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When Monster bought Trovix in the summer of 2008, the blogosphere popped with wonder at how the job board would make use of Trovix’ job matching technology.

Forrester Research analyst Zach Thomas suggested that, “By making this acquisition, Monster is putting a real emphasis on search and they believe it will help them leap-frog the competition.” Others were less generous.

The answer has been coming ever since Monster began beta testing Power Resume Search several months ago. A few weeks ago, confident that its $100 million investment was the homerun it expected, Monster turned Power Search live, premiering it during an analyst meeting that was also webcast over a marathon five hours or so.

Tuesday, the company demoed the new search for a group of recruitment consultants and bloggers. And the result was no mere home run; think grand slam.

In a word, Monster’s new Power Resume Search is stunning. Stunning in its simplicity. Stunning in its speed. Stunning in its ability to intuit skills from a title, and to rank and rerank the resulting candidates depending on what skills and other qualities you decide important. Stunning in its potential for changing the job board business. keep reading…

Jobvite is introducing what I hesitate to call a new sourcing tool, only because the term doesn’t really do it justice.

Google is a sourcing tool, but while it may get the job done, how long will it take to sift through the results? Jobvite Source is more of a blend of the best attributes of ZoomInfo and Broadlook with access to the social networks as well as the entire Web.

Last week, during a demo, Chief Product Officer Jamie Glenn did a search for an online marketing manager and came up with the resumes of, maybe, a couple hundred possibles from all the Web’s free sources. A similar search on Google turns up results in the hundreds of thousands.

The difference is Jobvite Source can compare the results to the job req, sifting out the job listings and other stuff, leaving you with resumes that match the requirements. It does the same as a well-structured query to your ATS or a resume database.

keep reading…

The hot stuff in HR technology these days is all to do with social networking. Recruiters are flocking to social media with the energy of a bull let loose in a pasture full of lonely cows during mating season. All that effort does produce some results — candidates (or calves; depending on what you’re thinking right now) — but they’re inconsistent (in both cases). And there are plenty of skeptics that question the value of social networking as a scalable recruiting solution. Social media has its place in the recruiting universe, but the buzz around it is overshadowing other interesting technologies. Two in particular that I’d like to highlight may not be as exciting, but address fundamental needs for recruiters. keep reading…

How many applicants fake test results and assessments?
Does cheating work? Is it worthwhile?
What can you, the employer, do about it? keep reading…

If a startup can land $3 million in angel investment in a market like this, it’s a company worth watching even if it is a close DNA relative to Facebook and LinkedIn and only a gene or two removed from what Jobster once hoped to be. keep reading…

As a (once and future) corporate recruiter “actively looking for his next opportunity,” (translation: unemployed and hitting refresh on Indeed.com), I’ve had the opportunity, for the first time in my career, to experience life across the desk, as one of the unwashed masses yearning to breathe free.

Interesting paradigm shifts have occurred. An interview has gone from a job function to an event worthy of a phone call to mom; I no longer screen my calls, and in fact, am excited when the phone rings; and, of course, the worst of it all: I’ve become the target of a billion-dollar industry of profiteers who promise to give my search the winning edge, but they’re no longer contingency recruiters on biz dev calls. That, at least, would represent a career opportunity.

Let me be clear: I actually admire those who have figured out a way to monetize providing services to the unemployed. Most marketers would probably, conducting a SWOT analysis, point to the fact that categorically, those without jobs who are “actively looking” likely lack disposable income. But, you see, that’s capitalism in action.

Perhaps the most common service offered is professional resume writing. These services promise that, for anywhere between 400 and 800 dollars, a professional resume writer will not only critique your resume, but also work with you to create a resume guaranteed to “break through the clutter” by using better verbs to craft the “story of your career.” Corporate recruiters, apparently, have very strict guidelines for formatting on a resume, and a secret code known only to them and somehow cracked by the Professional Resume Writer’s Association. I must have missed that workshop at ERE, but I suppose so too did a lot of my colleagues, who I have seen commit such violations to code as cut and pasting resumes off of Monster into Word or forwarding horrifically misformatted LinkedIn profiles to hiring managers.

Since there seems to be an interesting amount of conspiracy theory around how recruiters read resumes (if they do at all, since apparently, talent acquisition systems are to candidates what the Meadowlands are to Jimmy Hoffa), I hope to add to the body of knowledge and present, from first-hand observation, how recruiters read resumes. And we do. Hundreds of them, every day, but there’s a method to our madness: overstaffed, overworked, we’ve developed a short-hand to get through that resume. It involves a few simple steps. keep reading…

The list of companies offering resume writing, enhancement, and tracking continues to grow faster than you can say LinkedIn, with new vendors entering the market this summer. keep reading…

Did I grab your attention? Well, I personally believe that resumes will remain part of job applications and interviews for a while. But I’d like to explore how the expansion of everyone’s online presence may affect the set of documents and information that accompanies a job application. I’ll look at this mainly from the technical sourcing angle, but not just. keep reading…

Talk to Steven Toole about ResumePal for even just a few minutes and you get the feeling this is how sliced bread came about. ResumePal is a simple, elegant, and free solution to an annoying jobseeker and recruiter problem.

It’s an easy-to-use method to apply for jobs through corporate websites without having to reenter the data for each different employer. Jobseekers create a profile once, then by logging in to ResumePal from any participating employer’s site, they just click to apply. When they change their profile, by updating their contact information for instance, ResumePal automatically updates the database of every participating employer to which they’ve applied.

“It’s very similar to PayPal,” says Toole, vice president, employer marketing at Jobfox, which developed the service. “It’s convenient for jobseekers, but there are significant benefits for employers too.”

keep reading…

Over the weekend, I followed a conversation between Charlie O’Donnell (@ceonyc), Founder of Path 101, and Alison Doyle (@alisondoyle), About.com’s Job Search Guide on Twitter, and then later on their blogs. (Click on the graphic for a larger, more readable version.)

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. keep reading…

Way back in the 20th century, I learned an important fact about recruiters. We’re all salespeople. There are good salespeople and bad salespeople, but every recruiter has to be in sales if they are to function.

This is not up for discussion. We sometimes dance around the premise, but recruiting is essentially the selling of a company on a candidate and a candidate on a company. Those who choose not to engage in selling can pretend to be noble, but they’re doing a disservice to their clients and employers. It’s engraved on stone tablets for every third-party recruiter who makes it longer than three months, and even the most sales-averse HR generalist has to admit that at one time or another, they’ve tried to talk a manager into meeting with a candidate based on their internal interview. It’s the nature of our business.

Where we sometimes butt heads is in the implementation of a sales mentality versus that of a process-oriented human resources approach. I have good news: The sales mentality is remarkably effective for finding high-quality candidates or hiring large numbers of people quickly. Unfortunately, no company needs that kind of structure forever, and the friction caused by a sales mentality in hiring can lead to management, administrative, and even legal obstacles. The human resources approach of a kindler, gentler HR works when you don’t have urgency, and when you have an enlightened HR/executive management relationship, but process-oriented hiring turns off the top creatives and results in the hiring of a stable, but less aggressive workforce. That’s no way to run a company in uncertain times.

keep reading…

Let’s face it: YouTube, Break, Hulu, and Veoh have changed the way we view movies and videos and, more important, they have changed the way we use the Internet.

We rely more and more on pictures, graphics, and videos to display data, deliver the news, give us instructions, and keep us up-to-date with our families. The facts are amazing. Using Quantcast as my source, here is a rough idea of what’s going on. The online version of the New York Times, for example, has a monthly readership that averages about 14 million people in the United States. And that’s the largest readership of any print media I could find. The online Wall Street Journal does a paltry 4 million and even the prestigious Economist does only 3 million globally and most are seeing declining readership.

On the other hand, YouTube averages about 71 million viewers monthly — just in the U.S. And its rivals are also doing well and growing. Veoh does about 23 million, Hulu about 19 million, and Break about 15 million globally.

This indicates a decisive trend: more and more of us are getting information and education from video, rather than from words – whether in print or online.

We have already seen video slowly gaining in popularity and importance in recruiting. All top-tier career sites incorporate both pictures and video. Usually the videos are of employees talking about their jobs, but some include campus tours or chats with the CEO or a hiring manager. Many recruiters have received a video resume, and chat rooms have buzzed with concerns over the legality of such resumes and whether they should be accepted.

I don’t believe there is any serious legal issue in using video resumes, as long as your organization has a policy about how they are used. They are no more discriminatory than a face-to-face interview and may actually help to showcase communication skills and other positive traits. They can speed up the pre-screening process and may even eliminate the need for the number of interviews we subject candidates to.

Younger candidates, who are just entering the job market, may prefer to create a video resume as it reflects the media with which they are most comfortable. I can also easily imagine a time when the face-to-face interview is replaced with a live, virtual interview, perhaps with the hiring manger and several others also present virtually. The use of video lowers costs, expands the number of people who can participate in an interview, allows asynchronous viewing, and makes it more convenient for a candidate.

Here are just four of the ways organizations are using video.

keep reading…

After two years in the vertical search business, JuJu was looking to make an impression. So the job search engine is sponsoring the coffee breaks at the ERE Expo. Now coffee is always welcome at conferences, but what really is getting the attention of recruiters are the hundreds of brushed aluminum travel mugs JuJu is giving away at the breaks.

“We want to let everyone know about us,” explains JuJu’s Euan Hayward. Around since 2006 (with the JuJu brand) and with respectable visitor numbers, Hayward says it was time for the company to reach out to recruiters. “This is our first booth experience.”

A job search engine with roots in the late 90’s, JuJu is nearly identical in concept to the better known Indeed and SimplyHired, both of whom are also at the Expo here in Hollywood Beach, Florida. Like them, it “scrapes” job postings from commercial and corporate job boards making a jobseeker’s search a one-stop effort.

Does the world need another vertical — or meta — job search site? Hayward thinks so. “There are some additional opportunities,” he says. “Innovation is not dead in this market.”

There was other evidence of innovation on the show floor.

keep reading…

Next week, four company founders will take the platform at ERE’s second Startup Forum to tell the world about their better mousetrap. They’ll follow in the footsteps of four other startups that introduced themselves at the Spring Expo in San Diego, and who, today, are just emerging from beta or, in one case, not yet there, or about to launch a new version, but in every case still still here and hopeful.

At ERE’s Fall Expo in Hollywood Beach, Florida, recruiters will meet the newest businesses to launch. Two of the founders will talk about how their respective companies are harnessing the power of video to help recruiters make better hiring choices and save the environment while also saving the hiring company a few dollars.

keep reading…

What’s a marketing manager?

Ask five people, and you’ll get five definitions. Look for resumes, and you’ll get hundreds of people doing vastly different things.

Mark Bielecki is trying to clean it all up with a new site, Joblish. (And you thought startups had used up every possible fanciful variation of the word “job”!)

It sounds more complicated than it is. Employers can fill out some drop-down menus as to what they’re looking for — let’s say, for example, that the employer wants these four things in a candidate:

• a functional area of engineering;
• the R&D department
• division head reporting to chief executive
• supervising 10 or more people directly.

The employer picks those four attributes from the drop-downs, and generates a code that looks something like this:

joblishDENERBE

Job candidates who fit that criteria will, in theory, have added the code joblishDENERBE to their resumes or LinkedIn pages or elsewhere, and employers searching for joblishDENERBE can find them.

Like so many new ideas, the success of this one will depend on getting a critical mass of both job candidates and employers to use the codes.

Retailers have a sale, manufacturers slow production, but what can recruiters do with all those excess candidates? A few talent acquisition leaders are fast becoming inventory-management gurus and they are pursuing innovative ways to deal with all those extra candidates.

“We didn’t add any staff because responding to candidates didn’t add more work — we just changed our process,” says Catie Cowher, candidate experience leader for Recruiting Strategy and Initiatives at Wachovia Corporation.

Wachovia posts some 600 to 800 openings per week on its website, which includes both newly created positions and vacancies, and averages 10,000 applicants. According to Cowher, rejected candidates receive an e-mail informing them about their status and the reasons behind Wachovia’s decision. Most candidates are declined early in the recruiting process, following a resume review by a recruiter. Nearly 90% of applicants responding to job postings at Wachovia are declined. Giving candidates immediate feedback about their status was a process change that served up numerous benefits.

keep reading…

Little more than a year after introducing video resumes, CareerBuilder has discontinued the service. It was quietly taken offline in June.

The company won’t say how many jobseekers posted videos, but it seems the participation rate wasn’t high enough to warrant CareerBuilder’s effort. Job board spokesperson Jennifer Grasz told us, “We’re always testing the market with new tools and services to enhance the user experience. If the response rates are not there, we’ll reevaluate whether the market is ready and focus energies on other areas to aid in the job search and recruitment process.”

CareerBuilder’s main resume pages are still online, though no longer linked from the site. However, Grasz said the jobseeker videos have been removed. Jobseekers can always post their video to a service like You Tube and include a link in the resume or cover letter they have on CareerBuilder. When an employer downloads the resume, the link becomes hot.

keep reading…

This week:

• Non-compete clauses
• “Color tests”
• Internal recruiting
• Resume search/software tool
• Working from home
• Job board debate

keep reading…

A group of Fortune 500 companies that includes Best Buy Co., Inc., Starbucks, and Wachovia Corporation have formed a consortium to share the resumes of their unsuccessful applicants.

Calling the consortium AllianceQ, the resumes of participating candidates will be matched to employment vacancies across the member organizations.

In my sales management career, I would bet that I’ve seen about 5,000 resumes for salespeople. Yet, I still haven’t seen one that shows someone who has achieved 40% of quota. Every single resume shows 100%, 200%, or 2,000,000% of goal. Where are all of the people who have had less-than-stellar sales performances? Did they all leave the sales profession? If all of the resumes that I saw truly represented the performance of the individual, the U.S. economy would be thriving, to say the least. Every company would be enjoying record revenue performances.

If you have read my past articles, you’ve felt my passion for creating sales marriages, those relationships whereby a mutually-beneficial relationship is formulated between a sales professional and a company based on synergistic matches of needs. This is not easy to do as, right off the bat, the relationship begins with a flawed tool: a resume. It is this tool, not necessarily the individual, that dupes, tricks, and stretches the truth of a person’s pedigree. Yet, as an employer, that is what you have to work with when hiring a sales professional. You need to find a way to mine through the information in a quest for the complete truth.

keep reading…