our events.

Today is the final day of ICANN’s open comment period before they consider Employ Media’s .jobs charter amendment. It’s our last chance to be heard.

I’ve emailed ICANN the following letter urging that they reject the proposed amendment, and it is posted alongside hundreds of other comments in the ICANN Archives. Join me in by writing to ICANN today and letting them know what you think.

July 15, 2010

Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman
Members of the Board of Directors
International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601

Dear Chairman Dengate Thrush and Members of the Board,

I am the CEO of ERE Media, Inc., a trade publisher that serves HR and recruiting professionals. My organization has been observing the evolution of the .jobs TLD since its inception, and we have been reporting extensively on the proposed amendment at our web site, http://www.ere.net/.

ERE Media, Inc. would not be directly and adversely affected by this request except in a tangential way, since both HR professionals and job boards are our customers. I write this letter not to advance my own interests or those of my organization, but as a concerned citizen of the Internet.

As I read the letters posted as part of the public comment period, I am struck by how political the process has become, and how transparently the vast majority of the letters on both sides were driven by their respective trade associations.

Lost in this politicization of the .jobs TLD are fundamental problems with the proposed amendment:

1. The proposed amendment fundamentally changes Employ Media from a domain order processor to a domain kingmaker.
   
   The discretionary powers that the proposed amendment would give to Employ Media over the use of the .jobs domains are shockingly broad. They turn the company from a domain name order processor into a domain kingmaker, who can pick and choose who develops .jobs domain names entirely at their own discretion. To my knowledge, this would be a unique role for a registrar, and it is a troubling precedent for public policy to have one organization able to unilaterally decide who gets to utilize broad swaths of domains in a TLD.
2. The proposed amendment is driven by the financial concerns of the registrar, not concern for HR professionals.
   
   Financially speaking, the .jobs TLD has been a failure. Employ Media sold only around 15,000 domains since 2005, and because of the disappointing sales they are pushing for more creative ways to promote and sell .jobs domains. This is what is driving the proposed amendment, not concern for the profession of HR.

   Employ Media has never disclosed the details of its financial relationship with DirectEmployers, despite repeated inquiries. The SHRM PDP Council minutes of April 9, 2010 state that the council intended to ask Employ Media about the financial impact of the proposed amendment on the company, but never got the opportunity to even ask the question.

3. The registrar has already violated the .jobs charter.
   
   Employ Media and DirectEmployers partnered to launch the first of their geographic and occupationally focused websites using the .jobs domain in October 2009. At the time, these sites were a direct violation of the spirit of the existing .jobs charter, which states “.jobs domain registrations are limited to the legal name of an employer and/or a name or abbreviation by which the employer is commonly known.” It was not until March 22, 2010 that Employ Media proposed an amendment to the charter that would allow it to do what it had already attempted.
4. SHRM has failed in its oversight responsibilities as the sponsor of the .jobs TLD.
   
   I am a longtime member of SHRM, and believe that they are well-intentioned and a positive force for the HR profession. However, they have clearly failed in their oversight responsibilities. The first PDP Council was managed by Bill Warren, the Founder of DirectEmployers, and the second included Rhonda Stickley, the Association’s President, people with obvious motivation to see the amendment pass. Gary Rubin, the SHRM executive who managed the second PDP Council, was completely unaware of the first public comment period that had been publicized on Policy.jobs until we questioned him about its details, and the second attempt at a “public” comment period was conducted by SHRM in such a way that all of the responses were secret.

   Further, SHRM receives a fixed annual payment of an undisclosed amount from Employ Media for its role as the sponsor of the .jobs TLD, and Employ Media also advertises heavily in SHRM publications. There is a very strong argument to be made here that this has resulted in a situation of “regulatory capture,” where the organization that is supposed to be policing behavior by the registrar, is in fact financially tied to its success.

It is my belief that this amendment is not in the best interests of HR professionals, and it is not in the best interests of users of the Internet. The only ones who benefit here are Employ Media, DirectEmployers, and SHRM. I urge ICANN to not only reject the this amendment, but to reconsider the governance structure of the .jobs TLD.

Sincerely,

David Manaster
CEO
ERE Media, Inc.
http://www.ere.net/

On July 13th, ERE Recruiter Meetups are going to be simultaneously run in cities around the U.S. It’s going to be a great opportunity for recruiters to meet and network with other recruiters in their area.

The Meetups are going to be locally run and organized by the people attending them — crowdsourcing at its best.

This means that we need your help, and here’s how you can pitch in:

• Visit the ERE Recruiter Meetup page and sign up for a Meetup near you. If you don’t see one in your area, start one up!
• If you know a great location (bar, restaurant, office) where your group can meet, add it to the Meetup.
• Help us get the word out! We don’t need a huge group in each city to get together, have a good time, and make great connections. It can be as few as half a dozen, but the more the merrier, so tell all the recruiters in your area about the Meetup!

…And of course, join us!

In this post, I will attempt to explain the facts of the situation and then explain why I think that if SHRM approves this amendment it will be doing a disservice to the HR community.

But first a little history.

SHRM & Employ Media’s Roles

In 2004, SHRM and Employ Media submitted an application to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to sponsor and manage a new top level domain (TLD) called .jobs. In 2005, this application was approved and on May 5 the .jobs charter was published. As the sponsor of the TLD, SHRM’s responsibility was to set policy and establish registration requirements, while Employ Media took on the more traditional business responsibilities of managing and marketing the new domains names.

The terms of the contract between SHRM and Employ Media are undisclosed.  However, we do know that SHRM receives a flat fee from Employ Media for its role in sponsoring the .jobs TLD, and also that in their role as sponsor, SHRM is contractually obligated to act independently of Employ Media and in the interests of the sponsored TLD community.

A section of the .jobs charter states that:

.jobs domain registrations are limited to the legal name of an employer and/or a name or abbreviation by which the employer is commonly known. All prospective registrants must submit a Qualification Document (generally speaking, proof of status as an employer organization, such as, e.g., in the U.S., a Form 941) which will be reviewed by Employ Media for approval prior to allowing registration. This will significantly minimize fraudulent entities from obtaining a registration. This will also minimize registration of a name by an entity which does not have such a legal name or is not commonly known by such a name. This will minimize cybersquatters and/or domain prospectors. Furthermore, abusive “overreaching” applications (i.e., requesting domains which do not reflect the name of the entity (legal or commonly known)) will be rejected under this practice.

This puts SHRM in an uncomfortable role — it is effectively responsible for enforcing the rules that dictate to whom their own customer is able to sell its product. It is also the only one able to change those rules, which is done by amending the original charter.

The Amendment

So far, .jobs has not made much of a splash — since 2005, only 15,000 have been bought by employers, and the .jobs TLD is widely considered to be a disappointment. In October 2009, Employ Media partnered with DirectEmployers to launch the first of a series of geographic and occupationally focused websites using the .jobs domains, such as Atlanta.jobs and Boston.jobs. Selling these domains is clearly not allowed by the section of the .jobs charter that I quoted above, so Employ didn’t sell them. Instead, it retained the ownership themselves, and simply redirected the domains to DirectEmployers, who provided content to each of the domains. The domains were not “sold,” but Employ Media had still found a way to use them.

When ICANN became aware of this partnership, it sent a letter to SHRM asking that a Policy Development Process (PDP) Council be appointed to consider an amendment by Employ Media to either officially sanction such an arrangement or to turn it down. The proposed amendment was posted to a website bearing both the SHRM and .jobs logos, and the web site announces a public comment period beginning on March 23rd and ending tomorrow, Friday, April 9, 2010. There appears to have been little attempt to notify the public that this public comment period had begun, or indeed that it was almost over, beyond a link buried deep on SHRM’s Copyrights & Permissions page. John’s article yesterday was the first time that the general public heard that the proposed amendment existed.

And that’s the simple version. Yeah, I know.

But I’m not writing this post to give you a history lesson. I’m writing it to explain why the .jobs amendment is a bad idea and why SHRM needs to turn it down.

There are several reasons.

Employ Media’s Role

In the original charter, Employ Media was granted the rights to provide a simple “dumb” utility. A company would submit a claim to a TLD, prove that it owned the trademark, pay them a fee, and they sold them that particular .jobs domain name. This is the same way that it works with any other top level domain — the same way that your company registered its .com domain. For any domain name, it’s simple. First come, first served.

The proposed amendment fundamentally changes Employ Media’s role in this process from a mere marketer of domain registrations to the owner of the domain, deciding at its sole discretion who gets to rent the choicest domain names.

As an example, consider this: Who might want the domain name siliconvalley.jobs? Google? Facebook? Cisco? Monster? Indeed? There are thousands of companies that would pay handsomely for it. This amendment would allow Employ Media to choose who could use the domain. It might even let it auction it to the highest bidder. That could be very lucrative, but it is an inappropriate role for the manager of a TLD to reserve a portfolio of domains for itself and then handpick who gets to use them.

Employ Media is asking for permission retroactively here. In effect, its proposed amendment is asking for permission to do what it already did in their beta. Now it is asking us to trust that it will responsibly manage unilateral powers to assign domain names?

In HR’s Best Interest?

The .jobs charter, published in 2005, mandates the way in which SHRM and Employ Media must manage the .jobs top level domain. The charter explicitly calls the domain types now under consideration “inappropriate”.

A reserved list of names will be employed to prevent inappropriate name registrations. Certain groups of domains will be reserved, such as, e.g., a list of occupational identifiers (e.g., the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics list of SOC occupations), industry identifiers (e.g., healthcare.jobs) and certain geographic identifiers (e.g., northeasternohio.jobs).

The .jobs Issue Report to the .jobs PDP Council that is now under consideration by SHRM summarizes the amendment. It states:

Employ Media has submitted the current Proposed Amendment because it believes that Employ Media may use and register non‐“companyname” domain names in the best interests of the international human resource management community, so long as Employ Media maintains adherence to the .jobs Charter that is enforced by SHRM.

To summarize: In 2005, Employ Media believed that these domains were inappropriate. Today it proposes that it is in the best interests of the HR Community — without explaining why — that it (and it alone) has the power to register these domains. What changed?

Transparency & SHRM’s Responsibilities

Since ERE.net broke the news yesterday about this amendment yesterday, most of the backlash that has appeared on the .Jobs Discussion Board has revolved around SHRM’s incredibly poor disclosure.

The public period for comments was conducted in such a way that almost guaranteed nobody would hear about it. Let’s face it — when a company wants the public to notice something it plasters it on the front page of its website. It certainly doesn’t bury a link on its Copyrights & Permissions page.

Gary Rubin, SHRM’s Chief Publishing, E-Media and Business Development Officer, told ERE.net that SHRM was entirely unaware that there was a public comment period in progress. At best, this means that SHRM needs to be more mindful of its responsibilities under the .jobs charter. It’s pretty bad that the organization responsible for policing these policies is asleep at the switch. And it’s clear to me that someone tried to slip a “public comment period” under the radar without letting the public know that it existed, and that’s downright shameful.

Conclusion

A lot of the uproar over the proposed changed to the .jobs TLD has focused on Direct Employers’ role in .jobs Universe and the exclusive use of the domain names that it was given by Employ Media.

I think that’s a red herring. As the sponsor of the .jobs TLD, it is SHRM’s responsibility to ensure that the TLD is managed to “serve the needs of the international human resource management community,” as the .jobs charter says. It is (in this case) contractually and (always) morally obligated to represent the interests of HR professionals, and in this case, its responsibility is to insure that every one of the professionals that it represents has an equal chance at a .jobs domain.

I have strong feelings about the way this domain has been handled to date.  If you do as well, let me hear it in the comments, whether you agree or disagree. I’m not sure if SHRM is paying attention to its own .jobs discussion board, but let them hear it there too.

That’s thanks to the generosity of our sponsor, iCIMS, who is graciously underwriting ERE.net this week. We’ve wrapped ERE.net in their brand — woven their ads and colors into our navigation, look and feel.

Why are we doing this?

It’s old news by now, but run-of-the-mill banner ads are getting less effective by the day. The team at ERE Media is always looking for good ideas that help our sponsors get the attention they deserve for their support, because without them we wouldn’t be able to bring you our recruiting goodness each day.  At the same time, we don’t want to interfere with or compromise your time on ERE.net with ads that interrupt your experience. The site wrap achieves both goals.

Most important of all, the high quality and independence that you expect from ERE.net will not change.

If you have feedback for us — kudos, complaints, whatever is on your mind — put them in the comments. And if you are interested in wrapping ERE.net in your brand next, email our ad sales team at sales(at)ere.net.

I’ve got a couple of new announcements about what’s happening here at ERE:

First, I’d like to welcome Lance Haun to the ERE team as our Community Director, with a mandate to reach out to the recruiting community and increase participation on ERE.net. Many of you may already know Lance. He has been an active and well-respected figure in the HR community for years, and he already has some great ideas about where to take our 50,000 member community next. Lance has a post up about how he landed the gig on his blog.

Second, I’m pleased to announce that ERE Media has acquired the Creative Excellence Awards from Landon Media.

The CEAs have been a fixture in the recruitment advertising world for decades, recognizing the best and most creative work in the field. They have a long and storied history. They were founded by the agencies themselves in an era when recruitment advertising revolved around the newspaper classified section. On a personal note, my first job in this industry was at TMP Worldwide. I remember the buzz and excitement around the CEAs every year, so I am excited at this new addition to the ERE portfolio!

Our first task as we put our stamp on the CEAs will be to make sure that they reflect that real work in recruitment communications today no longer just done in the newspapers, but across many media, and especially online.

The Creative Excellence Awards are going to be held in October at the upcoming ERE Expo 2010 Fall conference in Florida, and in the coming weeks we’ll provide more details on the CEAs and how to be considered.

2010 is looking like it’s going to be be a big year, and it’s only February!

SourceCon is unique. It brings together the best minds in the sourcing profession to focus on minute intricacies of the art like no other event in existence.

I was at the first SourceCon, and remember being impressed by the vibe. There was an excitement in the air of a community coming together face-to-face for the first time. Several people came up to me unsolicited and told me how amazing it felt to finally be in a place where there were other sourcers “just like me.”

Since the current recession began, there has been talk of the death of sourcing. I disagree, and now ERE is putting its money where its mouth is.

So what does this mean?

For sourcers, this means that SourceCon is back, plain and simple! I and the ERE team respect the grassroots nature of the Sourcing community, and as we grow the event, we will do it in a way that respects the distinct (and quirky) ethos of the community.

For Leslie, SourceCon’s Founder, this is the result of years of her hard work building SourceCon into an amazing event. I and the ERE team will do our best to run the event as she has done, and hope to have her continued involvement for a long, long time.

As for us, SourceCon represents what ERE is all about — extending deeper into the talent acquisition community with another event that helps us to educate the profession.

We’ll be announcing the dates for the next SourceCon shortly, but if you can’t wait for your SourceCon goodness, check out The Source newsletter!

I have a second email from an even more prominent HR blogger in my inbox from late July, offering “guaranteed positive posts and tweets” in return for ERE covering all or part of their travel costs.

Why do these emails bother me? They show a willingness on the part of their authors to write their “thoughts” publicly, while never disclosing that those thoughts were not genuine, but contingent on favors.

I don’t think that either blogger thought of those emails in this way, but they were, in short, proposals for payola. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. And these are not extraordinary — they are just the two of the more bold tit-for-tats I’ve received.

Workforce Online recently published a piece on transparency in the HR Blogosphere. Collectively, the HR bloggers’ reaction ranged from outrage to dismissal. Nobody likes to be called out in public.

But as someone intimately familiar with many (but not all) of the players, I’ve long been troubled my many of the same things that are brought up in the Workforce piece. And so far, I’ve seen a lot of indignation and questioning of motives about the article (Old media: scared, out of line, link-baiting.  Bloggers: Great guys, opinionated, keeping it real.) but nobody seems to be claiming that any of the points and examples of undisclosed conflicts of interest in the article were incorrect.

I think that is a disservice, because even if HR bloggers disagree with the assertion that the level of disclosure they’re currently providing about their conflicts of interest is woefully inadequate, it’s worth considering the issues raised in the article and the level of disclosure that they provide.

It’s not wrong for bloggers to make money from their hard work. But deception about the motives behind a post — even by omission — can destroy all of that in a heartbeat. (Anyone else remember the Pay Per Post scandal?)

HR bloggers: I love you. Please don’t let the Sturm und Drang over the Workforce article keep you from giving this issue a cold, sober look.

One of our goals with the new community is to reach out to the entire recruiting profession to participate in our conversation, not just those who visit the website each day. (Don’t worry — we’ll always love you best!) To that end, we’ve opened up the conversations on ERE.net in a couple of new ways.

Email

We received a lot of pushback from the community about our decision to do away with the email group discussion digests with the full text of each post in the group.  We originally did this because we were trying to cut down on the volume of emails that you receive from ERE.net, but doing away with it altogether was a mistake.

The team here has created a new email digest that I think will meet both goals. It has a personalized email with the full text of all the groups and discussions that you are following, and at the same time you’ll have fewer emails cluttering your in-box. In fact, it looks a lot like the digest that we had before we made the big change! Of course, if you prefer the new emails with just the synopsis, you can still get that.

To sign up for the new email digest, you need to click on the “manage” link at the top right of the ERE.net website (make sure you are logged in).

On your manage account page, just scroll down to the “Newsletter Subscription” section of the page, and check the box next to “ERE Discussion Digest.” After you check that box, you can choose to receive the “personalized” version (only messages from discussions you’re following or from groups you’re a member of) or the “all messages” version. Be sure to click the “change subscription settings” button when you are done!

Twitter

There are more recruiters every day who are active on both ERE.net and Twitter (and so am I), so I’m excited that we can now link those accounts and automatically let our Twitter followers know when we post to the ERE.net community!

To set this up, you must have a Twitter account! If you do, go to the ERE Community, click “Settings”, and then “Broadcast”.

Now check the box to enable the Twitter connection, save your changes, and finally click on the authorize link.

Here’s an example of how it looks – my status update on ERE about this post!

Give the new options a try, and let me know in the comments (or on Twitter!) what you think!

Our community has evolved as well, expanding to include over 50,000 recruiting professionals, and growing more every day. Today, I’m proud to announce the next step in that evolution of the ERE community — community.ere.net.

When you check out the new community site, you’ll recognize many of the same discussion groups and people that you have followed for years, but you’ll also see lots of new features.

Some of the features that I have been using the most are:

• The new activity feed. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring how to make this more visible on our home page, because it does a great job of showing just how much activity is happening in real time.
• Voting. Finding ways to separate the wheat from the chaff has always been one of the most challenging aspects of running a professional community like ERE.net, and the new voting system will let the community collectively decide which posts bubble to the top.
• Blogs. A select few have had blogs for a long time on ERE.net, but now every ERE member will be able to express themselves in their own personal space.  We will be featuring the best of the blog posts more prominently on the site.
• New discussion emails. We’re trying to cut down on the number of emails that you get from us, so we’ve consolidated our community emails into one community newsletter that will be easier to navigate and read.

Jim — who did a great job developing the site with Hunter — put together a video to introduce you to the features of the social network. Check it out, and then give the new features a try!

Jim, Hunter, & the rest of the ERE team will be spending the next couple of weeks responding to your feedback and making changes, so don’t be shy. Tell us what you think and how we can make this a better tool for you to share your ideas and connect with other recruiters!

They were debating the value of the cover letters vs. a more comprehensive personal branding effort built around social media.

So here is my take:

Charlie is right. Social media allows you to take control of your personal brand and highlight your strengths. You can show rich examples of your work. You can let people peek inside your head in a way that resumes and cover letters never have and never will.

This morning, Jessica Lee linked to Matthew Cadwallader, a senior at UMass-Amherst who is using his website and blog to showcase his obvious skills and passion for communications, A/V production and writing. Matthew’s got it going on. He could not possibly have communicated just how impressive he is with only a resume and cover letter.

Alison is right too. The vast majority of professionals are unwilling or unable to send the time and effort needed to maintain a presence as good as Matthew’s. To do it well is a job in and of itself, and if you are looking for a new job immediately, a cover letter can absolutely convey that you have spent the time to learn about the company to which you are applying. When I receive a cover letter that shows an understanding of what ERE is and the position that we are trying to fill, I definitely take note.

Long term vs. Short term & Farming vs. Hunting

To a large degree, the cover letter vs. social media debate is like discussing the merits of the hammer vs. the screwdriver. Different situations call for different tools, and often both are necessary.

The social media approach is a long-term marketing approach to career development where you make yourself professionally visible to the world. It gives you the opportunity to show off your work, drive, personal philosophy, and depth of knowledge.  More importantly, it lets you engage in conversations that would never materialize if you were not “out there.” You plant the seeds today, and over time you grow relationships that will bear fruit throughout your career. Everyone should do this, but in the real world, it will always be a minority (and Charlie, Matt, Jessica, and Alison are all examples) who do it well enough to truly stand out. Isn’t that what marketing is about?

The purpose of the cover letter, on the other hand, is to convince the reader it that you are the right person for that specific position at that specific company. You’re hunting, not farming, and the cover letter is a tool  to show that you have done your homework and have real interest. It’s transactional, which some look down on as short-sighted, but your goal is to find work ASAP, so that’s just fine.

It’s not an either/or proposition. There are so many people today who need a job now. And these people cannot afford to wait for the farming approach to bear fruit. If you are serious about managing your career you should start planting those seeds, but if you are hunting for a job today, you had also better do what you can to tailor your resume and cover letter to show your interest in the position.

Social media as a career management tool will definitely be a topic of conversation at the Social Recruiting Summit @ Google HQ. Follow @socrecruiting on Twitter for updates on the Summit as they become available!

LinkedIn is doing well in this recession.  According to Hoffman:

We’ve been profitable the last two years. Q4 was actually our highest revenue quarter ever.

Not surprisingly, recruiting is one of LinkedIn’s three primary revenue sources, along with subscription fees and advertising. In Hoffman’s words:

We have a software-as-a-service business primarily driven by recruiting. And as a surprise we are actually doing quite well at that currently. You’d think that with layoffs and everything else that that business was being hit. Currently, we are the disruptive low-cost provider of really good hiring services, and when you are hiring 50 people as opposed to 1,000 people we are still growing there…

I find that “disruptive, low-cost provider” comment to be especially telling. Many startups claims to be disruptive, but when you actually kick the tires, few truly are. If LinkedIn is growing its market share of dollars spent while just about every job board is shrinking, it sounds about right to me.

There’s a preview up at http://beta.community.ere.net/, and we’re looking for your feedback on how to make it better before we go live on the main ERE.net.

So what’s new? Here are some of the highlights:

• Easier to use. You will find it easier to post discussion messages, and you’ll be able to add links, pictures and HTML without jumping through hoops.
• Threaded Discussions. To make it easier to follow conversations in the longer threads, all the discussions are now threaded.
• Community voting. We’re testing a new voting system for determining which discussion messages are most valuable to readers.  The best content will be voted up to the top of threads by the community.
• Activity Feed. There is now a central activity feed for all activity on the ERE Network, so it will be easier to see where the action is!
  
• Blogs. Every person in the ERE Network now has a Blog! Blog posts will have more prominence within the community, and we are working on integrating the best posts into the main feed on our home page to highlight the best content created by ERE members.
• ERE Forum. We’re bringing back the ERE Forum — a single, central place to post messages where everyone can see them without joining the smaller, specialized, groups.
• Following. Everyone has their favorite contributors on the network, and we’ve made it easier for you to follow just the ERE Members that you want, so you can see their content anywhere on the Network! This will replace the notion of “friends”, which as several members pointed out does not have a lot of practical use.

Why are you still reading this? Go kick the tires over at the preview site, and don’t be afraid to post messages to test it, because messages posted on the preview site will not appear on the main ERE.net.

Let us know in the feedback thread what you would change about it before we go live – we’re listening!

I find it striking how the worst problems in employment seem to center around the local areas that support the industries that are the epicenters of this recession: the real estate bubble, automobile manufacturers, etc.

Lots of red…

“Talent Pipelines.”

“Talent Networks.”

All of these buzzwords describe the same thing — the idea of building a community of individuals whose skills you will need before there is an immediate opening for them. The idea is to strengthen the bonds between these people and the organization so that when the need arises, it’s a simple matter of picking up the phone.

In theory, of course.

In practice, I’ve seen too many software solutions aimed at creating these “communities” turn out to be little more than databases with candidate names and contact information. I’ve seen too many companies fall in love with the idea (which is a really good one), but not put in them time necessary to implement them in a way that realized the concept’s potential.

This Tuesday, I attended a NY Recruiting & HR Network Meetup and had the pleasure of hearing Linda Paul, the Director of Team Development at Meetup talk about her work.

As background, Meetup is a software company that enables group organizers to create and manage events.  It helps people organize more than 100,000 face-to-face events each month. Its site is simple to use, and with only 58 employees the company, has developed a passionate fan following.

With such a devoted base of users, it’s not a surprise that many people want to work at Meetup. In a classic example of eating its own dogfood, Linda has developed the Working@Meetup group in order to develop relationships with potential employees.

The group currently has 424 members. Each month Linda organizes a face-to-face Meetup with 25 new people from this group at the Meetup headquarters. Those attending the Meetups get the chance to talk to current employees, get wowed by their cool office space (which is just up the block from ERE’s not-quite-as-cool digs), and get a feel for the culture of the company.

Early in the program, Meetup was getting a lot of very excited and very unqualified people signing up for the events, so it adapted. The current process prequalifies people to make sure that they are local and have skills in areas that the company needs before they can join the group.

The candidate experience is a seamless interaction with the Meetup brand; they sign up via the company’s product; get to tour the office, and meet the team. The people at Meetup get the chance to evaluate a group of prospects, develop relationships with them before they are critically needed, and leave a great impression.

Meetup found a way to run their program without expensive software, and they also did not forget that there’s no replacement for good, old-fashioned human touch.

Its program is simple, but I think it’s a great example of a company that’s done things right.

I’d love to see other examples of organizations doing this well. If you know any, let me know in the comments!

This morning, Indeed released data that they are calling Industry Trends, which compare the current number of online job postings in the United States today with the same data from a year ago.  It’s no longer news that there’s fewer jobs out there, but even with that in mind, the numbers are grim.

On the job seeker side, Google searches for the keyword “jobs” had a seasonal dip in December, followed by a huge spike in the new year. At one point in January, they were up over 50% over the historical average, an indication of just how many people are now looking for work.

The graph on the bottom of the Google Trends data represents media coverage about jobs, which has been on the rise since mid-2008.

All of the data above is backward-looking — it tells us what has happened in the past. What does the future hold?

Intrade is a online market that is used to trade futures on anything from who will be the next justice to leave the Supreme Court to which continent will host the Olympics in 2016. It harnesses the wisdom of those crowds willing to put their money where their mouths are in order to collectively predict the future.

Here is the chart for the Intrade futures on whether or not the U.S. unemployment rate will be higher than 9% at the end of December 2009.

The market is now predicting a 60% chance that the unemployment rate will be over 9% by the end of the year, up from 7.6% today. At the beginning of this year, it was predicting a less than 20% chance — like the Google trends on job searches, it has spiked dramatically since.

Batten down the hatches.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better.