Since getting started in this industry over 10 years ago, I've been amazed by the never-ending stream of companies trying to build better mousetraps in the Talent Management (aka Applicant Tracking) space.

I understand why it's a tempting niche - customers routinely report that they are unhappy with their existing software and want better alternatives, but somehow the profits never seem to arrive for most.  Industry watchers have been predicting consolidation for years.

Today, Taleo (profile; site) announced that they acquired Vurv Technology(profile; site) for $128.8 million in cash & stock.  The deal combines two of the strongest players in the space, so the consolidation is finally underway - at least among the major players.

For the record, Jason Corsello called this last week.  Corsello: 1, Anonymous cowards in the comments: 0.

It's a long-term goal of mine to expose more independent recruiters to the 30 year old gem that is The Fordyce Letter - the bible of the profession.

A big part of making that happen is FordyceLetter.com.

At the end of March, Jason left the FordyceLetter.com to go spend more time with his true love.  I don't blame the guy - RecruitingBlogs.com is a great site and he is doing some very creative things with the community there.

We've seen some amazing things happening on FordyceLetter.com in the last few weeks - in particular blog posts and videos by people like Jeff Skrentny, Dave Staats, Bill Vick, and Dennis Smith.  Every one of these people has years in the recruiting trenches, is passionate about the profession, and knows recruiting inside and out.  They embody the spirit of what Paul has been writing about for years.

I feel fortunate to have them writing on the site, and the readers apparently agree - since they've begun writing traffic has been way up.

There is more to come.

If you are a recruiter that is interested in writing on FordyceLetter.com - particularly if you are someone with deep experience running a desk - drop me an email.

O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference is in San Francisco this week.  For those living in a cave for the last couple of years, there is a huge amount of excitement, confusion, and sometimes hostility over the new tools and possibilities that have arrived with these new technologies.  How useful are they today?  How useful will they be?  Which ones are the "good" ones?  Inquiring recruiters want to know.

To me, it's beyond debate that we are experiencing the biggest burst of creativity on the Internet since the bubble burst in 2000 (arguably before).

ERE is sending one of our favorite researchers, Amybeth Hale, to the conference to see what she can see and report back on the implications of Web 2.0 tools for recruiters.

How Amybeth and I connected on this is a Web 2.0 story all it's own - she's posted about it on her blog.

Update:  There seems to be a bit of confusion about Amybeth's role - she's not joining our team, she's just going to be reporting from the show as a freelancer!

I am in Nashville for the SMA Conference. I am heading down to the event in a few minutes, but I've already heard that they had to stop accepting registrations at 1,500 attendees.  SHRM is a machine!

I will try to post some thoughts from the show over the next couple of days, but in the meantime here are Chad & the Cheez sounding off about the ERE Expo.  Thanks guys!

Last week I did an interview with Bill Vick , and he just put it on his site.  Bill's a smart guy, and in the course of the interview he had a great observation about social media favoring independent recruiters vs. corporate recruiters that I intend to blog about some more.

I'm pretty goofy-looking on my best day, and that headset didn't help.

Enjoy!

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I got an email from Neal Bruce yesterday saying that he would be leaving Monster and moving on to bigger and better things.

For those of you who have not met Neal, he has been Monster's public face to the industry.

I'm not sure how much - or even if - Neal's departure will affect Monster's bottom line, but it's a big loss for the company nevertheless.  He did a great job of humanizing what had become a huge faceless organization. 

Before Neal, Monster was effectively estranged from it's customer base, who only heard from the company's reps when it was time to renew their packages at ever-increasing prices.  Neal provided an outlet - someone in management who had actually done recruiting himself, went to industry events and had a personal relationship with many of the bloggers, writers and leaders in the industry.

It's looking like Neal may start to blog.  I hope that he does, beause I would like to hear more from him, whatever he decides to do next.

For Monster's part, I hope that they recognize that Neal's departure is leaving them with a big hole.

I am hopeful.

Sal Iannuzzi, Monster's CEO, came out to ERE Expo last week, and he had the chance to see up close and personal what the buzz of the industry is.  I have not seen someone anywhere close to that level of executive management come to an industry event since Jeff Taylor.

I am sure that there are plenty of people inside of Monster that think that Sal has better things to do then spend time at industry events, but I disagree.  Whether it is at ERE Expo or other events in the industry, Monster needs to engage and be more responsive to its customers, and Sal need to hear from his customers first-hand.

At ERE Expo we ran a session for startups in the space to give their elevator pitch to the crowd.

The four presenting companies were:

• Charlie O'Donnell, Path 101
• Ben Yoskovitz, Standout Jobs
• Clint Heiden, VisualCV
• Dan Arkind, JobScore
  

I was disappointed that more people did not choose to attend the session, but those who were there got the chance to hear some solid new ideas. Matt is saying that Path 101 and VisualCV were the two most likely to succeed, and the folks at Workforce agreed.

Watch the presentations and judge for yourself!

The latest ERE Expo is over, and the reviews are starting to come in.

Here are a few of my thoughts from the show:

• It's been said before, but can never reall be said too many times.  Networking, networking, networking is where some of the most valuable and unvarnished information gets passed along at these conferences, and it's why the ERE Expo gets more valuable as it gets bigger.  As a company, it is our challenge to make sure that the events don't lose their intimate feel as they get larger.
  

• Twitter was one of the experiments that we tried this time around as a tool to make the show more personal, the feedback more immediate, and to foster more personal connections.  I was pleasantly surprised.  We created the ereexpo Twitter account a week before the conference and by the end of the show over a hundred people became followers. That's a small fraction of the attendees, but I think that those that did sign up added a new level to how they experienced the event.  Also, I think that those that did not try Twitter themselves benefitted from the people who did, because we posted their thoughts on screen in front of the entire audience in real time.

• Even better, there were recruiters who could not make it to the Expo that were able to get a sense of what was going on in real time because of Twitter.  It felt like Shannon and Amybeth were there in person!

• This was a breakout year for video at the Expo.  We encourage attendees and Bloggers to bring their cameras and post videos online.  This year, we even had five cameras of own that we let people borrow.  There were people with cameras running around everywhere and you can see some pretty cool stuff here and here.

• The poker game was a huge success - it raised over $13,000 for the ERE Foundation.  Thanks for coordinating everything and getting the word out Jason!

• The. ERE. Team. Rocks.  We operate virtually so we don't see each other face to face very often.  When we do, I feel like there is pretty much nothing we can't take on.

• I had three people come up to me during the conference and tell me what a huge difference ERE has made in their professional lives.  We're at the point now where there are some people for whom we have been the primary way that they have gotten their professional educationfor their entire careers, and that's pretty damn cool.
  

Good times.

Here's an ERE Excellence Awards photo that we just uploaded to Flickr.

Check out the rest!

Only one day left here at the ERE Expo in San Diego, but for those of you who coldn't make it, we have posted a bunch of articles and videos to our Expo Blog, and there are some moreover at RecruitingBlogs.com. 

We've also been experimenting with Twitter at the show. We are almost at 100 followers, and have had some really good thoughts & comments go back and forth between the attendees.  I'll have some more thoughts on Twitter in a future post, but for now check it out and follow ereexpo!

We've been taping lots of the sessions, and there are a bunch of attendees running around with Flip cameras, so stay tuned for much more.