February 28, 2006

Wonderful Paul

Paul Kedrosky, as usual, has got the goods on the Google guys:

Late today Google issued a press release "clarifying" CFO George Reyes' clumsy earlier-in-the-day comments about the company's growth and monetization prospects. Reyes' original attempt to hold down market expectations, plus tonight's official press release, demonstrate beyond a doubt, as I've said for some time, that Google, contrary to received wisdom, gives guidance. It's just that Google is really, really bad at it.

It's amazing what having a few tens of billions of dollars will enable you to be really, really bad at.

February 27, 2006

The High Price of Internet Keyword Auctions

Fascinating BusinessWeek article on "Google's Success":

For instance, Yahoo gives the top spot on its search results page to the advertiser who pays the most per click. But Google maximizes the revenue it gets from that precious real estate by giving its best position to the advertiser who is likely to pay Google the most in total, based on the price per click multiplied by Google's estimate of the likelihood that someone will actually click on the ad.

Seems the geniuses at Google have taken auction technology to a level all its own.

The article does point out a critique of the system that we here at TheLadders.com would have to agree with -- "Advertisers complain that it's too much of a 'black box.'" -- which is certainly true and makes our job that much tougher by requiring that we do large-scale inductive testing and examining of the results as opposed to a deductive method from the algorithm that would allow us more flexibility in planning and surety in execution.

February 24, 2006

A New Voice In The Wilderness

If you've been looking for sustenance for your soul, a feedbag for your mind, and a new rhythm for your life's soundtrack, look no further....

it is all here at MrShafrir.com!

February 23, 2006

TED Conference 2006

I'm attending TED in Monterey, California this week.

What an amazing line-up of speakers and attendees: Nicholas Negroponte, Bill Joy, Jeff Bezos, Al Gore, John Doerr, and about a thousand other really smart and engaged people. Pretty interesting to see the Google guys not only aren't mobbed, but I saw them on more than one occassion kind of wandering around looking for the next person to talk to. It's tough compeitition here!

It's the first year I've been invited so I'm mostly going to be attendin' and not a-bloggin', so talk to you all next week!

An Open-Minded Skeptic's Response to Al Gore's Speech at TED

Vice President Gore gave an impassioned speech last night at TED on the threat of global warming.

Now I don't want to be a doubter, among the many reasons not least of which is I know absolutley nothing about environmental science. But as an educated, open-minded person, I should hope I'm the target audience for his message, which is that human behaviors can impact geological trends in unforseen ways.

I'm particularly interested in learning more as my relatively deep reading (for an amateur) in evolutionary biology and long-standing interest in economics & regulation makes "unintended consequences" an a salient topic for me.
In particular, Jared Diamond's recent book Collapse, has opened my eyes to the varying lengths of feedback, regeneration, and response-time cycles of the earth, life, human institutions, and technology, which are, perhaps, measured in millions, thousands, tens and units of years, respectively. As we are very good at creating new technologies, it is incumbent upon us to ask how good we are at understanding their long-term effects on the fundamental "technology" of our biologically-based home here on Earth.

Vice President Gore's assertion in his TED speech was:

"We are witnessing a collision between our civilization and the earth ... We have no more than 10 years within which we can make a difference; otherwise it's too late. It's a question of political will, but in a democracy political will is a renewable resource."

So in the spirit of open inquiry that pervades TED, here are my questions:
- Is there a selection bias in the peer-reviewed community? Gore cited the Science article that found zero out of 928 peer-reviewed abstracts disagreed with the main point that greenhouse gases cause global warming. I imagine that a similar review of abstracts of peer-reviewed creation scientists (in what? "Anti-Science Magazine?" :) ) would find that zero of them find evolutionary theory explanatory. Does that inform our understanding of the theories, or merely inform our understanding of career choices among ideologically-minded people?
- What are the incentives for environmental scientists? He unironically cited Upton Sinclair's quote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Is it possible that people who are paid to study global warming have an interest in finding that, yes, global warming as a result of human actions exists?
- Humility in science. Whenever a scientific argument announces that there is no counter-vailing evidence, my nonsense detector lights up. Even Newtownian mechanics gave way to the more complete understanding provided by quantum theory. Is there really, absolutley, not a single stitch of countrary evidence? My experience leads me to believe there must be, and folks who deny it lose some credibility in my eyes as dispassionate pursuers of the Truth.
- What are the limits of our computer models? Even the water dynamics in a particular city's bay is too complex a task for computers to calculate, which is why the army builds these scale models in Louisiana. Is it really possible that environmental scientists are so much better at computer modelling that they can predict water, wind, temperature, soil, and current dynamics over thousands or millions of years?
- What are the human costs of proposed actions? Our societies don't build super-tankers, drill for oil, create large-scale manufacturing plants, or engage in industrialized agriculture for fun. Hummers and other ostentatious displays of wealth excepted, we do all these things because there is a market for it, which means that in some appreciable way, people's individual lives are better as a result. And as Hans Rosling so ably points out, there is a direct linear correlatoin between life expectancy and welath. What will be the cost in lives lost due to the proposed course of action?

I look forward to hearing (reasonable, civil) arguments from my fellow TEDsters!

February 18, 2006

Nabokov Authors Another Russian Shutout

Very clever headline writers those AP sports writers are.

Nabokov is one of my favorite writers and Pale Fire, if you've never read it, is his best:

Saying No Gracefully

Heather Hamilton always has smart things to say about recruiting. And she and I share rather unique seats in the recruiting world in that we are both large-scale conduits for candidates, but not actually recruiters/ hiring managers ourselves.

As a result, the thousands of folks that pass from Heather's desk to Microsoft's recruiters, and the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to TheLadders.com weekly newsletters (676,315 to be precise!) frequently deem us to be their must-have lunch date.

Now this isn't the result of our sparkling personalities and witty repartee (though from her blog, I'm certain Heather possesses these attributes in droves!) but from candidates' misplaced belief that we are the actual hiring gatekeepers.

Saying no to these requests is always a little bit of death for me because it feels so... impolite. But as Heather mentions, and my excellent trainer at Crunch would agree, having 40 lunches a week would be, let's say, unproductive and fattening :)

If any Stoners out there want to share their most graceful way to decline these well-meaning invitations, please do comment below!

February 17, 2006

DailyCandy is (just) Eye Candy!

The Local Onliner www.localonliner.com:

It is apparent, however, that many of the cities have been rushed into the marketplace to prepare for the sale. The hunch here is based on the light amount of copy, and also the recruitment ads for “home based” sales reps in five of the markets (Consultant trick: learn how a company is doing by looking at their recruitment ads).

Pretty clever!

Social Networks attract those who are not social or have no networks

The Daily Show explains.

Factory Tour: TheLadders.com

Want to see inside the engine that is Online Recruiting's fastest-growing comapny?

Then join me for TheLadders.com Factory Tour and see firsthand how we do what we do!

Ten Things I believe I believe about Recruiting

This is a great post on Recruiting.com by Brian Toland called Ten Things I believe I believe about Recruiting

By Brian Toland

1. I would rather recruit for the hardest job in the world for a client that calls me back than recruit for the easiest job in the world and a client who never does.

2. Recruiters = Sales People. Manage and compensate them as such and it'll become obvious who the good ones in the organization are.

3. Companies lose great candidates because of overly long, poorly communicated recruiting processes. To have great people who want to work for you and have the process drive them away is an outrage.

4. All searches evolve. You rarely hire the exact profile that you set out to find. Knowing when a search is evolving is the key to client satisfaction.

5. Just because there is a job description, don't assume the client knows what they want. Ask questions of everyone on the hiring team since they don't always agree on what they individually want from a candidate. And they don't always know that they all don't agree.

6. In 99% of the searches, it's not about the successful candidate having a particular skill set, it's about the ability and willingness to keep learning.

7. Conducting a search is like building a house. Great research is the foundation and without it, the rest of search will eventually collapse. Any great recruiter should know how to / have done research at some point in their career.

8. Recruiters make their bones on the phone. If you can't / aren't willing to cold call, you won't be a great recruiter.

9. I've stayed in touch with and have more friends among those candidates I didn't place.

10. Except for the hiring managers and candidates, Recruiting is the best job in the world.

Plus one to grow on

11. I have no proof, but I believe that Recruiters make great Texas Hold Em players. A good recruiter can read people and that's what Hold Em is all about, not the cards. One of my life's dreams is to have a poker game consisting of all recruiters. A man can dream can't he?....

CareerBulider worth $6 bn by the end of the decade

That's what unnamed "Wall Street analysts" say in this story "Website stake could affect Knight Ridder sale":

While Knight Ridder's print operations have struggled, CareerBuilder saw its revenues grow 75 per cent in 2005 to $475m, and Wall Street analysts have estimated that a one-third stake could be worth as much as $2bn within five years.

With the change-of-control provision, the 3 partners that own CB (KR, Gannet, and Tribune) would have to determine a price at which to sell their stakes to each other.

And THAT, my friends, is one sticky wicket. Because the seller will want a high price, the buyer a low one. And where it would end up is, of course, exremely difficult to predict in advance.

So potential owners for KR have this huge, potentially very valuable asset as a major part of the company they are acquiring, and yet.... no good way to assess its value.

Perplexing for them, entertaining for us, dear Stoners!

February 15, 2006

What color is your Web 2.0?

From this collection of Web 2.0 logos, I'd say lime green.

TheLadders.com in Black Enterprise

I really enjoyed this interview with Black Enterprise Magazine:

"I have a radical suggestion for somebody trying to figure out how much their contributions are worth to their [organization]," says Marc Cenedella, president and CEO of TheLadders.com, "Ask your boss."

"I think it's really ultimately part of the boss' job to explain to people how their contributions in the work place matter to the person's themselves, to their boss, to their group, to their company, to society as a whole. But if your boss hasn't done that, ask."

It's also nice when a reporter keeps your words intact, rather than slightly re-arranging them to fit with the reporters' style.

February 14, 2006

Fired for playing Solitaire

Mayor Bloomberg fired a city employee for playing Solitaire at work.

I'm not sure this is the best way to motivate knowledge workers, but it's tough to argue with Bloomberg's successes.

Interesting that the fella is named Edward Greenwood IX. I don't think I've ever seen a "Ninth" before.

Feb Club

Seniors party every night at Feb Club.

Oh my, Yale's Feb Club tradition, with which I was all too intimately familiar during my days there. Feb Club was a party every night for the month of February -- designed to chase the winter blues away with.... let's just call it "good cheer."

Thayer said the organizers have stressed the social aspect over the drinking aspect and have been careful to follow all of the Undergraduate Regulations regarding parties -- parties on weekdays must end by 11 p.m. and on weekends by 1 a.m. -- when they are held on campus because of Feb Club's "sketchy" past.

Feb Club had a "terrible reputation" because it became associated with heavy drinking and wild parties, especially after it was taken over by the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at some point during the '80s or '90s, Dziczek said. By the late 1990s the University began to crack down on the gatherings, which were no longer restricted to seniors, according to a News article from 1998.

But Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg said she does not know when the parties were discontinued or if the administration was responsible for stopping them. She said she remembers that the details of the club and the parties were always shrouded in mystery.

I tried to make very one my sophomore and junior years but don't think I ever got more than 21 or 22 of them. One of my roommates did make them all, I think.

So congratulations to the latest batch of Elis on reviving this forgotten tradition!

They'll Have to Take the "E" for Effort

Dice has mailed this, well, we could charitably call it unfortunate, Dice Valentine to all their clients today.

As the customer who forwarded it to me wrote:

I can't believe how bad this is. Seriously, I'm a bit embarrassed for them...

Ouch. Love hurts.

The LinkedIn Network: LinkedIn Sells Out

I really admire the guys at LInkedIn -- they've built an amazingly far-reaching social network in a little bit under three years.

But part of that reason that LinkedIn was so successful in getting people, including me, to sign up was the promise that "We will never rent or sell your personal information to third parties..."

Well, that's not true any longer, as The LinkedIn
Network makes it pretty clear you can contact anybody in the 4.8 mm person directory as long as you pay LinkedIn to do it.

Now, to be fair, the quote above in toto is "We will never rent or sell your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes." [emphasis added]

I can't help but feel this is Orwlleian misdirection, a little bit like when the rules on Animal Farm are changed from "No animal shall sleep in a bed" to "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets."

I know the good people at LinkedIn believe this distinction "for marketing purposes" absolves them of any blame for the pitches that come in InMail, but what could possibly be the reason for somebody paying to contact you other than that they believe they can extract value from the connection? And what would we call the process of paying for communicating a message to a third party, but marketing? Any legally clever words or constructions that twist and turn around this simple truth won't make it so.

I feel that way, and perhaps others won't.

(For full disclosure, TheLadders.com has indeed launched something called TheLadders.com Professional Network, which allows recruiters and professionals to connect to each other. But as it hasn't the ability to invite contacts, connect to friends, or connect to friends of friends, it is not what would commonly be considered a social network, and we wouldn't really think of it as competitive with LinkedIn.)

Cool News Interface

This site has a cool balloon feature that lets insomniac news junkies (um.... me?) keep up with around-the-clock global events around the clock-ly.

February 11, 2006

Disney trades Al Michaels for cartoon rabbit

I really thought this was Onion headline: Disney trades Al Michaels for cartoon rabbit, but, as it turns out, it's not.

I think I'd be pretty bummed out to be traded for a fake rabbit.

February 10, 2006

Rumor Has It...

That my fellow Matrix Partners portfolio company JBoss is in talks to be bought by Oracle for $400mm or more.

Those Matrix guys have the golden touch, don't they?

Brilliant Viral Campaign

Not sure what this company does, but this viral "which celebrity are you?" application is brilliant.

In this example with my co-workers, it's a little disturbing that Shaft is Anna Kournikova.

February 08, 2006

Bad Publicity for Dummies***

How can you make yourself, your company, and your extremely useful series of books, all marketed under a catchy, unifying trademark, look like a bunch of piddling schmucks?

Easy!

Extend your interpretation of trademark law to blog posts!

Not a very smart move, Coorindator Robbins!

*** The owner of the trademark used in this title can be found by following the link above.

February 07, 2006

Indeed vs. SimplyHired Traffic: A Deeper Look

We've been playing around on MediaMetrix to get a better understanding of our traffic, and the traffic in the industry, and found some interesting data points on the job board aggregators. Specifically, it looks like the big increase in SimplyHired traffic that I'd previously noticed is due to some super-successful promotion they've run with Hi5.com:

Here is SimplyHired's October through December traffic, shown as a total, and also broken down by source of traffic:

And here is Indeed's:

As you can see from the graphs, 64% and 74% of SimplyHired's traffic came from Hi5.com during November and December respectively. That's an extraordinarily high composition of traffic from one site, so I'm wondering how SimplyHired has pulled this one off.

By contrast, Indeed.com's traffic is steady-Eddy and shows the typical December downturn that we've seen over time in the online recruiting industry.

What's the relationship here guys? I looked in vain for any press release or announcement of some big partnershp between Hi5 and SimplyHired, so perhaps Dave or Dion can let us know -- what is it, how does it work, and what are plans for the future?

Well now I *really* don't believe Borrell !

I've been puzzling over Kip Cassino's response to the detailed critique of his estimates by me and others.

He doesn't address any of the specific concerns raised and relies on vague generalties, like citing "The Tipping Point" to present his case. Nor does he share any data that would give us any way to understand their $3.5 bn revenue estimate.

So I looked into the one specific bit of information he gives -- that there are thousands of boutique job boards, including MediaBistro, that have taken up the dollars dropped from the big guys -- because, as Kip says, "The numbers in our model tend to generate skepticism until you understand their ground-level origin."

As CEO Gordon Borrell previously commented:

We count "local" with very granular detail. Unlike other companies that look at the national picture, add up what's happening with Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs and others, we have a unique database of local media operations that tells us much, much more than anyone can see from a high-level national perch.

Our database includes online ad revenue figures from more than 2,200 local media companies that report their revenues directly to us. It's confidential, and used for benchmarking purposes. That database allows us to look into any local market and see almost exactly how much all newspaper Web sites, all TV Web sites, all City.com sites and others are making on Internet advertising.....and how much they're making from online recruitment advertising.

In short, we're counting the thousands of Indians one by one. And they add up to a helluva lot more than anyone realizes.

One more thing you should know. The growth is not attributable to the established recruitment sites such as Monster and CareerBuilder. It is attributable mostly to the new job boards that entered the market in 2005. There were hundreds of new boards -- perhaps thousands -- that went from getting $0 just a year ago to $100,000 or more last year. It all added up to tremendous growth in this segment.

So MediaBistro, which is one of the most successful niche job boards out there, would be a logical choice to include in their survey. After all, Borrell claims to be counting with "very granular" detail the niche job board market. And as MediaBistro is one of the two companies Kip cites as important boutique job boards, Borrell must be gathering job listing revenues from MediaBistro, right?

Wrong.

I e-mailed my friend over at MediaBistro, who is CFO and Publisher, to ask if he shared data with Borrell or had heard of the firm. His reply?:

"Of course we did not share any specific sales data with him...No, I do not know the guy."

Telling.

So the ultimate score is: Borrell has made an outrageous claim about the growth of the online recruitment market, they've been unable to cite specific data that back up that claim, their responses to specific critiques have been vague and data-free, and one of the few specific job boards they cite as the type of company from which they may gather data has never heard of them.

That, in my view, answers the question of Borrell's credibility.

Kip Cassino Responds!

Kip Cassino, VP over at Borrell, has been nice enough to offer an extended reply on my post "I Don't Believe the Borrell Numbers." He offered it in the comments section, but fair is fair, and I think his viewpoint deserves a full blog post, so here, in its entirety, is his reply. Thanks Kip!:

I am delighted to have the opportunity to answer questions about our methodology for estimating advertising spending, which has been developed over more than a decade and accepted by many major media companies. I am posting this to both erexchange.com and cendella.com/stone, since both sites are discussing our recent report.

The numbers in our model tend to generate skepticism until you understand their ground-level origin. We use this model in our work with our media company clients, most of which are on the front line of ad sales and see things from a very different perspective. Viewing advertising only from the 40,000-foot level often delivers an inaccurate view.

Like any other analysis, ours gets better as we work on it. We have sources available to us now that we did not have in 2004, and the sources we did have are now -- in many cases -- better. Rather than complain about our current estimates, a better critique might be to deny those from several years back. If we look back in history, our "backcast" will undoubtedly be more accurate than the estimates we developed then.

Let me offer several points that more specifically address your concerns with our data.

1. The data for our model are gathered from literally every business unit in the US, as well as from many of the federal government agencies that measure them. JOLTS, as well as several of the other BLS data sets that we use, have become available only recently. IRS data, though available for some time, has improved dramatically in its specificity and its accuracy during the past five years. Most of the analyses available today do not take as broad a perspective as ours.

2. Gauging recruitment spending to the listing volumes posted to the major job boards is bound to lead to error -- much like the tale about the blind sages trying to describe an elephant. In fact, if all of the recruitment
spending that left newspapers had translated -- dollar for dollar – to postings on these job boards, Monster would be several levels of magnitude larger than it is today, or ever will be.

What actually occurred, like most human phenomena, was much more complex. Much of the spending went internal to the recruiting businesses themselves, in the form of recruitment spaces on company web sites. Some went to burgeoning recruitment spaces built by industry associations, their associated publications, and/or college linked alumni sites. Along with all this, literally thousands of "boutique" job boards -- like Media Bistro and Snagajob -- sprang up. And, of course, newspapers created their own recruitment web spaces as well. Though there has been some attrition in job board population during the past five years, hundreds still exist and more are created daily.

3. Recruitment spending is not an advertising expense, even though the media treat it as though it were. In any company's budget, recruitment is a human resources expense. Advertising -- in a publication or on a job board – is only one of several choices an employer may make in finding employees. Others include hiring a headhunter or temp agency, where the great majority of recruitment spending that we track is directed. Job fairs, college recruitment, on-site materials and other "non-media" solutions make up much of the remainder. A large portion of the increase we have reported in recruitment advertising is money that has shifted out of the temporary placement agency category; growth in overall recruitment spending was quite modest.

4. As noted in "The Tipping Point," businesses don't change their minds about how they accomplish goals based entirely on precedent. If a better way to do something presents itself, businesses (or individuals, for that matter) rush to it. The stately histograms that show gradual growth of a trend are mostly real only in textbooks. In real life, dramatic swings, sharp spikes and valleys are more the rule. That being the case, when recruitment spending heated up -- as it did substantially between 2003 and 2005 -- it should not be surprising that the move to online recruitment spending was sharp and dramatic.

5. Media has harvested recruitment spending online very effectively during the past few years, using a tool called "upselling." Basically, this means pushing some or all of a print customer's recruitment ads to the web
for an additional fee. Most of the revenue, however, remains on the print side. Around 2005, in many cases, this model reversed itself. In the "downsell," some of a recruiting company's online ads are also put in print. In this case, the majority of revenue remains on the web. The continuing use of "upselling" and its mirror image have much to do with the increases shown in recruitment spending patterns we have measured.

6. A remarkable change in employment is beginning to occur: the nation's largest generation is beginning to retire. Companies that could rely on senior employees to take care of engineering, administration, management, or technical specialties for decades now have to find ways to replace whole departments. My son's case is a good example. He works as an engineer for Westinghouse -- a company that must soon replace 60 to 80 percent of its retiring engineering staff. He's been asked to cast about for classmates who might be good candidates.

This is not the whole story. Human activities are always far more complicated. But the points I have raised underline the danger of dismissing useful estimates just because they don't match "business as usual" models. The future is seldom like the past. If it were, we'd still be writing letters.

Kip Cassino, vice president, Borrell Associates Inc.

Thanks for the reply, Kip? Well, folks, what do you think? Are the Borrell numbers plausible or pie-in-the-sky? Comments welcome below!!

February 05, 2006

Karis Jagger

Very interesting! A huge spike in traffic to Stone as a result of searches on "Karis Jagger." I rather off-handedly posted about her here because she was in my Spanish class in college.

Great E-mail Advice

From Guy Kawasaki, the world's best-known unsuccessful venture capitalist, The Effective Emailer is actually great advice on how to e-mail well:

Craft your subject line. Your subject line is a window into your soul, so make it a good one. First, it has to get your message past the spam filters, so take out anything about sex and money-saving special offers. Then, it must communicate that your message is highly personalized. For example, “Love your blog,” “Love your book,” and “You skate well for an old man,” always work on me. :-) While you're at it, craft your “From:” line too because when people see the From is from a company, they usually assume the message is spam.

Read the whole thing.

A Short History of Job Boards, Part 4: The SuperBowl

1999 was the break-out year for Online Recruitment advertising in the Super Bowl.

Monster, which had done $48 mm in revenues in 1998, broke out big with what's widely viewed as one of the 10 best ads of all-time. Click here to see Monster's classic "When I Grow Up."

And I haven't found HotJobs' original ad yet, but here's a great story that pretty much sums it up HotJobs.com Will Spend Half of '98 Revenue For SuperBowl TV Ad . Ah! Those crazy internet days.

Great Super Bowl Moments for Online Recruiting

With Monster out of it this year, CareerBuilder is our standard-bearer this year.

You can see the latest chimp ads over on CareerBuilder.com's site.

I liked the chimp ads a lot better this year -- the concept ages well.

Yo, CareerBuilder. Represent.

UPDATE: By the way, you have to check out the outtakes... #1, 2 and 4 are deathly funny.

Happy Birthday Shaft!

TheLadders.com Employee Number One turns a year wiser today! happy, happy birthday Shaft!

February 04, 2006

Goodbye HotJobs!

We're running a piece by BIll Arruda on Monday in TheLadders.com Weekly Newsletter titled "How to leave your job with grace." I always love Bill's commentary and insights because they are so spot on.

#6 in his list is:

Prepare your 'So-Long' email. You will want to publicly acknowledge those who have been helpful to you in your career. Include your new contact details to make it easy for your colleagues to stay in touch. A client of mine who is extremely articulate and has a very commanding speaking style created an audio version of his 'So-Long email.' It was on-brand for him and enabled him to deliver something that was memorable and exactly what people in the company expected from him.

Which got me to thinking about my so long e-mail at HotJobs. I spent a lot of time crafting it and received the warmest response from the extended team. I think Bill is so very right. This is a very important part of setting your brand and leaving a great legacy behind.

So, here in full, is my so-long e-mail (with the subtle Douglas Adams intro....):

From: Cenedella, Marc
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 2:23 PM
To: everyone@hotjobs.com
Subject: So long, and thanks for all....

Dear HotJobbers,

I joined HotJobs two years ago to head up business and corporate development. As those of you who remember the Bryant Park location can recall, space was limited. So my first eight days I didn't actually have a desk - I had to come in early to find out who was sick or on vacation and grab their spot for the day. (And I still feel a little guilty about hoping the art director's cold would last just *one* more day :)

But that was okay, because the job was so cool: doing deals with other web sites, buying and selling companies for HotJobs. Hours of negotiating, inches and feet of paper documents, and of course, lots and lots of e-mails! Well, thousands of hours, a mile of paper, and countless "your mailbox has exceeded your storage capacity" messages later, we actually sold the company to one of the world's premier brand names. And now that I've completed my job, my time to move on has come. Today is my last day working at HotJobs, and the first day of the rest of my life as a proud HotJobs alum.

What an extraordinary group of people! And what great things we have achieved! The experts would say that it just simply does not happen that a company can grow from $4 mm to $20 mm to $100 mm in revenue in the space of three years. But each of you, fortunately, were too damn busy building HotJobs to listen to the experts. I believe you are, and should be, tremendously proud of what we've accomplished. And I want to thank you, and especially the founders - Richard, Dimitri and the whole crew - for inviting me to be a part of it.

I am particularly indebted to Christopher Jones, Alex Douzet, and Edward Harrison, who have made my time here so enjoyable. A partial list of their achievements - building the #1 newsletter in the HR business, dropping the cost of resume acquisition by 99.7%, leading us to #1 in MediaMetrix traffic, selling the company twice in one year :) - gives you some idea of the scope of their abilities and commitment. When you work with great people everyday, it doesn't really seem like work any more, does it?

I can't tell you how happy I am that we've brought HotJobs into the Yahoo family. A global brand, a huge presence, and a wonderful assortment of businesses that will work together with us to make HotJobs into something even greater than it is today.

Our loathed competitor has nothing on us. Myself and the senior management team spent 6 months inside the belly of the beast, as it were, and let me tell you - they *should* be scared. You guys are better. Much better.

And so as I leave you to head on to my future, remember what we have done and be sure to teach the next generation of HotJobbers about who we are and what we are made of. We need more Vossens and Lelongs and Kochs and Grandefelds and Lees and Grossmans and Brockmans and Dimitriadises (Dimitriadisi?) and Antens and Speros and Pomeroys in this company because we have a big job to do. And OK, sure, probably a couple more Haires too :)

The horizon is bright with opportunities, and you my fellow HotJobbers, are called to your destiny. Slay the beast! Take the market! Kill the Monster!

And always, always, always.....

Rise up!

Marc

Re-reading this today is a bit poignant for me. As the guy behind the deal (let's face it -- waaaaaay behind! -- the CEO and Board ultimately decide whether or not to sell a company, but as head of corporate development, I did push and prod in the spring of 2001 for us to do a deal and hence, felt a great responsibility for it) I definitely wanted it to work out well for all my soon-to-be-former colleagues.

And I really did believe that we had set HotJobs up for success by marrying it to one of the world's premier internet brands (at that time, THE world's premier internet brand.)

So it's sad that the energy and optimism of this e-mail haven't been justified by subsequent events. HotJobs has dropped to a distant third. 9 out of 11 of the top people at HotJobs were gone within 6 months, and the remaining stragglers have now left. And the place has lost that old HOTJ feeling -- the manic, exuberant, juvenile atmosphere of "hey, let's put on an internet company!"

I had drinks with one of the new HotJobbers the other night, and none of the history has been passed down. None of the tradition, none of the pride or legacy, none of the crazy celebrations, none of the misguided sense that we deserved to be #1. And so it's sad to see that loss. Because what's been lost isn't just the spirit of HotJobs, but a beautiful, inspiring example of the entrepreneurial best in all of us.

And for that, we are all the poorer.

February 03, 2006

Belushi: Beethoven Does Ray Charles

A friday afternoon treat for you, Stoners... Beethoven Does Ray Charles (SNL).

Don't you miss the bejesus out of John Belushi?

11,000 Recruiters on TheLadders.com and growing fast!

Well it seems like just yesterday that we announced RecruitLadder, our site where companies and recruiters can fill their $100K+ jobs at no charge (just so long as it is an open job that pays over $100,000 per year including bonus and commission), had surpassed 10,000 active users.

Well, it seems like just yesterday because it was just last week!:

Jan. 26: More Than 10,000 Recruiters Now Posting Jobs at TheLadders.com

We'd passed it in mid-January, so it was great to check out the numbers this morning and discover that we've now passed 11,000 recruiters actively using TheLadders.com!

I think it's our rocking Sales team, the killer systems that Product and Technology are building, and our Marketing mavens, all working together so well.

Watching a team "gel", and participating in it, is really one of life's great experiences. And that's never been so apparent to me as it has been at TheLadders.com. We've added 4 world-class VPs in the past 8 months, and to see how the team, without overt direction, corrects itself, directs itself, and keeps charging forward, is just such a blast.

So a big self-aggrandizing congrats to us! :)

funny kittens

Who doesn't like funny kitten videos on a rainy friday morning?

More on Borrell

David Manaster weighs in with two great posts: Online recruitment advertising tripled last year??? No way! and this analysis of the industry ex-Monster.

He notes:

Given the lack of existing research that focus specifically on the online recruitment ad market, I find it difficult to believe that the data cobbled together from all of these generalist sources can result in accurate data. (Do the IAB or DMA even produce research on this niche? If so, I couldn't find it on their sites.)

And, further, does a great analysis of what this implies for growth of the market besides Monster:

Without Monster, the rest of the industry - which according to Borrell was only $706 million in size - would have had to have grown by an additional $2 billion. Instead of nearly tripling in size, the rest of the industry would have had to nearly quadruple if these estimates were accurate.

And when looking at CareerBuilder revenue estimates, which grew from $280 mm to $495 mm, the implied growth for the rest of the industry is 413%!

Now if there were over two thousand job board companies out there with an average 2005 revenue figure 5x 2004, don't you think we would have heard about it by now?

Great OFCCP Discussion

At ERExchange Simon Meth's post, plus the very smart comments, make for great reading on OFCCP.

February 02, 2006

I Don't Believe the Borrell Numbers

Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, has been nice enough to post a comment to my post Online Job Revenues Grow... but not this much!.

Gordon begins:

Thank you for your skepticism, and for the opportunity to respond to it. Kip Cassino has been traveling, so I thought I'd respond on his behalf.

And goes on to make the case that Borrell's secret methodology lead them to these outstanding numbers.

To put it flatly, I remain unconvinced of the quality of this methodology, and I do not believe the Borrell numbers:

• "It's confidential" -- when you're in the data business, claiming secret data, unverified, unaudited, and unproven by any third party, is a pretty big no-no.


• The numbers don't add up -- "There were hundreds of new boards -- perhaps thousands -- that went from getting $0 just a year ago to $100,000 or more last year." -- well, 1,000 job boards times $100,000 in revenue would be $100 mm incremental, not $2 bn.


• The postulated behavior of small job boards contradicts my actual experience with entrepreneurs. Having run corporate development at HotJobs, and been an LBO investor before that, I know firsthand how extraordinarily difficult it is to get small entrepreneurs to reveal anything confidential about their business. For Borrell to claim that they have successfully negotiated, with thousands(!) of entrepreneurs to get a private, confidential, accurate, verifiable data stream about their 1-year-old businesses does not fit with the typical experience one finds with small companies.


• The posited superior data collection effort does not cover known private players in the business. A quick call around to job board companies reveals that known $1+ mm players are not sharing their data with Borrell. Who makes up the list of these thousands of small job boards?


• No reported tripling in online advertising expenditure from customers. Customers that we know are not reporting that they have suddenly tripled their online advertising budgets. Neither is this estimated expenditure reported by any of the major customer-focused HR consultants, (care to comment CareerXRoads? what are your customers saying?).


• The methodology that we are invited to review, link here, is a top-down estimate based on Borrell's assumptions as to estimated advertising expenditure that companies in a particular market make on a per-employee basis! I simply don't know how taking educated guesses based off of D&B and the NAA numbers can lead to anything remotely accurate. Though if Borrell wants to share their calculations and specific methodology, perhaps we can get greater insight.

So while I greatly appreciate Gordon's civility, I believe more convincing arguments are required of a data outfit in order to assure the public at large that their methodolgies and calculations are sound.

At the present moment, I am unable to reach that conclusion with regards to Borrell Associates' claim that the online recruitment advertising market has almost tripled in the past year.

Those CareerBuilder Monkeys Do It Again!

CareerBuilder will be in the Super Bowl again this year with the monkeys! And they've put together a really funny viral site: MonkeyMail.

You can send your friends little video greeting cards of monkeys and chimpanzees saying funning and / or inappropriate things. So I'm running a contest -- the person who sends Jason Davis at Recruiting.com the funniest Monkey Mail gets a stuffed monkey from me and TheLadders.com!

Identifying your recruitment brand with "monkeys" does seem a bit risky (then again, the #1 player in the business is "Monster" so a monkey might not be all that bad.) But I can tell you, that it sure makes it easier for us here at TheLadders.com to stand out as the premier site for high-end candidates seeking $100K+ jobs.

Oh that Lanny!

Lanny Baker's former colleagues are impressed with his Monster success. Here's Douglas Arthur from Morgan Stanley:

The most surprising development surrounding Monster’s fourth quarter was the stock’s surge. In addition, [sic] to the positive reaction regarding int’l profitability, the market has clearly warmed up to the relatively new CFO, Lanny Baker, a refugee of sell-side research. Baker’s style, the more deliberate use of cash, the detailed projections, and the emphasis on return on investment is lending this heretofore, occasionally unpredictable story –- more certainty! We now term this “the Baker Put”.

Congratulations, Lanny! You've certainly earned your keep!

February 01, 2006

An intelligent GOOG comment

From, of course, Paul Kedrosky :

Ugh, the commentary this morning from never-worked-in-capital-markets entrepreneurs and VCs on Google's results is driving me nuts. Guys, it doesn't matter that Google was close on its results, and it doesn't matter that this won't chill the entrepreneurial or venture investing climate. What matters is that a volatile, young publicly-traded company with a nose-bleed valuation says it doesn't give guidance, but does. And on one major line where it does give guidance -- forward tax rates -- it got things badly wrong, and it didn't have enough earnings to make up the difference.

Generally, people or institutions that behave erratically are less valuable, and less cherished, by the world.

MBA Entrepreneur: An Oxymoron?

Paul Kedrosky, whose blog you MUST put into your RSS... right now... has a great post on MBA Entrepreneur: An Oxymoron (he has it in the declarative, I've changed it to a question above.)

Paul writes:

Most real entrepreneurs blanch at the idea of putting their business venture on hold to pursue an MBA degree. Not only that, most of them realize in retrospect that they learned more about business in the six months of creating a new venture than they would have learned in two years in the classroom.

And for the most part, that could be true. But, as I posted in his comments, and I suppose I'm a bit unique in that I started a business before business school -- a company specialized in the export of U.S. made pet food to Japan (yes, yes, *that* hoary old chestnut) -- and ran it all thru b-school. Joined a couple companies after school but started my own gig again 3 years ago -- www.TheLadders.com, the world's largest $100K+ job site.

I found business school to be the most rewarding 2 years of my life up to that point. Not because I learned *more* than I did as the owner of a little $3 mm business, but because I was able to put what I had lerned into perspective, a bigger framework; and the people I met were and have been invaluable advisors, friends, and inspirations.

Might not be for every entrepreneur, but for those with a considered view of the world and interesting in knowing more about *how* they were successful (kinda like the trick shot pool artist who wants to, but doesnt need to, know physics) it is an invaluable life experience.

The Lanny Effect

Since being named CFO last March, Lanny Baker has presided over a 50% increase in Monster's stock price:

Let's make a list of smart Lanny moves:

• Divesting non-core assets


• Reigning in the acquisition appetite


• Initiating a stock buy back


• Focusing on cash flow generation

I bet those have something to do with the stock price moves, don't ya think?

That's one smart cookie, that Lanny Baker, and the industry sure is lucky to have him.