Some thoughts for commenters on Heather's blog
Lots of commenters over at Heather's "Marketing at Microsoft" Blog regarding TheLadders.com and our visit with Heather.
I've posted the following comments there, but not entirely sure if the comments system will handle such a long post, so here it is again:
Well thank you very much everybody for taking such an interest in TheLadders.com here on Heather's blog!
To take folks' comments in order:
"Layla Davis" the person whose favorite writer disappeared, sounds like it might be a pseudonymn for that writer! We don't have a Layla Davis in our database, and, in any event, I read every single customer email here at TheLadders.com -- it's about 1,000 per week, and therefore about 150,000 over the past 3 years. I haven't had any reader complain about the details of our resume services, or connect the dots between the fact that many of our resume writers also write articles for the newsletter, so I'd have to guess this is one of the disgruntled writers that we opted out of our service. And I really make no apology for that -- we've reviewed hundreds of resume writers over the years to pick our current crop of 12 approved writers. And the ones that don't make it, or that we fire because their service is not up-to-snuff, can engage in this kind of petty, anonymous sniping. If those are the "outrageous slings and arrows" that we have to put up with to serve our customers better, I am glad to do it.
Wine-Oh: Thanks for the general feedback. Recruiter responsiveness is always a perceived issue among job-seekers. In the good old days, you'd actually get a postcard or a phone call acknowledging your application! (Yes, to all the young ones out there, that's how it was in the goold old days). But today, the problem is that recruiters receive, literally, thousands of applications for every spot. We've tried to help them with our system, which leads to an average of about 15 applicants per spot, but it's just not always possible for a recruiter to reply. Our next generation system, called "My Applicants" and due out next month, will make it much easier for recruiters to provide feedback to candidates.
As far as the interface, Wine-Oh, without more specific feedback there's not much I can address point by point. But I will say that we've improved dramatically in the past year, as we've increased our product, tech, and deisgn staffs three-fold. We're only three years old and we're developing this system from scratch, so it does take a lot of listening, learning, and working on our part to keep getting better. The good thing is, we're defintiely getting better! If you want to see for yourself, just take a look at what our site looked like two years ago when I was still doing the design myself!:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040322140732/http://www.salesladder.com/
Eeeek! :)
Matt -- yeah, we get this one a lot. Because we're inventing an industry -- job seeker information services -- a lot of people approach our model with a sense that it is desperate / cheap / pathetic, etc. Which is really kind of funny and sad. In the other major life decisions you make -- buying a car, buying a house, making investments, doing your taxes -- it is of course, understood, and even a little bit expected that you would seek out better sources of information and purchase them. For some strange reason though, it's viewed as an odd thing to do when it comes to the 2nd most important decision in your life -- where you'll work and how you'll earn your daily bread. So we'll continue to try to overcome people's prejudices about our new industry and prove that our subscribers *should* "hire" us to help them in their job search.
Wine-oh, Part 2 -- thanks for coming back with more comments. Screen recruiters -- we do, in fact, hand-screen every single recruiter and every single job before we allow them into our system. Occassionally, stinkers do fake their way thru -- we're currently pulling about 1 recruiter per week off the site for bad behavior (out of 17,000, so they are actually very well-behaved) and find that 10 to 15 non-high-end jobs each week somehow snuck through our filters (out of 7,000 new ones, so, again, I think within our acceptable margin of error).
Only posting exclusive jobs -- yeah, WIne-Oh, I hear you, and you sound like a very diligent sort. But other customers want just the opposite -- they'd like to see all $100K+ jobs in one place so that tehy DON'T have to go looking everywhere on the net. That's why we put the icons there for you, so you can decide for yourself whether you just want to see the exclusive ones or "all" jobs. Building a product in general means compromises and trade-offs, and trying to find the right mix of features that can best satisfy everybody, so while I definitely hear and understand your particular preferences, I hope you'll understand that we try to do our best to maximize the utility for most subscribers.
Wine-Oh, Part 3 -- Hybrid-type gigs are definitely the hardest to find, Wine-Oh, so I can appreciate that your search was a little tougher. We defintely love feedback -- as I've said, I read every single customer email (about 1,000 / week) and that's what drives our product development process. Feel free to write in and mention that you're "Wine-Oh" from Heather's blog and you'll get a reply from me.
Tobin -- thanks for the comments, and glad that you've rejoined! As far as the resume critique goes, it's meant to be a 15-minute "taste test" of what a resume writer can do. As I strongly recommend that any professional get their resume written professionally, we've arranged for this critique to help you better understand the resume writing market. It is definitely NOT a "freebie" resume re-write, for which any good writer will charge $800 or more. And it's important that subscribers be fair to the resume writers -- you wouldn't want a company to have you come in and complete a project for free to take advantage of your desire to prove yourself. Similarly, resume writers can't do all the work for you for free, and then hope that you'll pay them. It's just not entirely fair.
As far as resume writers and more resumes, that's a good idea. As is a rating system. Alas, given everything in our pipeline right now, that's probably a 2007 project, but thanks for the thinking on that!
Paul -- many thanks for your thoughts.
Recruiters -- we're hoping our new system, out next month, will make managing and communicating with applicants about their status MUCH easier.
Eliminate paid ads --we don't accept money from hiring firms or recruiters, and we don't acept paid ads. We work for you, the job-seeker.
Eliminate monthly fee -- not sure how we'd stay in business if we didn't charge our customers! Also, the monthly fee serves as a cover charge; and like cover charges verywhere that helps ensure that the people using the service feel it is valuable and appropriate for them, thereby keeping inappropriate applicants out.
Eliminate paid ads -- we don't have paid ads from recruiters / employers.
Pay to view jobs -- we're really a lot more than this, and, in fact, people can view all of the job titles, locations, etc. for free on the basic free product. The premium product is about *connecting* with recrutiers: through the job listings, through the Bio database, etc. So we're hoping to make the paid version even more useful in terms of, not just viewing job listings, but connecting with real recruiters, hiring managers, and HR groups, in order to get you into that next great role in life as quickly as possible.
Thanks for the other positive comments, Paul!
