Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn’t just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google’s algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg’s vision, users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.

The power of Facebook (and Twitter, but that’s another post) as a search engine is undeniable and is likely at the heart of how the company will find its way to the pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow. But until recently, we weren’t really sure what this new search might look like.

In this example, we picked a random HR vendor, Jobvite. Our trusted Facebook friend, Mason Wong, really likes Jobvite. He says, “I’m a customer and a fan of Jobvite, which is the primary recruiting system used where I currently work, and at my previous workplace as well.” He even added a video.

Had I been in the market for an applicant tracking solution, this would likely drive me to Jobvite for a test drive. I might even contact Mason for more information before making a purchasing decision. Either way, utilizing Facebook’s new search functionality to tap into my network, or just see what the community at large is saying, can and will affect the way people find information and make buying choices.

Alternatively, a quick trip to Google and typing in “Jobvite” fails to reveal Mason’s positive commentary. The usual suspects of blogs, corporate links and social media sites can be found instead. There’s nothing wrong with such sources, and most people will likely visit those in a complimentary fashion, no matter what, but our private networks and the wisdom of crowds will potentially have more and more weight over time when spending our hard-earned dollars.

Searching in the manner should also serve as a wake-up call that if you’re currently not implementing a social media strategy at your company, well, you’d better start. The ease at which social networking hounds can tweet, tag, share, stumble, digg, buzz and bookmark your content may be the difference between success and failure.

No one was laughing, however, when they opened their war chest for a Super Bowl ad a few months later. And they really weren’t laughing when the start-up was picked-up by Web icon Yahoo! in 2002. Since then, by most counts, HotJobs has been a solid acquisition for Yahoo! and one of its best revenue generators.

Fast forward to 2009 and the company is subject to new rumors about acquisitions and sell-offs. This time compliments of The New York Times.

Under [New Yahoo! CEO Carol] Bartz, Yahoo has also been trying to sell some business units that it doesn’t consider core to its mission, including Hotjobs, the online recruiting service, according to several people familiar with the plans.

Will it happen? Time will tell. Until then, who are some possible suitors?

• Monster - Let’s start with the obvious choice and the one with the most recent track record of buying companies. It’s doubtful Yahoo! will accept stock as part of an acquisition by MWW and it’s even more doubtful that Monster has the liquid it would take to buy HotJobs. It would also be interesting to see how much crossover between customers there are at the moment. Might not be ideal.
• CareerBuilder - They’ve been in the print/online hybrid business for quite awhile now, so the existing relationships Yahoo! has with print entities around the country would be a natural fit, if not a bureaucratic mess. Still, with recent layoffs and cost-cutting measures at the company, acquisition seems unlikely.
• News Corp - Already an investor in the space via Simply Hired, Murdoch and Co. could be looking at the HotJobs brand to help support Fox and their other properties, such as The Wall Street Journal.
• Microsoft - Another company that’s dipped its toe into employment in the past (CareerBuilder stake), Microsoft is already close to Yahoo! and potentially looking at a search relationship. Could a deal that combines Yahoo! Search and HotJobs be that unreasonable?
• Dice - With a wide array of niche sites in its arsenal, Dice could be looking at a play that would compliment their existing catalog and jump into The Big Three overnight. And how many HotJobs clients could they turn into Dice clients?
• Jobing - A long shot? Maybe. Rumor is they’ve been actively looking for companies over the past 6 months to add to they’ve done in the past. And HotJobs’ newspaper play caters to Jobing’s local focus pretty nicely, and in markets they don’t currently target hardcore.
• None of the Above - Bad economy. Bad timing. ‘Nuff said.

Aside from those who say a deal is D.O.A., I for one wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some movement out of Sunnyvale around HotJobs. Whenever you have a motivated seller - and Yahoo! undoubtedly is by most accounts - things happen that normally wouldn’t.

As one source said, “This is what shitstorms are for.”

A little better alignment between the stars and printing presses might have led to a marriage between print and mobile marketing that was made in heaven. Let’s explore.

Try as they might, print has never really been able to bring the best of the Web to your local newspaper. In a short period of time, free postings online, if you have them posted in the paper, has given way to free postings in print, if you post online.

And the advent of performance-based marketing like pay-per-click or free has been impossible to wrap a publicist’s head around. Mobile marketing, however, is a great one-two punch with print and other traditional mediums.

Consider the following:

• Text messaging - Ever hear of American Idol (or Any-Country-on-the-Planet Idol for that matter)? Text messaging helped take crusty old television to an interactive medium amassing more votes than a presidential election. And radio? Spots in Oregon are driving mobile users to buy bread and ice cream (mmm, ice cream) with interactive coupons. “Seventy-six percent of listeners use text messaging, and 66 percent want to text with your radio station,” said Brian Benedik of Katz Media Group, commenting on a Media Buyer Planner report in a story entitled, “Mobile Marketing Could Be Key for Radio.”
• MMS - The immediacy of getting multimedia to your phone is a great employment branding builder. An employer’s ability to push video and audio, podcast-style to job seekers in a way similar to text messaging is powerful. Apple’s recent inclusion of MMS to the iPhone was ” top news on many mainstream news sites, likewise on most blogs and even the Twitter-sphere was agog at the news.”
• Scan Marketing - 2-D mobile bar codes that look similar to grocery item bar codes are selling lots of burritos on college campuses. Though still a fringe technology in the States, the technology of taking a picture via billboards, newspapers or other offline signage and receiving an offer or advertisement shows promise.

In short, whereas the Internet is a print-killer; mobile is a print-enhancer. The connection between someone reading a newspaper in a coffeehouse, airport or train to work and the mobile device that accompanies them is real. It brings old world clunkiness to new world interactivity, trackability and, more-and-more, virality (hey, it should be a word).

The knock on print has been the inability to track results for advertisers, offer a dynamic experience and trying to compete with the unlimited real estate that the Web offers in a 5-line business. Mobile potentially moves the balance of power, as readers can access media and advertisers can track results intimately and immediately. Asking people to go from a newspaper to a computer and type in a specific URL just doesn’t get it done.

Instead, imagine a world where an offline ad can drive users to content and brand awareness in real time at the click of a few numbers in their hand. Imagine a world where that activity drives an immediate alert to a recruiter in the form of a phone number and a database of said phone numbers is built for future and ongoing communication.

And it will happen, though probably not to the degree it could have happened if timing was just a little bit better. A friend of mine who owns a recruitment ad agency specialized in healthcare jokes about employers who still post ads in the newspaper.

He feels it’s just a matter of time before they all migrate online. Mobile marketing gives him a new product to sell and it gives his advertisers a new way to think about offline as coordination with online. And it may just keep his clients advertising in the newspaper.

Is mobile the defibrillator print needs to come back from the dead? Doubtful. But it sure makes for great fantasy and speculation.

For More on Mobile Recruiting, Checkout Our White Paper

Brands are the solution, not the problem … Brands are how you sort out the cesspool … Brand affinity is clearly hard wired, … so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.

In the second week of January 2009, Google dumped a big ol’ bucket of chlorine into that cesspool, which boosted some of the world’s most well-known brands into ranking nirvana. For the time being, competitive phrases have seen the most significant impact. RankPulse, a site that documents and archives rankings, gives us some insight into the move.

Note the big brands in our space hold positions 1-3, with Craigslist and Google breaking into the Top Ten. Exact-match domains Jobs.com and Jobs.net seem a little less prominent than they have been historically, which is a trend I expect to continue. Searches for “mortgages,” “airfare” and the like are seeing similar results. (Yes, I know behavioral-based results deliver different rankings to different people, but this phenomenon is real and well documented.)

Of course, the question is, How does Google decide who’s a brand name and who isn’t? Well, they’re not telling us, of course, but here are a few guesses. 1) They’ve made a list. It’s not difficult and publications do it all the time. 2) They’ve looked at their biggest spenders. Google won’t admit to advertisers impacting organic search results, but looking at who spends the most gives them insight into who’s a brand and who isn’t. 3) Monitor user behavior via Google properties.

Here are a few:

• Google Toolbar
• Google Chrome
• Google Reader
• FeedBurner
• Google Analytics
• Google Android
• YouTube

There are probably more, but you get the idea. The bigger question is, What now?

Well, if you’re a well-known brand - spend big money on Super Bowl ads and throw your name on sports arenas - you’re SEO initiatives just got a lot easier. And if you’re, well, anyone else, your job just got a lot harder.

I’m already starting to see bigger brands creep into the rankings of longer, less competitive search queries, where they weren’t before. As Google continues to collect data on activity, I expect the trend to continue and the number of wannabes in the Top Ten to decrease.

Of course, it could work in opposite fashion if users fail to click on Monster, because, well, they’ve already been there and didn’t really like what they saw. Only time will tell, but newbies clicking on names they know is a fair assumption to make.

An interesting side effect could be the emergence of large employers cracking into organic search results with their brands, where they’ve been largely absent since the inception of Google. It’s left to be seen whether or not an employer like Dell or Wal-Mart will grasp such an opportunity, but it’s there now and likely will be more and more over time.

The trend will also continue to send the guerrilla marketers to social networks and vertical search engines, which, by the way, should make the likes of Indeed and Simply Hired very happy, assuming they can maintain their search prominence. It’ll also be good for Google. The big boys will continue spending and more little guys will enter the PPC fold to generate traffic.

Oh, and it’ll probably push a lot of search engine optimizers, and the vendors who service them, into doing other things, which is doubtful to bring any Googlers to tears.

More from Google

During the month of January 2009, we invited our contacts in more than 200 large (5000+ employees), high-profile, firms to participate in our study by supplying information about their sources of hire as well as a few of their related hiring practices for 2008. 55 firms responded by January 30, 2009 … 45 firms completed our January, 2009 survey. These firms employed approximately 1,863 recruiters and sourcers and filled 309,600 openings during 2008.

Key findings range from a desire to reduce hires (and associated costs) attributed to third-party recruiters, newspapers and job boards, while increasing tactics connected to social networks and search engine marketing to how important referrals are to recruiting.

Of job boards, the executive summary said, “We believe [job boards as a] source of hire has indeed peaked and predict it will diminish in the future.” Their study revealed 12.3 percent of external hires come through job boards.

Monster led from the choices listed, followed by CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Direct Employers, HotJobs and TheLadders. According to the report, however, between the two, more hires come from CareerBuilder, saying “within the category, Monster has lost ground to CareerBuilder.”

“The two of them account for half the job board hires but both are losing ground to the ‘long-tail’ of niche sites, social networks and other online search engine marketing capabilities that are expanding their reach. The gray area where boards are morphing into much broader suites of services makes it difficult to draw hard and fast conclusions.”

Vertical search engines like Indeed.com and Simply Hired were noticeably absent from the options. Considering the growth of Indeed.com, this was an interesting omission. According to Crispin, “The vertical search engines are there under job boards (Aggregate - 1.7%). They are, in my opinion, still poorly tracked.

“If the job seeker goes to google and types in electrical engineer job in phoenix and gets a link to Simply Hired which provides another link to the IEEE which links to the job description on the company site, your guess is as good as mine and clearly the dilution of SEM, aggregate job boards, company site etc. make it extremely difficult to analyze sources well enough to make a decision on where to spend 2009 budget. Even if there is data in the field - which is the point most people overlook - the report focuses on what is needed to improve the quality of the data, not accept it as a benchmark.”

Niche boards got particular recognition in the study as well. When asking employers to name three niche sites used to generate hires, a total of 60 were mentioned. Dice, Jobing, Craigslist and JobCentral were all highlighted in this category.

“The growth of niche sites is due in no small measure to the ease of use of job distribution services such as JobTarget.com (one of dozens of competing firms in the category, JobTarget is a prime example of how the category has grown as it has built a solid relationship with SHRM and is marketed to SHRM’s 250,000 members), the study noted. “This job distribution category offers user-friendly means for a firm to select niche sites to post, automate the posting, and aid in the measurement of results.”

Lastly, near and dear to our hearts, search engine marketing (SEM) seems to be gaining momentum and is noted as a potential threat to traditional job boards. “This category is growing rapidly as firms learn about and develop internal capabilities or partner with suppliers and vendors. We believe this is one of the potential tools to disintermediating traditional job boards.”

The entire study and more information can be found at CareerXRoads.

Didn’t happen. Fast forward to today and Ask has more-or-less gone back to its former self and essentially given up on its efforts to dethrone Google. Google’s momentum and mojo was too much to tackle.

Monster is working against similar forces. And although you could argue they are the Google of our industry, that’s simply not the case. Years of segmentation, competition, verticalization, commoditization and neglecting the job seeker have taken its toll on a once mighty company. I doubt any amount of coolness or job-seeker refocus will alter the winds of change that have been blowing for a long time now.

That said, the new Monster is a noble effort.

“Monster has made a significant investment in product and technology in an effort to design and develop new tools and applications that help job seekers manage their career,” said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, president and CEO of Monster Worldwide (MWW). “The result is an entirely new site experience which allows job seekers a more engaging and dynamic way to find the career that best matches their talent, background, aspirations and professional goals. We set out 18 months ago to deliver the best seeker experience possible. Given what is going on today with the global economic crisis and its affect on employment, we are even more gratified to be able to provide these valuable tools to seekers.”

Visitors to the new site are met with a variety of videos touting everything from “Monster is not just about jobs anymore” to “Monster’s new job search is easier than ever! To apply for the job is 65% faster than before!” Using real faces at the company is a smart move and helps put a little humanity on an organization many buyers feel is too big to understand their individual challenges.

Additionally, registered users can add widgets to their homepage, similar to iGoogle. This is a nice time saver option for job seekers and helps put more control in the users’ hands. Nice touch if you look at Monster as your be-all destination for job search, which I doubt many do. An interesting move would be to allow users to add third party widgets outside of Monster’s jurisdiction.

The new search results page has sacrificed banner ad overload for featured ads in a Google AdSense-style format. A search for sales jobs in Cleveland revealed opportunities with local companies around town. However, changing my location kept the advertising to the Cleveland-area, so I’m guessing they’re checking IP information to serve ads instead of on-page content.

In looking at the list of results, job seekers can scroll over an ad title to get a snapshot of the position in about 150 words. Scrolling over other icons reveals mapping information, salary information powered by Salary.com and an action button where users can save certain results. There’s also a movie icon, which I assume will provide employment branding videos at some point, but I failed to locate any examples. The results are laid out in a way that users don’t have to load page-after-page to see job data. A nice feature, but it will undoubtedly impact banner ad revenue negatively by decreasing pageviews dramatically.

A past interview on the launch revealed a more algorithmic approach to results versus a date order list, which seems to be the case with more granular queries. One search revealed a posting from 12/5 as the top result with more recent postings coming after. Seekers can also filter their search in a wide variety of ways.

Going to a job posting reveals a similar interface to what we’ve seen from Monster in the past. In a framed environment, you’ll most likely see the job posting as it looks on an employers’ main site and post resumes through the company’s applicant tracking system. No registration via Monster or e-mail required (or implied) to apply (I’m looking at you, CareerBuilder). Jobs shown as posted directly on Monster give users a ShareThis-style icon, but it only allows for e-mailing the job to someone. A bit misleading considering many who click on that icon expect the ability to post to a Facebook account or Twitter. Looks very 2.0 wannabe.

Career Tools
Outside of basic job search functionality, the biggest seeker-side changes come in the shape of the company’s new career tools. Unfortunately, it’s also the biggest disaster. Through sections that include “Career Snapshots,” “Career Mapping,” and “Career Benchmarking,” the company has created an absolute quagmire of confusion. I know I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I found using these tools entirely too time consuming and certainly not worth the effort unless I was really, really motivated to find employment.

“Today’s ‘new’ Monster not only provides the resources to help people find a job now, it also helps people begin to identify and plot out career aspirations over time,” said Iannuzzi. “We’re delivering on our promise to make Monster a personal, relevant and exciting place to search for the perfect job. Simply put, there has never been a better time to visit Monster.com.”

Career Snapshots apparently tells you if you’re on the right career path or not. Through a series of questions, it’s goal is to help put people on the right path to a new job or position. There’s also a forum-style component, where others in your space can comment and give advice. This area is empty today and I expect it to be pretty empty (spam excluded) in the future. It’s also not much help if the field isn’t already in the database. There’s not much of a career path for an SEO, I guess.

Career Benchmarking is supposed to help you understand how you compare with others in your particular field. Most notably, do you make as much as your equal at another company or would you make that much more in a different city. Good idea in concept, but like the other tools it’s not the most user-friendly thing on the planet. Payscale is a much better option.

Career Mapping serves as, well, a map to take you from where you are now and where you might want to go in the future. Again, a good idea in concept, but the tools are tough to understand. I’m sure the engineers who built it understand it, but not me. And I really have to wonder if you’re an engineer or accountant or marketing professional, do you really not understand the opportunities in front of you? If not, you probably shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing in the first place.

Conclusion
Hit-and-miss. I like what they’ve done with the job search functionality. But I think they’ve wasted a lot of time on the Career Tools portion of the program. I like that they’ve taken out a lot of the nonsensical banner ads (you can still find them if you dig hard enough) and made them more targeted. And their ad network could be an interesting play in the months to come.

No doubt the moves they’ve made will receive acclaim by many. It may even turn people who have given up on Monster in the past to give them a second look. Will it turn the tide currently in favor of destinations like LinkedIn, Craiglist and Google? Only time will tell (but don’t hold your breath).

The company has experienced a steady string of setbacks, beginning with their Q3 financial call and continuing with a bevy of lawsuits that threaten to rattle the core of this globally renowned company.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

On November 3, the company reported disappointing Q3 earnings, showing that net income went from $2,233 million in Q3 2007 to a net loss of $ (8,151) in Q3 2008, due in part to the acquisition of Vurv Technology and disproportionate sales and marketing costs in relation to revenue.

On November 10, Taleo notified the SEC that its financial filings would be late while auditors Deloitte and Touche asked to re-evaluate the firm’s revenue recognition process.

On November 17, Taleo was hit with a class action lawsuit by Johnson and Perkins, a Vermont-based firm that alleges the company misled or failed to inform the investing public regarding their historical and current accounting practices with respect to the timing for recognition of application and consulting revenues.

On November 18, NASDAQ notified Taleo that it was no longer in compliance with listing requirements due to the delay in reporting their financial filings to the SEC.

On November 21, the law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP announced they are investigating potential securities fraud action against Taleo. According to BusinessWire, the firm will investigate whether Taleo and/or its executives conducted “extensive insider selling while improperly recognizing revenues by the Company’s leadership.”

Also on the same day, the law firm Bull & Lifshitz, LLP filed suit against Taleo and its executives, also claiming that the defendants misled or failed to inform the investing public historical and current accounting practices with respect to the timing for recognition of application and consulting revenues under generally accepted accounting principles in the United States.

Other law firms, including the Brualdi Law Firm, P.C. have announced similar lawsuits in the wake of the financial filings delay AND the alleged insider selling.

ZDNet writer Brian Sommers gave his own analysis of Taleo’s current situation and what repercussions may surface:

Apparently, some Taleo executives sold off shares of stock they owned in Taleo. In the last six months, insiders apparently sold approximately $10.8 million in Taleo shares. However, the law firm is reporting that insiders have sold approximately $121 million since the company went public in 2005. My math tells me that insiders have been selling a lot more stock in earlier years than they have in this last year of 2008. Does this suggest a smoking gun? I’m not so sure. Many software executives have pre-arranged sell orders with brokerages so that these individuals can make their investment liquid and/or diversify their holdings. Most executives have these plans as the planned schedule of sales is known and controlled by the brokerage and not the executive. This is done to prevent the appearance (or reality) of insider trading. Given the magnitude of prior sales, this may be a dubious claim if the sales were triggered by third parties.

The real issue here will be whether revenue was incorrectly recorded, the magnitude of the recording error, if any, and how it will affect the published financials. Given the time-intensive nature of these auditing/accounting reviews, this could be more than a year and maybe up to several years before it is resolved. The faster Taleo and Deloitte can get through this, the better for Taleo and its executives.

Does any of this reflect poorly on Taleo’s products or the Vurv solutions they purchased? No. Will it be a management distraction? Yes. Will it cost a lot of money? Absolutely. Will competitors bring this up in selling situations? Bet on it.

Some companies have leveraged the parade of Internet hot shots to their advantage, and many are still trying to find a way. They understand the value of connecting with people as customers, even if their marketing efforts often miss the mark. But when it comes to using the Internet to connect with people as potential recruits, it’s a different story. Why are recruiting departments at corporations missing the boat when it comes to realizing the potential of the Internet to find the best people?

On the surface, there don’t seem to be any obstacles. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article entitled “Recruiting 3.0: Web Advances Change the Landscape“. In it, employers who leverage everything from podcasting to video to social networking are highlighted:

“Recruiters for Electronic Arts Inc. began perusing MySpace.com and Facebook.com a little over a year ago to learn more about and engage with prospective hires, says Matthew Jeffery, head of global talent brand for the gaming company. ‘We want people who are passionate gamers, and often on these sites, people talk about their hobbies,’ he says.”

An outsider is led to believe such cutting-edge tactics in the employment space are the rule. In reality, it’s the exception. The percentage of companies publishing blogs full of embedded YouTube videos, Flickr photos, a roll call of MyBlogLog users and links to Facebook fan sites is probably in the single digits. Fortune 500 companies taking this approach are easier to find than Bigfoot.

Take Electronic Arts, the video game maker quoted in the Wall Street Journal story. It should be a great example, right? Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, the company has some incredible assets including a laid-back atmosphere, a beautiful campus, video game terminals, soccer games at lunch, a casual dress code, and almost everything else you’d expect from a company located at the nexus of the technology and entertainment industries.

Unfortunately, EA’s Internet recruiting efforts don’t compliment this vision.

A trip to their online career center at http://jobs.ea.com reveals a company stuck in the ’80s. The experience leaves you feeling more like you’ve checked out a paper brochure instead of surfing the pages of a hip employer. The destination for careers is text-heavy and has none of the progressive elements of today’s Web. Video? Nope. Pics? Hardly any. Employee profiles? Didn’t see ‘em.

There’s really no excuse. This is a technology company that needs to engage and attract young, fresh talent to maintain its position of leadership. So how does EA get it so wrong when it comes to online recruitment? A few possibilities:

1. HR is at the bottom of the heap. A disconnect between recruiting and marketing is quite common in corporations. While creative brainpower focuses on selling products and services, getting candidates through the door takes a backseat.

2. The IT department, like marketing, pushes the online needs of HR to the backburner. By relying on excuses like “we’re just too busy right now,” or “here’s why that won’t work,” IT easily pushes aside initiatives from the department that doesn’t understand technology, and doesn’t know how to push back.

3. Legal says no. Just the idea of a lawyer getting involved can kill an initiative before it’s even born. It’s easier to just go on with business as usual instead of try something new and innovative. Additionally, even if blogging, video and social networking efforts are approved, they are viewed as potential legal land mines and headaches if site visitors get out of line.

4. Turnover. HR departments tend to see a lot of turnover. Many employees spend
limited time in the recruiting profession, hoping to land a less stressful generalist position or move on to higher-paying jobs in management or other departments. This leads to HR departments that prefer to play it safe and not stray from traditional recruiting tactics. People like to stay in their comfort zones, and recruiting is no different. Playing it safe means staying employed at most organizations.

So, while there are a handful of employers who effectively leverage Web 2.0 to their advantage in terms of driving top talent to their companies, most do not. It’s a trend that will continue to hurt businesses and their ability to find success through one of their most valuable assets — people.

“In late ‘07 I went through CareerBuilder’s new hire training in Anytown, USA. During training we were told NOT TO TALK TO HR when calling into companies. I am not one to bash my previous employers and I have no reason to be bitter towards CareerBuilder, however I really don’t have many positive things to say about my experience there. Also during training they focused more on teaching us ‘how to sell’ than how to help employers and understand their needs.
“We had to learn a sales presentation that was to be exercised in every sales call. We were also required to learn rebuttals verbatim to every type of objection a client could possibly have. Bottom line is they are so focused on sales and revenue they forget to really help their clients. Not to mention their inside sales reps are required to make 125 outgoing calls-per-day. I believe there is a line between quality and quantity and they definitely care more about the quantity. On a positive note I have talked to many recruiters an HR professionals in the Anytown market who say they have good responses from CareerBuilder. I think their newspaper partners are their saving grace.”

Such commentary is not exclusive to CareerBuilder. Aggressive sales activities in our highly competitive environment are just the nature of the beast, I guess. I do wonder, however, how many times anecdotes like this have occurred when Craigslist is concerned. Yeah, like, never.

And maybe there’s a lesson to be learned there.

“The focus of HRM Today is community,” says Ruettimann. “There are no membership fees or certification classes. We want to elevate our profession, speak our minds and have fun.”

Ruettimann believes the site is not in competition to others like Recruiting Blogs.com and will look to ways in which they can work together with such offerings. The site is powered, like so many these days, by Ning. The group also touts a LinkedIn Groupand Facebook Fan Site.

I frequently visit your website. I like the articles. Recently I have made an easy tool for HR and people to see what in published on the web. The website is www.cvgadget.com. I would like to ask you, if you like the website, if you could write a small article about it or publish the link on your website.

Regards,
Dirk Dijksma

Many bloggers are familiar with similar kinds of messages. Most get deleted (for good reason). However, on a slow Friday in August at least, this one seemed interesting enough to share.

The site enables you to plug in a name and search results across a variety of popular services - from Google to Facebook to ZoomInfo to LinkedIn and more. If the person you’re searching has a common name, like John Smith, it’s more or less worthless. But say that special someone has a funky name like “Cheesman,” and this tool could give you some insight that you might not have found otherwise (or at least not as easily).

On a sidenote, our friends in legal circles tell us this kind of thing should never be used in conducting, say, background checks on people, so, um, don’t use it for that, OK?