Professional organizations and double dipping
Heather over at Microsoft has a great post on professional organizations and double dipping. Money quote:
I hate to keep harping on the same things over and over again, but for a professional org chapter, you have to think about who the customer is and what they want. If the ultimate customer is the member, they may want access to open job listings (hello...networking is a major reason people join these groups). If you don't charge the company for the job postings, you will get many of them. This will make your members happy and you'll have lovely stories about job seekers who have found their next role via the organization (hello....that you can use as marketing tools to get more members). All this from me and I have no formal training in marketing (other than one undergrad class which I hardly remember at all). If you charge the companies for the job postings, you are competing for dollars with other chapter level organizations so you aren't going to get as many listings and your membership will go elsewhere to seek out listings. Seems pretty simple to me. What am I missing? I think that these groups will end up making more money in the long run if they decide to charge EITHER the employer or the seeker, but you can't have it both ways. You have to pick....what is your business, who is your supplier and who is your customer. Could it be any simpler?
That's exactly why we don't charge our corporate recruiter and executive search friends for job postings at TheLadders.com. As the nation's largest organization of $100k+ professionals, we exist to serve the job-seeker, the high-end professional. And to do that, we need to see all the high-end jobs out there, not just the ones that have a little extra left over in their recruitment advertising budget.
