7 Warning Signs for Monster.com
In 1999, Monster was born and quickly became the largest and one of the most respected job boards in the industry. Over the past few years (like most job sites), Monster.com has tried to rebrand itself as much more than a job board, with little success.
The site has made a lot of headlines recently, many of which highlight a gloomy future. Is Monster becoming a Mini-ster?
Here are 7 recent warning signs:
- Last week, UBS downgraded Monster Worldwide Inc (MWW), citing market share losses in North America. The news cited Monster losing market share to competitors in 2011, and Analyst John Janedis references limited chances of a reversal in this trend in 2012.
- 6 weeks ago, Monster.com announced it would be laying off 7% of its’ workforce (400 people), as continuing global economic uncertainties persist.
- At Baird’s 2012 Business Solutions Conference last week, Monster.com’s CEO Sal Iannuzzi shared they find themselves in an ironic position considering the company is in a stronger position that it has been – in years – with a stock price that is totally in-adequate. During the session Iannuzzi shared Monster is exploring strategic alternatives. Here is an audio replay of that presentation.
- At the Baird event, Iannuzi also shared Monter has well over 300,000 clients compared to LinkedIn’s 9,200 clients. He added Monster focuses on postings and search primarily for jobs between $50,000-$100,000 and in comparison LinkedIn is mostly search – for jobs paying more than $150,000. He added Monster and LinkedIn are in 2 different sectors of the market, and that even if you do use LinkedIn to search profiles you should use Monster’s search technology to do so. Seriously?
- Monster has evolved its’ products, and launched new ones too. BeKnown, as an example, made the Top 5 Recruiting Fails for 2011. Another example, nearly 80% of the Monster iPad app users rate it 1, out of 5. This, from a technology leader.
- Comscore shows Indeed.com leading the job search pack, with over 50% of the traffic in the US. CareerBuilder is #2, and Monster is #3.
- MSNBC posted an article yesterday - Is LinkedIn Ready for a Monster Acquisition? The article states that Analysts see Monster.com’s revenue and earnings falling by 6% and 30%, respectively, compared to other competitors facing growth. As a comparison, Analysts are banking on revenue and profitability soaring 67% and 74% for LinkedIn. The financial difference between these 2: Monster’s enterprise value is less than $1 billion, while LinkedIn’s value is more than $8 billion.
While many say job boards are not dead (and they’re not), it will be interesting to see how the strategic alternatives the company is considering play out in the job board space. Until then, we’ll see if the company will transform itself, or go from a Monster to a Mini-ster.
Top Mobile Recruiting Apps
It’s been 5 months since the industries first mobile recruiting conference. Since then, more and more companies are developing mobile recruiting capabilities. The business case for mobile continues to strengthen for both sides of the table (candidates and recruiters).
According to a Potentialpark communications study – the priorities for candidates related to mobile are fairly clear. Recruiters on the other hand, continue to be faced with increased demands and competing priorities. An on-the-go approach is becoming the norm. While there are literally hundreds of apps available that one could argue have potential or could be used for mobile recruiting it’s not realistic to have pages or folders filled with the “maybes”. The likelihood is Recruiters rely on a couple of them, at best. We’ve completed a lot of research, and have highlighted 10 of the top apps for mobile recruiting.
Written Communication (Dragon)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This is an easy-to-use voice recognition application that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. Can be used for a re-cap of a phone interview, communicating with hiring leaders or candidates, or can also come in handy for writing blog posts when injured.
Video Interviewing (HireVue)
Several months ago, we published a 4 article series on video interviewing, including the ROI and benefits. Since that time, the video scene for recruiting continues to evolve from interviews to now include video introductions, applications, and even sparks. Last week HireVue announced the HireVue App™ as a way to continue accelerating the recruiting process. Candidates can also learn more about the organization by watching employment branding videos, as well as introductions and thank you videos from the hiring manager and recruiting team.
Sourcing & Networking (beamMe)
It wasn’t that long ago that beamME was about sending a virtual business card to other devices via SMS or email. With the app, you can now quickly find people nearby based on your profile. You can connect beamME securely to your Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook accounts and see contacts across networks in a single app. You can then easily chat, share your actual location or contact information and meet. beamME even learns your preferences over time – the more you use it, the better it get.
CRM Capability (JobScience)
From sourcing and pipelining to building communities and managing relationships, the need for CRM tools have increased significantly over the past 5 years – primarly due to the limitations of some applicant tracking systems (and the differences in activities between a “contact” and an “applicant”. Jobscience, one of the leaders in this space, launched Jobscience Mobile powered by Force.com, Saleforce.com’s social enterprise platform for employee apps. Recruiters can invite candidates they have just met instantly to apply digitally, and resumes are instantly parsed.
File Management (Box.net)
For Recruiters or companies not using a more formal CRM tool or process that has an app available to clients, Box.net is a great service (and app) that enables to the storage of files (Resumes) for an on-the-go access. With the app, you can very quickly and easily access, view, or share files.
ATS & CRM Tool (Bullhorn)
The Bullhorn mobile app provides their key ATS and CRM features at a recruiters fingertips. Examples include information on candidates, contacts, companies, jobs, notes, and Resumes. With single click functionality, easy tracking, and integrated apps for email, calendar, and contacts – everything remains in sync.
Recruiting Platform (The Hire Syndicate)
The Hire Syndicate is the only Recruiter split placement community that enables Recruiters to collaborate with networks of trusted Recruiters and share placements using real time and mobile recruiting technology.
Sourcing (AutoSearch and Google Power Search Utility)
AutoSearch offers Recruiters the ability to scour the Internet for top prospective candidates and leads without spending hours on dozens of individual sites or forming complicated Boolean search strings. If you source on Google, the Power Search Utility can be helpful in building a search string – with the power of Google built into the app.
Tungle
Tungle is a free app that helps with scheduling time with candidates. In addition to basic calendar functionality, others can see your calendar availability easily online – so they can schedule and confirm interviews.
Productivity – Reminders (TextMinder)
If you don’t have a personal assistant like Siri 
, an app like TextMinder allows you to schedule SMS text reminders to be sent to you at the times you specify, repeating as often as you choose. Whether you need to call a candidate, follow-up with a hiring leader, or set a reminder to conduct some research TextMinder might be worth checking out.
Job Postings (JobSpeek)
JobSpeek is a free mobile job posting app that re-imagines the traditional job description. It combines the unique capabilities of the smartphone and bring your jobs to life. The app allows you to add a picture to your posting, and Our format lets you add a picture of your business and record a 60 second audio “hiring message” right from your mobile device.
If you’re wondering where the obvious apps are (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), we skipped past the obvious ones. If there are others you use or would recommend – please share in the comments section.
The use and adoption of many of the apps depends on some of the systems you use and the sophistication of your approach. Regardless, if you find yourself in a state of “app overwhelm”, the most effective app on a mobile device is – no app at all. Just smile and dial.
Job Search Leader Indeed.com Launches Company Pages
Indeed.com, the leader in the online job search space is crushing other job boards in traffic. According to comScore, overall traffic to U.S. job search sites grew 27 percent in January to 24.2 million total visitors. Indeed.com ranks as the leader with over 1/2 of these visitors (13.7 million), followed by CareerBuilder.com with 9.8 million , Monster.com with 5 million and SimplyHired.com with 3.5 million.
Last week, Indeed.com announced the launch of “company pages”. Simply put, these are free profiles that provide employers with a new way to promote their company and job openings to job seekers on Indeed.
I had a chance to catch up with Chris Hyams, VP of Product for Indeed, and he shared the following:
“Our goal at Indeed is to help job seekers find the perfect job. With Indeed Company Pages, job seekers can now find out what it’s like to work for millions of companies. Company Pages also give employers a new way to promote their workplace and jobs to 60 million job seekers.”
Employers can claim and customize their pages with company information, logos, and links to their website and social profiles. Company Pages will also make it easier for job seekers to find information about prospective employers and view their jobs.
For more information, and to see examples of employer Company Pages, please visit Indeed’s Blog.
The 2012 Social Recruiting Report
Social Recruiting continues to be a focal point in the evolution of online recruiting. In a recent post titled The Reality of Online Recruiting, I concluded with data is just what it is.. Data. As an example, a recent JobVite report showed 78% of job seekers attributed their job to Facebook. Say it isn’t so.
Today, Bullhorn released data which found that Facebook is just not where recruiters are finding candidates. The report presents key findings and benchmark data pulled from the Bullhorn Reach user network of over 35,000 recruiters. What’s the outcome? LinkedIn is KING.
I had a chance to connect with Art Papas, Bullhorn’s President and CEO to discuss the findings. Here’s what he shared:
“What we are exposing is a disconnect in the social recruiting space, between where job seekers think they will find a job and where they’re actually much more likely to find one. “We think that this information will help recruiters connect with candidates more successfully on social media.”
Bullhorn measured LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter’s frequency of usage by recruiters and their effectiveness for sourcing candidates and found that LinkedIn is blowing away the competition in terms of job views and applications. Even Twitter (Twitter!) is ahead of Facebook in these metrics. A few examples include:
- For job applications, LinkedIn is driving almost nine times more applications than Facebook and three times more than Twitter.
- Twitter drives almost twice as many job views per job as Facebook and three times more applications per job.
- A Twitter follower is almost 3 times more likely to apply to a job posting than a LinkedIn connection and 8 times more likely to apply than a Facebook friend.
- Facebook is the network least connected to by recruiters, with only 10% using it in combination with LinkedIn for recruiting
Included below is the infographic on how recruiters are using social media. Click here for the free 2012 Social Recruiting Report from Bullhorn.
20 Competitive Intelligence Tools For Recruiting
Great recruiters and researchers use competitive intelligence in a variety ways to advance their organizations talent acquisition efforts and results – from industry information, company research, organizational charts, employee information, labor market information, and overall trends.
Recruiters that lead the way use competitive intelligence to position and drive influence with their hiring leaders.
And sure, while the best researchers have as many cell phones and numbers as they do accents for making calls, there are a lot of other ways to gather information quickly and cost effectively (usually free). While this list is focused on recruiting, it can be used in almost any research function. Here are 20 powerful competitive intelligence tools you can use in recruiting:
- The Free Library: A great source for articles and information on your competitors. You can browse by date, author, category and name. A quick example – I typed in the company Wells Fargo, and instantly came across information about a reorganization which included information about a new structure (including some names and titles). There are a lot of opportunities with this tool – this is just one quick example.
- BoardTracker: This powerful tool has near real-time monitoring with over 2 billion (yes billion) in-depth discussion posts from hundreds of thousands of forums and millions of users. You can get advanced alerts & tracking options with alerts by email, twitter, SMS, RSS, etc. Another popular option is BoardReader
- Google Alerts: Keep up to date instantly with what your competitors are doing, and have the results delivered to your email or set up as RSS feeds. Customize your alert to include specific people, press releases, financial information, etc. The opportunities with google alerts are endless.
- SocialMention: Receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, individuals, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, or a competitor. This can be a powerful tool, and includes exporting features as well.
- LinkedIn: For starters, follow your competitors pages. Check their employees updates, track a companies new hires, promotions, people that have left, where they have gone, press releases, research org charts, etc. If you aren’t taking advantage of everything LinkedIn has to offer, start with this one first for recruiting.
- Glassdoor: Research companies, jobs, salary information, awards, and as of last week – inside connections.
- copernic AGENT: Simply put, Copernic Agent is the best meta search engine that queries several search engines and aggregate the results to give you the best search results.Copernic Agent gives you the ability to search deeper into the Web and to get relevant, high quality results grouped into categories..
- Google Plus: Google Plus can be used as a source to find information on companies and employees. Not only are companies establishing their brand pages on the site, but individuals are sharing content about companies that have not decided to have a presence on Google Plus. Like with any other site, you might be surprised with what you can find in a short amount of time.
- Twitter: Are you following your competitors and all their employees on twitter? How about the people that the competition is following? Are you leveraging twitter lists? What lists do they use or subscribe to?
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: There is a significant amount of data available from the BLS that can be valuable information when used in recruiting and research. If you haven’t visited the site in awhile, I’d recommend taking a look at what’s available.
- Twitter Search: Twitter search is the #2 search engine. Are you tracking what you should be? Some obvious choices include competitor names, news, and relevant keywords. Use the advance search feature for even more options.
- Wikipedia: What’s out there about your competitors? Check out the business intelligence possibilities with one company’s search results on the Wikipedia site – for Target Corporation.
- Job Descriptions: Do a quick search on job boards for competitive intelligence jobs to see what other methods or sources companies look for when hiring these professionals – it may give you some other ideas.
- Indeed: Yes, you can find jobs on indeed and see what jobs your competitors are hiring for, but don’t forget other Indeed tools including hiring trends, their online forums, and salary research.
- Slideshare: Which of their employees are presenting? Where? What’s being published? Tap into this information with a couple of searches on the site, and you’ll quickly see what’s possible.
- Google Finance: If your competitor is publicly traded, you can perform a search in Google Finance, where you can review income statements, latest news stories and blog posts about competitors and their business data.
- CI Radar: Automatically uncover competitor presentations, research, competitive analysis, etc. Documents can be automatically collected, filtered, and scored for relevancy based on your industry/market.
- Research firms: If you don’t have the resources, you can always rely on a research firm to provide you with information including names, numbers, organizational charts, etc.
- Company & Industry Information: Some of the best sources of information for competitive intelligence can be found in annual reports, analyst coverage, and industry analysis.
- Your employees, references, and candidates: They all sounds obvious, yet don’t forget about them. We’re hiring people everyday, and they can supply the most relevant information quickly – or put you in touch with someone who can.
A list of 20 tools can be overwhelming and it can take some time to look through and decide what makes sense for you to use. I’d recommend starting out by putting together a simple strategy. Then, start with the easy ones – that provide results sent directly to you. Also, carving out a couple of 30 minute blocks of time in a week can help to. It’s a small investment (time), compared to the return.
What other tools do you use for competitive intelligence?
Glassdoor Leverages Facebook and Launches Inside Connections
Glassdoor is the only site that offers professional networking, job listings and reviews and salary reports in one place – and they represent more than 150,000 companies including 100% of those that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Fortune 500 and the S&P 500. Minutes ago they announced the launch of Inside Connections. The new product will leverage Facebook to help job seekers quickly uncover if they know someone at a company where they want to work.
I had a chance to catch up with Glassdoor to learn more about the launch of Inside Connections and Robert Hohman, co-founder and CEO shared the following:
“Friends and family are the most trusted resource for career advice, and with Glassdoor’s Inside Connections, we are bringing together who you know with what you need to know about jobs and companies. Inside Connections allows job seekers to leverage their Facebook network to uncover where they have an ‘in’ at specific companies to help them land the right job”. said Robert Hohman, co-founder and CEO of Glassdoor. “
Learn more about Inside Connections via the brief Glassdoor YouTube video:
Click here to view the embedded video.
You can download the Glassdoor Inside Connections .pdf overview or visit the Glassdoor site for more information.