Liquid HR

iProfile re-revisited. Does it work?

So in my last post I reviewed the iprofile CV publication product, and had an overall favorable view of it from a strategic standpoint. So now I've come to the big test: it looks pretty, but does it work?

The Process:

On February 2, I updated my online CV profile -- i.e., my iProfile -- and opened access to four recruitment agencies (spring.com, volteurope, JM group, glotel)...and I guess I must have left Abraxus on the list as well, since they apparently viewed my profile. So I click on "my connections" to confirm who should have access...and I keep getting an error message. Over and over - the rest of the menu works, however. 

So I head over to volteurope.com. I browse a few jobs, find one I like, and click "apply now." I get the usual webform asking me to write in a cover letter and upload my CV. Hmm. I look at the form again and find a "login" option. Perhaps I can use this to leverage my iProfile. I try some email addresses, including my iProfile associated email address, and none of them work. Hmm. OK, so I just go ahead and register. Then find a job and try to apply. Again, no reference to iProfile

Strike 1. Darn. I thought by having an iProfile, I wouldn't have to upload yet another CV! Shouldn't iProfile be integrated with Volteurope, so that when I apply for a job, I just click a button, and my iProfile is utilized?

So I then go to spring.com. I'll cut it short. My experience is the same. What am I missing?

For me, the point for a portal like iProfile is to empower me. I can't see how iProfile does that. It doesn't seem to invite a lot of attention from recruiters, and I can't see how it helps me distribute my CV to recruiters. I hesitate to make conclusions, because I feel like I have to be missing something, but maybe not..!?

Liquid HR View:

One thing I did notice along the way on the Volt Europe site, however: I was offered an email address if I wanted to query about the job. The email address was something like this:

person.12343.123@volt.aplitrak.com

Aplitrak? Hey -- that's the Broadbean application! Remember, Broadbean distributes jobs to various job boards on behalf of recruiters and hiring companies. Does this mean Volt Europe does not have jobs of its own? If so, the house of mirrors is complex, and iProfile is a like a layer upon a layer upon a layer of jobs. (And Volt Europe doesn't seem to be integrated with iProfile, at least in any consumer friendly way that I could find). If all of this were true, the value chain looks something like this:

Iprofile ?-> VOLT <- Broadbean <- job source

Maybe VOLT publishes its jobs via Broadbean, however, but utilises Aplitrak to post those jobs back to its own website.

iProfile ?-> VOLT <-> Broadbean -> job board.  

Once again, I have determined there is a lot of air in this industry. Could somebody point me to the job source, please?  On the other hand, the industry is becoming more liquid. The Liquid HR economy is beginning to become reality as jobs are passed around. And guess what will happen next? Those that don't add value to this process will start to be eliminated.

Conclusion:

Back to iProfile, and apologies for this discursive blog. I guess I don't get it. It looks beautiful, but someone will need to explain to me why the iProfile service is something I want. Maybe I just need to allow many more recruiters to access my account.

I wonder whether the guys at iProfile got the portal and consumer front end together, but forget about the backend or never really understood the strategy.

Anyway, hate to sound nasty, but I have to call it like I see it. Good luck fellas, somebody make some comments and show me I'm wrong about all of this.

Liquid HR Supports Techcrunch and Arrington

Just wanted to post a reference to Michael Arrington's recent blog regarding threats and abuse he has received as a prominent blogger. Arrington and the guys at Techcrunch are well known in the tech community and have informed and inspired many of us, so I thought I would just show my own support by posting a link to his latest:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/some-things-need-to-change/

Mark

Revisiting iProfile: We're getting there

Too much time has elapsed since I checked out the iprofile website. I decided to go back on to see whether they've come as far as they said they would when last I talked with them.

To refresh, iProfile has a service whereby you can create an online CV which can then be reused among various recruiter websites. A great idea (not uniquely theirs - I originally started my own venture long ago with this idea in mind, and I'm sure others have thought of it), but in my first review of iProfile I found that the implementation bent over backwards to appease the recruiters rather than empowering the job seeker.

So anyway I logged back into my long dormant account, and was greeted with a new layout. Things are looking up. For the moment, I'll abbreviate the description of the layout. Let's just say It's more user friendly than before -- with topside tab (my unscientific name) menus and various widget boxes a la facebook. There are bits of clunkiness here and there: for instance, selecting preferred work locations doesn't seem to be using AJAX, so you have to type in and click 'search' for a location like "Switzerland." But nevertheless the interface is relatively well organized and easy to understand.

What's more important: iprofile is more user focused than before. I have a list of recruiters, and I can check and uncheck each one to determine whether my CV is distributed to their website's database. Each recruiter website has associated Terms and Conditions to which I must agree, and a little logo where they can present their brand and uniqueness (snicker, giggle). You can attach your CV and develop your online CV in another submenu, and job search in yet another. Jobs summaries are representative of that which is on various recruiters' websites. Furthermore, iProfile compatible websites have iProfile logo indicators associated with them -- so you know where you iProfile CV can be used. Of course, this creates a gentle push upon the recruiters to become more compatible.

What's also cool is that if you go these individual websites, they have iProfile compatible logos on them (ever wonder why I had the www.liquid-cv.com 'CV' in a waterdrop? It was to be distributed to all participating websites as a compatibility indicator). All of this is sign-posting for the consumer, making his or her job easier.

Liquid HR angle

Remember, there were three requirements to develop the Liquid HR economy. They were the liquidity of information, standardization of information, and the bidirectional flow of information. iProfile has helped with standardization of data: the iProfile CV is a standard CV that can be used in various websites. However, we'll need to drill a bit deeper to see whether the iProfile is replicated with data intact from one recruiter website to another -- in my last posting some time ago, it seemed iProfile was having trouble with this point: I logged in to various iProfile compatible websites and found my CV has been slightly mangled from its original iProfile form.

However, what's particularly interesting is that iProfile is now beginning to help with the bidrectional flow of information: on iProfile, we have a database of recruiters in the same way that recruiters have a database of candidates. However, this information doesn't go very deep: we don't have any information about whether these recruiters are any good, how many people they place, etc. Therefore, look for iProfile to start creating a consumer-oriented review service for various recruiters. So next to each recruiter, you might find a 3 or 4 or 5 star rating, and perhaps testimonials from happy candidates. You know -- references for the recruiter (the same way we have references for ourselves). Why do I think this would happen? Think about all the crap recruiters that have wasted your time, and the need to make that known to other would-be candidates. Furthermore, I had the iProfile idea a long time ago, and recruiter review was one of the features I wanted to tack onto it. And it's logical: it follows the requirement for the bidirectional flow of information. Companies and recruiters have info about us: we need info about them.

Good, good...the recruiters are starting to get pushed down into the lower ranks of the supply chain. They are a source for jobs, while iProfile is beginning to take over the actual consumer relationship. What's next? Once recruiter review functions are in place, the recruiters that don't add much value will be squeezed out, in favor for a direct relationship between the consumer-oriented website (in this case iProfile) and the actual source of the job (the hiring company).

So I'd say iProfile is stepping into the right direction. I'll subsequently go further to see whether, in practical terms, they are providing a worthwhile service, by reviewing the fidelity of my iProfile CV once it is sent from company to company, and by seeing if the actual jobs are any good, and if recruiters take notice of a CV. But so far, it looks like the fellas at iProfile are further along the right track.

Recruiting with inflated nonsense job titles

So the other day I happened upon a job posting for a company called Concep. I'm sure it's a lovely company. They were advertising for a "Marketing Executive." For some goofy reason I clicked on the job description, and found out that this "Executive" would be paid £28,000 annually. Not in the outskirts of Hyderabad, but right here in London. It was an entry level job. Why in the world would this company refer to this position as an "executive" position? Perhaps they meant the role entailed "executing" entry level marketing stuff? It reminded me of a conversation I had with a recruiter long ago, who explained to me that a "Business Development Manager" managed the process of business development. Silly me, I thought managers managed people inside a company, but by now we have all become accustomed to the meaninglessness of the word "manager."

Such inflated, hot-air bullpoop job titles make us all take recruiters less seriously. And when you add up all the wasted seconds clicking on mistitled job-postings, slows down the process of searching for jobs and getting people employed. Of course, these kinds of job titles gum up online recruiting, as the precision of various search engines and matching engines is dulled by job titles that don't match required skills or role definitions. I guess the upside is that we can now be "Global Heads of " something.

Liquid HR Angle

Stop for a moment. Put on your conspiracy-theory hat. Think about the number of conversations you have had with recruiters that have led nowhere. Think of the number of CVs or resumes you have created and posted. This process isn't improving recruiting. It's not helping you get a job faster. It's slowing you down. It's making you get a job slower. It's making companies operate less efficiently because they have open positions. It's destroying value, not adding it. Let me run it by you again: these folks are taking money from companies, creating imaginary value by slowing down the recruiting process, and sending you on various job hunting misadventures. Think about it.

I remember a documentary clip I saw about a firm that would measure your body and send the measurements to their factory to create a bicycle that perfectly fit you. They would then intentionally slow down the delivery of this bicycle to raise perceived value. Let that notion inspire you. Be creative. Think about it.

Zubka Review II: The Vengeance

So I've received emails from Zubka offering me thousands of pounds if I refer somebody in a particular position. With such enticement, I went straight back to the Zubka website and was greeted by a logon screen with such giant characters and big buttons that even Web 2.0's standard for dumb and simple interfaces seems to have been eclipsed. I pressed on.

If you don't recall, Zubka's business model is to faciliate middle-men. It gets ordinary folks like you and me to make job referrals by offering us bounties for successful candidates. Not a bad idea, though I was uncertain where it would go during my first review.

Having returned to Zubka, I don't yet see any huge advances in terms of the website, but I'm not sure it really needed any. What's more important is quite simply whether people are posting jobs and referring candidates....so I plow on...

I see 479 postings, with an average reward of roughly 4% of the annual salary per job, and Zubka's basic fee is supposedly 8% of the job's salary - so half the bounty goes to Zubka, and half to the referrer. The average job looks like it has been sitting there for about 2 weeks, which means these postings are refreshed about 24 times a year. Therefore, it looks as if there's enough volume through the system here for the folks at Zubka to make a liveable wage.

So I suggest the formula is something like this: of the jobs that are posted (X), how many of those are real jobs (Y), how many of those are not filled by other means (Z), and finally: how many remaining will be filled by avid Zubka users (the magic number)?

If I'm incredibly generous with revenue projections, and conservative with costs (say 4 full time people), I can see them making a profit of about 315,000 GBP annually, but I think the real number is closer to about 100K, and could even be lower. While that's great for a lifestyle business, it won't satisfy the VCs. Given that they received investment from Benchmark Capital, and had over 2 million investment by Q1 2007, I think they're falling way behind.

I watched a video of one of the co-founders, David Shieldhouse, and he seemed to be singing music to my ears. "Disintermediation of the recruiting agency...needs to happen." But then he also indicated there was some surprise internally at the lack of takeup of their services. Then he indicated that a lot of recruiters are actually using Zubka, which is what I had guessed. He also said he hoped Zubka would help eliminate the non-value adding recruiters that "match one word on a CV to a job spec." What a wonderful vision! (See all of my earlier postings).

Well, you recall my rather bearish outlook on Zubka from a previous post: recruiters are really the only ones that are going to want to invest the time and take the cash-up-front risk. So really Zubka is just becoming a cloud computing service for the recruiters. That makes some money, but fundamentally means they probably won't be creating or recreating an industry in a way necessary to have explosive growth.

Well, I like to imagine that my projections and strategic readings were correct, so I'll go ahead and pat myself on the back. As far as Zubka goes - it's at best an incremental step in the right direction. But it aint the next big thing. Why? Well, I'm feeling a bit prophetic at the moment, so I'll let the Zubka guys give me a call and buy me a pizza before if they want to hear that. So far, I've gotten two free pizzas.

Why the recruitment industry often irritates me

Some time ago - before my day job, I assure you, I was interviewing for various positions, and was called for an interview by one particular company, BMS IT, in the UK. Now, normally I wouldn't name and shame in this fashion, but since I do review online Internet companies by name, I ask myself why a recruiter should be treated any differently.

So I sat down with the recruiter (he'll be unnamed) in an office in downtown London, and we had a conversation about the job at hand. It seemed somewhat relevant for my background, so points scored there. More importantly, we talked about recruiting as an activity. He expressed how baffled he was that recruiters didn't call back their candidates after talking with them, and seemed to really understand the perspective of the candidate. Music to my ears! Very professional. We discussed another position and said he would send the details of it after our meeting. I believe I also needed to follow up with perhaps another cover letter or version of my CV, or something of this nature. I did my part in a follow-up email. And I heard nothing from him...ever.

How can a person criticize unprofessional behavior and then turn around and do exactly what he has just criticized? Oh, life, and the injustices we see every day.

So that irritated me. What irritated me more was when somebody else from that office called me weeks later for a different position. I expressed what had happened and told the person on the phone, quite clearly, to remove my name from their database of CVs. That was roughly a year ago.

Now, what's really funny is that this company called me AGAIN about a week ago. The guy said he wasn't sure whether I would be the right fit, but might know somebody who is. I politely told him to email me the details of the job. How did they get my name? Have they seen my CV? My guess is that they have, because they never got rid of it in the first place. It's possible he found my name on linkedin.com ...but as far as I can see my phone number is not published there. I have to assume the worst.

Now, my instinct tells me these guys could get into hot water for ignoring my request. So my overall assessment of this company is:
1: Jobs (as published, for what that's worth) are pretty good.
2: Organizational skills are bad.
3: Long term relationships and intangibles (trust, etc.) -- well, read the passage above if you are still not clear on my view there.

Enough on that company.

Recruiting companies often simply behave like card shufflers. The stack of cards on the left are jobs. The stack of cards on the right are CVs. Shuffle left, shuffle right. Turn over a card from each stack. If there's a vague match, make a call.

Guess what? A computer can do that--and faster. And this is what got me interested in the online HR business so long ago. Now, my own venture is far from perfect (though not bad considering only one guy was ever really driving it), and my blogs may not have won prices for journalism, but at least my heart has always been in the right place: Eliminate the people that aren't adding value to the system because they are not helping people find jobs, and not helping companies find employees. Create a more liquid economy where companies are not rewarded for hording jobs and CVs, but for making the right match through real understanding of the candidates and of the jobs. Everything else? Leave to the machines.

Coming soon, a return to Zubka..

Return from Sabbatical

Apologies for the long absence, readers, but this (your) blogger was out for the summer season + a month or two. In subsequent posts, we're going to go back to basics, walking over some of the old ground to see how much closer to the Liquid Economy we have come. We'll take another look at:

• Linkedin (Can't avoid it. Are they really adding 3000 users per day?)
• Xing
• Naymz
• Notch(ed?)Up
• iProfile (SkillsMarket)
• Open Social

...And others that have popped up. We need to find out how close we've come to terminal velocity in this industry (free jobs? cheap CVs?). We need to see how much closer the Internet and the Intranet have come to merging. And we'll have to take a look at it knowing that the financial sky is falling. Are mergers and acquisitions in the works? What does it mean that Broadbean has been acquired?

By the way, it was just announced that Totaljobs and CWjobs won the National Online Recruitment Aware (NORA). I was at that party before another dinner engagement called me to an early departure. But the Samosa I had before I left was not bad. Actonomy hands the award over to Totaljobs..? Is this the same contest from year to year? I can't complain too much - I missed the awards ceremony, so I don't know how they came to that decision. But needless to say both of these companies are on my radar for a in-depth assessment.

Anyway, now that Batman has finally been done justice in the last two movies, I tend to think of myself as The Joker in this industry. You'll see. Welcome back.

Naymz.com business model and context

So I got the latest invitation several weeks back for Naymz.com. Yet again, I'm sure this newcomer is experiencing that sudden burst of hockey stick growth. The formula goes something like this:

1: Come up with a good concept (yes, I'll give you that) for an online networking or HR firm.
2: Create a nice easy to use interface - Web 2.0. style.
3: Get some early users to bang out the bugs - hopefully.
4: Create an incentive for inviting people (some way of giving them money, either virutal or otherwise, usually).
5: Turn on the linkedin / plaxo contact books APIs to get your first burst of users. (i.e. "invite your friends from linkedin.com! click here...")
6: Enjoy the Hockey stick growth of users signing up.
7: ? I don't know what happens next. Do these companies succeed? Probably too early to tell.

So starting at point 1 above, Naymz is addressing the age-old dilemma of one's online reputation. If we do more business transactions online, trust and similar intangibles become more of an issue. This has been addressed before on other website, but perhaps not with the singular focus (and community) of Naymz. After all, Ebay has a well known rating system for buyers and sellers, but this (last I checked) is tied to Ebay transactions. Zoominfo and pipl and lots of other info aggregation websites try to bring pertinent information together from across the web to establish credibility for a person. But Naymz seems different enough to mention.

At first blush Naymz seems a bit unique in that it is a community site designed solely around people vouching for one another, while many of the others try to reach across the Internet to ascertain reputation information. But even then, you can make a comparison between Naymz and Rapleaf, which both aggregates information and allows users to rate one another. Heck, even their seals of approvals look the same. Outside of this feature, Naymz doesn't seem robust enough as a community to attract people.
Liquid CV also has a "trust rating" function, but this feature is not broadly marketed.

Now, Naymz seems to have another trick up their sleeve: for a premium, they'll make you easier to find on the Internet via a custom domain and search engine promotion,. Hmmm. On one hand, this crosses over into promotion /advertising, but on the other hand it helps pull people into the naymz site and the reputation domain. They'll also give you identity verification for this premium. However, when I looked at the Naymz identity verification service, it was Trufina -- that is, another website. Trufina sells its serve for 4.95 USD (I think a one time charge), while Naymz wants premium users to fork over 9.95 USD monthly. If you use Trufina (and, presumably, pass the verification check), it gives you Naymz reputation points. Fehh. I'd prefer monopoly money.

For the premium price, there are also some reporting features about who has visited your profile, but I felt them rather boring. Maybe just because I didn't see much of a teaser on the features.

The classic Internet questions remain: can they generate enough buzz and autonomy? As a community site, I would suggest not. As a personal service for broadcasting your Internet image...well, maybe. But here Naymz is getting into the domain of Google and nameservers. Providing a one-stop shop service for both reputation and personal advertising, particularly with a smooth Web 2.0 interface, is an interesting idea. But...I don't know...I'm not convinced. You need lots of features and reach across many Internet services, and great execution, assuming you don't have your own value to add.

On a bit of a tangent: if you want to provide an API for other sites to Mashup with you, people have to know that it's worth developing an interface for your API to pull reputation information. Naymz isn't even suggesting this as far as I can tell, but Rapleaf already has this (as does Zoominfo). I would like to integrate with Rapleaf, but thus far the reputation information just didn't seem accurate enough , and there aren't enough users, for an effective integration with Liquid CV's user base. None of my early adopters on Liquid CV could be found on Rapleaf's search. Just not enough reputation meat out there for me to dine upon.

Well, I think there is some value that Naymz could provide, and they might have some success after the early hockey stick burst (provided to them on the back of linkedin.com and others). But, I guess I'm just not that excited. It's a mashup. I hate to say it, but I'm on the verge of giving this company another lukewarm review. I'm getting bored with the site already. And of course, the perennial problem persists: facebook, linkedin, xing and others can just create a reputation feature and eat the lunch of the little guy here.

I'll keep digging on the site, and put this on my list of companies and technologies to revisit (like the open social API, itzbig, and others) in a subsequent posting. For now, that's enough.

The importance of corporate culture in job-hunting

A lot of candidates never get around to asking the most basic of questions: what's it like to work at this company? Candidates are too busy answering questions, asking specific questions to demonstrate industry knowledge, and in general trying to be on their toes. They don't really have opportunity to find out about the basics: how many hours do people work here? WIll my personality fit in? What's the dress code? Is it a process oriented company?

Some people will be able to dig into the company's network of employees, who may reveal impressions or stories. But even this isn't scientifically itemized account of the companies values, processes, achievements, etc.

This is the next step in online networking: introducing culture and personality to the mix. Liquid-cv has already taken a crack at it with culture assessments and Corporate CVs (a collection of information, including corporate culture, regarding a hiring company), and is promising to launch more features over time. Other companies like xing.com and linkedin.com may add similar features, but may run into some constraints in terms of focus and corporate sponsorship.

Stay tuned, this is the next stage in online recruiting.

Notchup.com: hockey stick or hokey shtick?

Notchup.com is a new website with a cool idea. Recruiters pay members to interview them for jobs. It targets more senior professionals and sleeper candidates who already have a job, not the desperate jobhunters who are giving their CV away. This will mean that recruiters do more groundwork and prequalification before calling upon the candidate for the interview. It will therefore also mean that a higher percentage of these "calls" will translate into job offers.

Given the business model and the target audience, discretion is pretty important. So there are some less-than-airtight features designed to protect you from over exposure: you can be invisible to recruiters who use certain domains (e.g., mycurrentcompany.com) - a way to keep your current company from seeing you. Also, you can preclude recruiters from seeing you altogether -- and be visible only to hiring companies. Furthermore, you can indicate that you are "Happy, but will listen at the right price" to a pitch - a statement that's a little less offensive should your current company's HR rep find your profile on notchup.

Well, I gather notchup.com has just begun to experience exponential growth in first time users. According to an insightful business week article, they went from 200 users to 70,000 users in a few days, who then invited 900,000 more. Having read a little bit about it in techcrunch.com, I received an invitation soon after from an old B-school classmate who works at Bain consulting. This would indicate a pretty high profile average user. Of course, when I found out that I get 10% of the interview cash generated from colleagues that I sign up, I shamelessly invited my entire linkedin.com contact portfolio. (Hopefully, my contacts that are senior have developed quick and painless methods of filtering out invitations in which they have no interest.)

My Analysis:

Hmmm. At first glance, I really like this idea. Companies pay recruiters for their services already, so simply redirecting a bit of that cash to the candidates shouldn't be too hard. Professionals who ordinarily wouldn't interview are tempted to do so - tempted by money. But I think the market is a bit smaller than one might think when you look at it. Various things chip away at the business model:

1: The cash-up-front problem. Companies generally hire recruiters on a contingency basis, which means recruiters will have to pony up the cash in order to talk with a candidate. Recruiters will do more groundwork and prequalification before calling upon the candidate for the interview - which means a higher placement rate and less candidate time wasted. But it will also shrink the candidate pool and the number of transactions.

2: The dearth of pay-me purists. People that are working but open to hearing about new jobs may not want to put up a money-barrier for potential recruiters. Really, we have to ask the fundamental question: who is the buyer and who is the seller? Who has the power -- the candidate or the hiring firm? It depends on the job market - but note, we're heading for international recession right now. Candidates who have the power are generally pretty senior, and there's a headhunting market already in place for them which offers more discretion than a Web 2.0 site like notchup.com. And a little bit of cash aint much to the most senior people - certainly not worth risking their reputation.

3: The classic network leakage problem. If I see someone on notchup.com, can't I just contact her via linkedin.com, and avoid being asked to pay her cash? It depends on how tough that professional is -- how much he or she adheres to using the notchup.com website. Interestingly, notchup.com allows you to import your profile and contacts from linkedin.com. This implies that users on notchup can often be found on linkedin - leading to network leakage.

And there's no way for notchup to really respond to this. If notchup were to launch social networking features, it would dilute the website's singular purpose and eat away at the privacy and discretion of its (already-employed) members, not to mention put notchup in the hyper-competitive social networking market. Furthermore, what's to stop Linkedin.com from adding a "pay me to interview me" feature?

Well, notchup is something of a fit for the Web 2.0 Liquid HR economy -- it is helping to standardize HR information by utilizing Linkedin profiles. But this just in: apparently there may be legal constraints put on the model as well -- apparently, linkedin is angry that their user information has been mined by notchup in violation of terms and conditions. Notchup is not providing new information to the mix -- it's just another place with regular member profiles (often imported from linkedin). Therefore, it's not an Information Provider. Nor is it a Conduit for information (linkedin is the conduit in this story). As a Matchmaker, it is providing some service by adding new incentives to bring people together, so I guess that's the notchup play. I think this company will make it, but won't have stellar growth: its market is too vulnerable.