Recruiting in 2.0 World
Recruiting is not the same anymore, atleast it should not be the same anymore but are you keeping up with the changing landscape. In a 2.0 world, sourcing possibilities increase exponentially.
Shooting for the Stars - Staffitnow Featured in MidwestBusiness.com
If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it's OK. But you have to shoot for something.
This is feature written on Staffitnow in the MidWestBusiness.com
CHICAGO -- If you’re a technology entrepreneur, you are shooting for something. But how can you tell if you’re shooting for the stars rather than, say, your own foot? For insight, let’s look at one Chicago-area company that aspires to become an interstellar rocket.
The company is StaffITnow. It was founded by Naveen Bala and Siva Ramamurthy in May, 2005, but the two have been working on their technology since 2002. They bill the company as the “eHarmony® for the job market�. If accurate, that’s a strong claim, because eHarmony itself certainly looks like a rocket.
In fact, eHarmony seems on the verge of joining online innovators like eBay and Google in transforming a fragmented and mostly latent market into a blockbuster that they dominate. It has become the must-use online dating service because of their “scientifically-designed compatibility matching system� that uses 29 factors to quickly narrow thousands of romantic possibilities to the best matches. The company claims credit for 90 marriages every day.
By comparing itself to eHarmony, StaffITnow is saying that it quickly narrows thousands of job and candidate possibilities to the best matches. Sounds important, but is it really shooting for the stars? Let’s peel the onion a bit to examine some similarities between eHarmony and StaffITnow.
First, consider some gross demographics. In the U.S., about 140 million people have been married, and about 150 million people are in the workforce. Not only are the magnitudes comparable, but they highlight that both eHarmony and StaffITnow are focused on improving two of life’s fundamental issues, usually a good foundation for a business.
Next, reflect on the problems you’ve had finding great dates and a wonderful spouse. Then reflect on the problems you’ve had finding a wonderful job or hiring great employees. It would be hard to say that one is more difficult than the other, and both activities are highly inefficient, time-consuming and painful. Again, a good foundation for a business.
Now consider the fragmented, low-tech, online “pinup� boards that have been the only services you could turn to for help in solving your dating or job problems. Both services rely on crude keyword matching, usually leaving you with almost no matches, out of date matches, or so many undifferentiated selections that you’re overwhelmed. Ineffective competition is another good business-building foundation.
In summary, both eHarmony and StaffITnow have huge potential customer bases with very painful problems that competitors cannot solve as well as breakthrough technology-based solutions that offer compelling customer value. Certainly sounds like great launching pads for an interstellar venture.
StaffITnow’s technology is an example of powerful find-the-needle-in-the-haystack search engines that intelligently filter, rank and prioritize limitless possibilities based on relevance to the searcher. It employs sophisticated technologies (e.g., natural language processing, artificial intelligence, pattern matching) that can read, understand and analyze job descriptions and resumes in any format, and do so quickly, easily and cheaply. Their service is being successfully used by about 50 pilot customers. Nice initial liftoff.
Interestingly, although their technology is a platform that can be used for the entire job market, StaffITnow’s founders wisely chose to launch their business at the information technology job niche, about which they know a lot from personal experience.
In fact, serving the job market for IT professionals alone will be a great business. There are about 3 million IT jobs in the U.S., and annual turnover, always notoriously high, has been estimated by one analyst at up to 20%, which would mean 600,000 job openings per year. Because so many jobs are open and because they typically have very specific technical specifications (which change constantly with the dynamics of information technology), it is very difficult to find good candidates.
In addition, finding good candidates is further complicated by highly fragmented and inefficient IT recruiting, which is conducted by recruiters from employing firms as well as from about 20,000 job agencies. One result is that a single job is often posted many times, and StaffITnow documents 18,000 IT job postings every single day (which it collects from several hundred sources). At prices prevailing on the pinup boards, IT jobs represents about a $1 billion market niche.
Not only is StaffITnow initially targeting a single job market segment, it will be focusing more specifically on its most attractive niche, recruiters who labor trying to fill a minimum of 50 IT job openings annually. It’s one thing to find one good match for life, it’s many magnitudes harder trying to find 50 good matches every year. So perhaps the better comparison is that StaffITnow is like eHarmony on steroids.
We have only touched on a couple elements of StaffITnow’s promising business model, so the company’s progress may merit revisits in future columns. For example, most of its technology has been developed by its India-based unit, which sits in the second largest IT job market in the world and will serve as the launching pad for StaffITnow’s first international market launch.
Stay tuned, earthlings.
Posted by Naveen Bala Posted at 11:53AM Mar 13, 2007 by Naveen Bala
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Marketing Your Candidates
Market Your Candidates without Hot Lists
Staffitnow provides a very efficient forum to market your candidates and generate leads for placements. The B2B module enables you to register your candidates (person on your payroll or have an agreement for representing the candidate) with Staffitnow.
Until now Marketing your candidates means emailing Hot Lists or anonymizing your candidate names and load them onto job boards.
The Staffitnow B2B module not only gives you more control but also expand your potential clientele. When you register your candidate, only "your" contact information is visible to others. Your candidates automatically comes up in their search and match results and they give you a call.
You can manage your consultant status, his/her preference, expected rate etc any time you want.
The B2B module also provides something no job board can, access to business opportunities anywhere on the web. Your registered candidate is automatically matched to over 2.4 million jobs posted anywhere on the web. You are presented with a list of jobs your candidate is qualified.
Instead of going to multiple jobs fishing for opportunities, you can do it from place. You can even choose to have this list on your desktop updated on a daily basis.
There is a never a charge for maketing your candidates
Start Marketing Your Candidates"
Posted by Naveen Bala Posted at 11:38AM Mar 13, 2007 by Naveen Bala
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Why Job Marketing & How is it Better than Job Posting
Traffic to major job boards are going down. Candidates are spending more time on blogs and social networking sites. How does a recruiting solution target these candidates?
Job posting on traditional job boards, is like putting a "For Sale" stake in front of your house that is in a cul de sac off a road that is off the main road.
How many people do you think will see it? Even if your house is on the main road how many do you think will be qualified?
Now imagine that your "For Sale" is visible to only people who drive in red cars. You post in a job board, now you need to wait to see how many people in red cars pass by and find you.Is passive posting the most effective way to find qualified people?
At Staffitnow, we do not think so. We believe, a sourcing solution should be able to target and actively market your job to qualified candidates.
We know that in a web 2.0 world, candidates are everywhere - blog sites, networking sites, groups and forums. So posting your jobs on a single board, doesn't really serve the purpose.
Nearly all job boards offer only passive posting, your jobs will only be visible to the daily traffic to the site. This means only active job seekers are aware of the opportunities. You miss out on semi-active and passive candidates. Thus considerably reducing your chances of finding the best match.
Staffitnow's job marketing solution is designed for today's scenario. It takes your job to where the candidates are, instead of the other way around.
Staffitnow Job Marketing Solution Encompasses:
Marketing on Job Sites
StaffTnow advertises your job to over 100 job sites, sites that are relevant to your job. Do a Google search for "staffitnow", and see the potential places your job can go to.Marketing on Individual Blogs
We have partnerships with individual bloggers to display relevant jobs on their sites. StaffITnow has selected blogs that cater to a specific topic and market jobs relevant to those topics.RSS Marketing
StaffItnow markets the job through RSS reaching qualified candidates. Qualified candidates have subsribed to the feed that is specific to a skill and/or location. Your job reaches people who have the skill you want. We have over 200,000 feeds going out daily.Visibility Through Groups and Forums
We are present at most of the important topic specific groups and forums, where candidates of a particular skill set are also likely to be found.Use of Job Aggregators
We use job aggregators like odinJobs.com, simplyhired.com, indeed.com, googlebase, MSN Expo and 100 other sites to significantly increase the chances of the job reaching the right person.Single Ranked List of Applicants
Our solution doesn't stop with marketing. All responses are collected and ranked according to job and profile fit. Sparing the recruiter profitless hours of browsing through e-mails.Start Job Marketing Now"
Posted by Naveen Bala Posted at 11:25AM Mar 13, 2007 by Naveen Bala
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