Liquid HR

Monster.com Spam

For your entertainment: there is a reason why monster.com is an easy target for people. It's because people like you and me receive emails like the one below, which I received today (note, the subject was "Asbestos Surveyor"):

We have found your cv at Monster and we would like to offer you a job. It is a part-time job that consists of receiving payments from customers (through bank transfers) and then making further payments to our main office or to one of our regional affiliated departments, depending on the customer's location.

 

Your commission as an agent is 6% of each transaction. For example, if you receive £2000 to your bank account, you will withdraw the money and keep £120 for yourself. The salary is commission based only and you will earn approximately £12000 per year. The hours for this work are flexible and can be combined with any permanent or other part-time job, with an average workload of up to 10 hours a week. All additional money transfer fees and money transfer-related charges are covered and paid for by our company. Therefore you will only be responsible for making the proper payments in time (within 48 hrs of successful receipt into your account). Each transaction will be transferred only after prior notification, which will sometimes be a notification by phone call. Please note that you can work from home but this job cannot be done online, you need physically withdraw/send money from nearest branches.

 

Our company's principal business is based on a peer-to-peer type payment network, this business model heavily employs all the latest internet technologies. We are one of only a few companies that use regional representatives in its business operations. This avoids high foreign taxation and cross-board acquisition fees. If you are interested in our offer, please feel free to ask for details of the general provisions of the contract.

 

Best regards,

Rita Widmer

Ha! What a job this would be! I'll be a peer to peer payment middleman taking a commission -- with a job title of Asbestos Surveyor. Sounds like a great way to launder money. I'll forward it on to abuse@monster.com . Maybe send them a link to this post.

...I did just that. Here's the response:

Thank you for taking the time to bring this to our attention. The email you are inquiring about is called an 'email spoof'. This e-mail spoof uses the Monster name to add credibility to the fraudulent offer. Please be aware that this is not a Monster authorized email. It was not sent by or through Monster.

This email is attempting to engage unsuspecting individuals in a money laundering scam. It is in your best interest to disregard the email. Do not engage with the entities! If you did begin correspondence and have started the required financial transactions, it is recommended that you contact local law enforcement immediately to request the appropriate steps to absolve yourself from any wrong doing.

Open the Data: The Impact of Social Networks on Recruitment

Not long ago I “linked” with a recruiter on Linkedin.com, only to find that he had precluded me from seeing his network contacts. I questioned him about this Internet faux pas, and, not surprisingly, he replied that, as a recruiter, he had to protect his asset: his contact list. This behavior seemed a bit ironic considering that Linkedin.com is a Web 2.0 website.

 

The idea that recruiters can maintain exclusive control over their networks is increasingly unrealistic. There are a couple of different factors behind this. First, the Intranet and Internet of the HR world are merging. This is leading to the more liquid flow of CVs between Internet sites and internal systems of recruiting companies. Second, the Internet is becoming Web 2.0. This is empowering Internet users, often job candidates, to manage and control their own professional information (i.e. CVs), and encourage the flow of this information among websites and recruiters of their choosing.

   

IDC predicted that U.S. spending on automated hiring software will rise from an estimated starting point of $750 million in 2006 to $1.7 billion by 2009. This spend will benefit vendors such as Bullhorn, an interesting case study. With Bullhorn’s software, a recruitment firm can create an open position, then use their “Dragnet” feature to pull candidate resumes (or CVs) from places like monster.com and careerbuilder. These resumes are parsed, written into the Bullhorn database, and then matched against the open job, ranked by suitability. Recruiters can then email or contact the candidates about the open position.

 

Let me summarize: Bullhorn’s software sits in the recruitment firm’s Intranet, and reaches out into the Internet for job candidates. It pulls those candidates back onto the Intranet and then turns them into a CRM (Intranet) task. It gets more interesting still: Bullhorn utilizes software from Resume Mirror, owned by Talent Technology (staffed with upbeat employees, it would seem). Resume Mirror’s software performs resume parsing – and is compliant with HR-XML. HR-XML is a standard for both Internet based HR information (jobs, resumes, and CVs) and for Intranet information regarding billing and staffing. Oh, and by the way, monster.com is one of many members of the HR-XML consortium. That is, CVs and resumes are becoming standardized data -- data that can easily flow between the Intranet and Internet world of recruiters, job boards, and companies in the liquid HR market. Reiterating Point 1: The Intranet and Internet are merging in the HR world.

   

Point 2: The Internet is becoming more open and user-controlled with Web 2.0, and social networks are driving this openness. The Web 2.0 buzzword was already getting old in San Francisco two years ago. We’re now on the second slope of the S-curve – companies are gleaning real, not imaginary, benefits from Web 2.0. Xing.com, a business networking company, has successfully gone public. Facebook is well known as an open platform with support from many application developers. A host of networking sites are standardizing to the Open Social API, and also creating additional "application programmer interfaces" (APIs) – they’re opening up access to data about their users to other websites. The benefits of this are not imaginary: Plaxo has utilized Linkedin's API to balloon its active user base, and there are recent rumors that Xing might buy them for it.

   

Can you imagine a recruiter that grew its base of contacts from 200,000 to over 1,000,000 in 1 month? I can't. Yet.

 

Where did Plaxo get this information? By getting current members to invite new members via an API from places like Linkedin and Yahoo address books. That is: by taking advantage of an open stream of data about people.  What's the impact? Plaxo can garner contacts far faster than recruiters who choose to be exclusive. More importantly, professionals know that if they create an image of themselves and their professional network on a site like linkedin, they can transport this image and network to other websites. Candidates will feel less inclined to type that information into a recruiter's website, and more inclined to tell the recruiter: "Get with the program. Integrate your website via an API like Open Social or get my details from my online profile somewhere. I don't feel like typing it into your website."

   

One issue that has long plagued candidates is that of managing their own data on a multitude of corporate websites, including websites of recruiters and hiring companies. Traditionally, every time candidates wanted to apply for a job, they would have to key in or upload their CV into a company or recruiter's website, at which point they began to lose control over that information. Social networks are member-driven websites that members often visit; members have total control over their own information, and actively maintain it. This contrasts with recruiter websites, where members create a profile once and are then inclined never to return - particularly once they find a job.

 

Interoperability among social networks via standards and APIs ultimately gives users that much more power to control and encourage the flow of their own data. If you add recruiting and job posting capabilities on these websites (as Linkedin, Xing, Jobster, Liquid-CV and many others have already done), you begin to solve the woes of the candidate who cannot or does not want to manage his or her own data on yet another recruiter's website. Furthermore, social and business networking sites integrate features such as professional references into the online job hunting arena, which are crucial for many recruiters.

   

What does this mean? It means that for job candidates, it's easier to use online social and business network websites to manage their own professional data and networks. It means that recruiters can improve their performance by using one platform for both CV browsing and reference checking.

 

Recruiters are already online, and not just entry level recruiters: executive recruiters are online as well, and beginning to adapt to the Web 2.0 social networking environment. Though there is still debate about the quality of online candidates, social dynamics (references and personal networks) are being used to pre-filter candidates, and various websites have developed that cater to niche and more senior professionals, like asmallworld.net and theladders.com. How long before these sites develop a way to maintain exclusivity and high standards while leveraging the Open Social and other API data exchanges? Not long. Consider the case of new upstart Notchup: candidate users import their profiles from linkedin to get started. Notchup's business model is built around passive, high-quality candidates who companies will actually pay for an interview.

   

The impact upon recruiters

All of this means that the traditional recruiter's world of closed databases is shrinking, and in some cases, ending. Recruiters are becoming power-users of social and business networks, rather than proprietors of their own candidate databases. Companies like theSkillsMarket have been working on the Intranet side of business to improve the flow of data among recruiters, and are discussing the launch of more Internet (Web 2.0) facing features. Recruiters are beginning to understand that tapping into this open data exchange -- the flow of CVs and resumes -- can vastly increase their pool of candidates (remember Plaxo), and that the focus will shift from the acquisition and retention of basic candidate data to acquiring deeper information about candidates, and matching candidates to jobs.

 

This is a positive development: it means finding jobs faster and making a better match with hiring companies. It means some recruiters will have the opportunity to truly add more value to the process, as people who can read deeper into CVs, understand candidates, as well as the jobs for which they are applying. But those that wish to horde a list of job-seekers will increasingly be left out in the cold.

CVs for people, CVs for companies: bi-directional flow of information

Most career consultants would tell you that it's important during an interview not only to answer the company's questions, but also to interview the interviewer. This supposedly means you're "switched on" - a "go-getter" - not some kind of jobslut that will take whatever job is offered. Interviewing the interviewer should, in theory, also improve the selection process, by helping candidates self select.

In reality, candidates sometimes ask intelligent questions, but often ask softball questions for which the interviewer has rehearsed responses, like "we work and play hard," or "If you make a contribution, your work will definitely be recognized," or "it's a friendly work environment." Oh come on. Just once I'd like to hear: "If you make a contribution, your boss will take the credit," or "a lot of people are competitive, poorly mannered jerks in the office." I remember once a large consultancy's HR representative asked me, during a 5-hour multi-stage interview, whether I had gone to their on-campus presentation weeks before. I said "no, those presentations are all the same." I digress.

The problem is that there are no official documents or processes to enforce this bi-directional flow of information between candidate and interviewer. There are no standard questions a candidate might ask an interviewer that elicit insightful answers. We have CVs and resumes for candidates, but not the equivalent for companies. We have psychometric tests for candidates, but no group-culture examinations for the hiring companies. We have references for candidates, but what of the company? What are we to read, the annual report, or the classic PR sales job? Should we listen to Jobcasts? None of this information gives us enough of what we're looking for.

My Angle

I present to you the idea of a Corporate CV. Inside the Corporate CV we have a collection of valuable information, such as:

• Corporate Culture: a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the company's values and processes based on structured questionnaires deployed to employees;
• Employee List: list of people you can talk to that actually work there;
• Accomplishments: things that employees in the company have been able to achieve while at the company;
• Jobs available: simple enough, but also linked to the above.

Think of it. The process of matching candidate and company would be improved, increasing employee retention rates, as employees would self-select and know better what they were getting into. We as candidates can see how our own personality and talents might match the company in its current form, or compensate for the company's deficiencies.

Before you work at a company, wouldn't you want to know: "Who works there? What's it like to work there? What kind of things can a person get done there? What kind of culture do they have? Is my personality a match? Are they direct or indirect when they communicate? What's the management like? What's the career development process?" There's no reason we can't begin to standardize this, but it would first take a structure and a community effort on the part of a company's employees and past employees. Partners, suppliers and customers could potentially feed into this Corporate CV.

Some companies would resist this sort of thing, but I think it's inevitable. The search for talent is always a competitive one - that much more so in the era of global business. So companies are looking for ways to differentiate from one another as potential places to work. And the Internet and Web 2.0 are built for the exchange of information and building of communities.

I won't kid you: I have a project in motion to address this issue. The Bi-directional flow of information is one of three roles that a successful company can play in the new Liquid HR economy - so this is my angle on being a player.

Standardized Resumes and CVs

One of the clear pain points for all job candidates has been, and continues to be, simple data management: the data stored in a CV or resume. Every time a job candidate goes to apply for a job online, she types in information that she's already entered into a thousand other job boards and company websites. Now, many websites ask different questions, and have unique fields of data on their web forms for candidates to fill out. But a lot of these fields are the same over and over -- things like name, address, previous employers, and academic institutions.

Why not simply standardize the data, and put it in a central repository where the candidate can maintain and control its use? Wouldn't this not only save time for the candidate, but also empower candidates in a way that epitomizes the spirit of employee data protection?

The use case would go something like this: I'm a job seeker. I go to "distribute-resume.com" and see a list of 1,000 jobboards and companies. I click on the 35 job boards and companies that interest me. I click on another button, and presto - my resume is sent to them.

"But, wait," you say: "Not all of the websites want the same information." Well, I suppose that's true for the moment, but don't you think they would be happy to take a candidate's CV or resume without having to pay the marketing expense of attracting them in the first place? Surely, they'd take a free CV or resume, and THEN determine whether to keep it.

"But wait," you say, "Maybe not. They don't want just any candidate." Well, then, "distribute-resume.com" could preclude the wrong candidates from sending a resume /CV to the more exclusive websites. (OK, so I just gave away some of my old business plan. But never mind that.)

"But wait," you say: "candidates format and customize their CV or resume for specific companies or jobs." Well, a fair amount of that is because recruiters with low-attention span don't have time to read more than a page or two. If you turn the CV into structured data, software can do the first pass review instead of people, and the CV can be reformatted easily to fit the reviewer's needs. I spoke with an executive search company once about this, and estimated it cost them about 3,000 GBP (that's 6,000 of our banana-backed U.S. dollars) per year for a small recruiting agency to reformat CVs and resumes. With standardized data CVs and resumes, that all becomes automated.

Suppose you think that's too far fetched. So you do it a different way: every time a candidate visits a company website or job board that's part of "distribute-resume.com's" consortium, the candidate can click on a "distribute resume.com" icon, and her basic CV / resume information is pulled from "distribute-resume.com" into your current website's webform via XML. It would speed up a candidate's application online! A much improved experience.

My Angle

OK, I just gave away a chunk of my old business plan (just replace distribute-resume.com with Liquid CV. Note the cute little waterdrop icon on the liquid-cv website). It's a great idea, but I couldn't pull it off, so I focused on something else more oriented around the bi-directional flow of data (though you can still get your very own  XML CV on the site).

Back to the idea. How do we do this? Standardized Data to begin with. It's one of the three components of the Liquid HR economy. My thought was to use HR-XML's resume standard, but there's no reason we couldn't expand upon this. Of course, the more granular the data, the better. Right now, the idea of using standardized data is happening behind the scenes - in a more B2B context, but not with the consumer experience in mind. Check out my earlier review of iProfile to get an example.

This is a challenging proposal, because it requires the distribute-resume.com to do business development on the B2B / consortium end of the market, as well as the consumer (candidate) market. But it will eventually happen. Most of the time people spend customizing CVs and retyping them is a waste of time. Screw this. Turn the resume / CV into data, and let people manage it themselves.

Back to basics: the HR industry is broken

The HR industry is broken. That's why we have so much competition in the HR vertical online, yet the basic problems are still not solved. We all have our horror stories - there are many and of many different shades, shapes and sizes. People submitting themselves to psychometric exorcizes which analyze their personality and then tell them they're not worthy. Meetings with recruiters who do nothing more but pattern matching between a CV or resume and a job description. Candidates repetitiously keying in personal and professional background information each time they apply for a job at a different corporate website. The same information over and over. Recruiters paying large sums of money to job boards to post their jobs -- only to receive hundreds or even thousands of applications from the wrong kind of people. Money spent for no value. Poor data exchange. Middlemen. Pain.

   

How do we fix it? We create a Liquid HR economy. Where if there is an opening - a job available - it's filled immediately with a good qualified candidate. Like the financial markets - where we have standardized information flowing around in a liquid economy. And it goes beyond that. More than just jobs and CVs – it’s people learning about companies, and companies learning about company, in order to make the best matches.

   

There are three components of this economy: liquidity of information, bi-directional flow of information, and standardization of information. There are three roles one can play in this economy: information conduit, information source, and information matcher.

   

The stars are aligning, and the Liquid HR economy is beginning to happen. Job information is starting to flow, and we're seeing the dawn of liquid candidate information. Information about companies is starting to flow as well. I've got my own project to bring the elements together and add my own chunk of value to the equation as an information source and a matcher. We're solving the problem. Let me know if you're interested in learning more.

Review of itzbig: itznotworking yet

This will be a short post. What the hell does this website do? Some HR pundit out there who I should probably not annoy extolled itzbig on some blog somewhere. It sounded to me as if the itzbig guys were using a matching engine for CVs and Jobs (nothing really new there) to tell you what skills you might need in order to be eligible for a wider range of jobs (kind of new, but poses problems). But when I went to investigate, and first landed on the website, it basically told me, the would-be job seeker, “piss off, there’s no jobs for you.” The next time, it told me to “piss off, we have your email address already.” I didn’t bother with the employer section yet – because why bother if the website tells candidates to piss off? Anyway, I’m annoyed. I’m annoyed because this website was hyped. I'm annoyed because this website looks like it has a nice Web 2.0 interface but secretly is hard to use - at least for me, the dumb user. Itzbig, improve yourself and come back to me in 1 month’s time. Get out of Beta, or whatever.

iProfile (SkillsMarket) review: dying for web 2.0

I'm not sure how to structure my review of iProfile (note, the URL is www.iprofilecentral.com), given the confusion I experienced while getting familiar with their service. Much of this confusion stems from a fundamental assumption I made at the beginning: that iProfile is a consumer offering. In fact, while it has great potential benefit for job seekers, it really is an HR infrastructure play at this point.

Let me start over. iProfile is a service that allows candidates to create an online CV / resume which can then be kept standard across many recruitment agencies. The service is created by the Skills Market, who also offer related HR services. The idea is that rather than maintaining your CV on many recruiters' websites (databases), you can maintain it once and use it across all compatible recruiters. I found, however, that despite this seemingly wonderful attempt at standardization of data, there are some problems.

The root of the problems is that iProfile does not own the customer relationship - yet. The compatible recruiters do. You would never know about iProfile unless a compatible recruiter's website mentioned it. And you have to use some Google magic to find the registration form on the iProfile website (assuming you know about the website). After I found the registration form, I was told that my iProfile account had been created already - when I, erstwhile, uploaded my CV to some recruitment firm's website.

Now, the problem goes beyond simple marketing reach. After (re)registering with iProfile, I logged in and viewed my iProfile CV details, which were a mess. Personal details were in my objective. Companies where I had worked were missing altogether, etc. Why was it a mess? Undoubtedly my word doc CV was parsed (translated) into iProfile format, relying on CV/resume parsing software which is notoriously inconsistent. So I edited my account by hand.

Most recruiter's websites allow you to upload a word doc or text CV; they don't require users to fill out complex CV forms for fear of annoying potential candidates. Therefore, if iProfile is fronted by recruiters' websites, then most iProfile CVs are probably junky until you (knowingly) fix them up.

Next, I registered with two sites on the iProfileExchange list (preferred-it and lorien resourcing), and saw no initial mention of iProfile -- only a simple CV uploading form. So, there was no way for me to know (if I didn't already) that these firms were compatible. A day later, I was emailed an acknowledgement that preferred-IT was iProfile compatible, and that I could check on my iProfile account, which I did, only to find that my CV was again a mess! It seems my uploaded and parsed CV overwrote the edits I had made a day earlier.

OK, such a problem can be fixed with a programmer and a bit of time, but you can see where this is going. It seems like there's a weak alignment of incentives between recruiters and iProfile, and that iProfile is not leveraging consumer power to drive recruiters' behavior, which is in turn leading to poor implementation.

My Angle

Not all hope is lost! Also, according to various press releases on theSkillsMarket website, the company has 2 million iprofiles, is growing operations, and has just received 3 million GBP more in investment. Among other things the funds will be used to "Launch a new online portal, which will add advanced Web 2.0 functionality for candidates." Perhaps iProfile has been biding its time, building an infrastructure and relationships, and is going straight to the consumer now that it has some market power. With a proper online marketing campaign, iProfile can begin implementing a CV push - where candidates can write their CV once - as structured data - and distribute it outwards.

Somehow, I think the business relationships in place might suffer with such an CV-push offering, but it's the kind of thing we would like to see. (You know, I had an idea exactly like this once that slowly transformed into something else, but never mind that). But I have to wonder, if this is the plan, why didn't they do such a thing all along?

Could the SkillsMarket fit into the Liquid HR market? Clearly, it could. The iProfile is obviously contributing towards the standardization of data as its core offering, and it utilizes HR-XML (I'm pretty sure, as one of the SkillsMarket founders, who I once met, is a founder of the HR XML consortium for Europe). But what role does iProfile fulfill? Well, the forthcoming Web 2.0 frontend could include just about anything. As it stands, however, iProfile is not a Matchmaker (that's done by the compatible websites), nor an Information Provider. And this is where I believe the company is falling down: it is not yet a Conduit, either, because there is currently not enough incentive for compatible recruiters to share information, and candidates are not knowledgeable enough of iProfile or empowered to drive CV updates out through iProfile. Hence, not much data flow about candidates -- not a Conduit.

The verdict? If you're a recruiter or hiring company, check out the commercial requirements for partnership, and if they're not too steep, it's worth a thought. As for myself, I'm concerned about forcing my users into the kind of experience (i.e. profile overwriting) I had. For candidates, my jury is out - it doesn't seem like candidates are yet very empowered by iProfile. If you're an investor or industry person, I could be completely wrong about this business, but I'm wondering whether SkillsMarket has been too conservative in catering to the HR market in its old form to the detriment of its current growth and perhaps its future. I think the big bet is on the new Web 2.0 features. Tell me this company is highly profitable and prove me wrong, but I think these guys need to turn the corner still in order to realize their excellent potential. Otherwise, they're an HR integrator. We'll be watching!

Broadbean: job posting distribution, liquid style

Broadbean is a service that allows recruiters and companies to distribute job postings to a variety of job boards, and to track job applications from these channels (job boards). So the scenario is: I'm a recruiter, I want to put my job advertisement on 75 job boards, but I don't feel like keying in the posting 75 times. I put it into Broadbean, click 75 checkboxes (one for each job board), and presto - the job will be distributed. That's their "adcourier" product. If I want to track which of these job boards is the most successful in eliciting applications, I can buy the Broadbean aplitrak product.

   

The recruiter or hiring company needs to 1: pay Broadbean for at least a basic adcourier service and 2: establish an independent commercial relationship with the job board. It's up to the job board to determine whether they want to charge the recruiter, but most do. On the other side, individual job boards pay a one-time setup fee of 1000 GBP (now over 2000 of our banana-backed American dollars) to be able to receive jobs from recruiters via Broadbean.

   

Technically speaking, the jobs come as relatively well structured XML documents, which includes roughly 20 dated-related fields (job title, duration, etc.).  The XML format is simpler than, say, the HR-XML standard for positions, but looks suspiciously similar. It is more structured than Google's unworkably bloblike full-of-garbage Googlebase XML data, and a bit more structured than indeed.com. In addition, job boards can customize these fields a bit – though this may turn off potential recruiters who would otherwise send through a job via standard Broadbean format.

   

OK, let me confess that I've actually worked with Broadbean on my own project to find some of these things out. I found them a pretty easy group to work with. And according to their Corporate CV's corporate culture assessment, their employees are a happy bunch with a balanced, if not slightly driven culture. I perceive Broadbean to be rather European in its style: rather than a high volume, free-of-charge service, you have to pay (more) to get into the Broadbean infrastructure, but your quality of service is better. Costly, but good, like the mobile phone networks.

   

But this does give rise to one complaint: job boards still must do business development with the recruiters that use Broadbean; just because you’re part of the eco-system doesn’t mean recruiters want to use you. As an intermediary, Broadbean would do well to encourage more matches between its buyers and sellers (recruiters and job boards).

   

My Angle:

   

Broadbean fits in with the Liquid HR economy, as they contribute to two of three Liquid HR components. They give a good start at standardizing HR data with a relatively structured XML feed. However, time will have tell whether their feed is structured enough to encourage more intelligent processing and matching of the data by job boards and networking communities. Furthermore, Indeed.com’s UK launch will be pressuring Broadbean. While indeed.com’s business model requires no fee, it also means their data is less structured. Broadbean would be wise to continue to exploit and maintain this qualitative difference, and should consider a larger counter-attack in the U.S. (I can see U.S. jobster is already onboard).

   

Broadbean’s large network of recruiters and job boards definitely encourages liquidity of HR information flow, but of course their membership fees preclude total liquidity. As far as matchmaking goes, Broadbean’s aplitrak product apparently helps clients not only track applications, but filter spam applications out as well. This is interesting: Broadbean is making a play at being more than a conduit of information, but being a matchmaker (at least for pre-screening purposes) as well – two of the three roles available for a Liquid HR company.

   

According to Broadbean’s claims ( 60% of the top 250 staffing firms; last month distributed in excess of 1.2 million ads. ) and press releases, it’s doing quite well. I’ve heard recruiters refer to them while doing business development in the UK. I think the big question is how less structured job aggregators like indeed.com develop – that is, how fares the battle between structured (XML) Intranet data and unstructured Internet data. Either way, Broadbean is worth a look even for U.S. players – but remember that if you are a job board, it’s an infrastructure play, not an advertiser for your services.

Zubka review: open the HR pipeline

Zubka.com is a combination job / board referral site, where members can collect a bounty by placing somebody in a job that's posted on Zubka. That is, it's a website where anybody can effectively be a recruiter, and where hiring companies are encouraged to post more jobs because they only pay if a match is made. The success-oriented fee (bounty) solves a big problem in HR, as many companies pay to post jobs on job boards, only to receive a flood of applications from unsuitable candidates. Zubka effectively charges companies to target specific candidates with jobs, by turning its members into job-candidate matchmaking engines. On the other side of the transaction, Zubka provides member-recruiters an online referral collection mechanism: a way to make money from their networking skills.

OK, I like it. But there are some minor problems. Little tech-teething issues (I often get an exception thrown and not caught), and there are not so many jobs just yet. I tried searching for management consultancy positions, and project management positions, and it looks like all of them are being advertised by, guess who? Recruiters. OK, this isn't so surprising, but I can't help but feel the waters are a bit muddied.

Zubka creates value by either 1: disintermediation (replacing recruiters with Zubka members) or 2: Improving effectiveness of recruiters already in place (Hiring company-> recruiter -> Zubka member ->more and better pre-screened candidates). So, the first big question is simply whether companies can spend less on recruiting because Zubka is in the mix.

The second big question is whether members will be able to successfully collect on bounties. As resumes, CVs and jobs are increasingly available on various online channels, it becomes increasingly difficult to claim a bounty, without dispute, for a referral. Personally, I'd be a bit afraid to refer candidates to recruiters, as they might claim they already had the candidate on their own database despite my time and energy invested. This could lead to a multi-party legal dispute.

My Angle:

Remember, in order to foment the Liquid HR revolution, we must have bi-directional flow of HR data, standardization of HR data, and liquidity of HR data. Data has to flow everywhere. And, in order to be a player in the Liquid HR economy, a company must be either a conduit for HR information, an information provider (about candidates or jobs), or a matching engine that matches buyers and sellers (candidates and jobs).

Zubka motivates everyday people to act like recruiters. It encourages them to send job info to candidates, and candidates (resumes / CVs) to companies. So Zubka contributes to the liquidity of HR data, and acts a bit like an HR data conduit. Furthermore, assuming its members are at all selective when referring jobs to candidates, Zubka is acting like an HR matchmaker; or a pre-screening service of sorts. So, indeed, Zubka is adding value to the Liquid HR environment.

What's the danger? Well, in the abstract, as HR information becomes more liquid and standardized, Zubka will need to depend on its members' matchmaking efforts in order to be valuable (and make money) in the Liquid HR economy. Of course, in the meantime, Zubka will gain a lot more traffic (as a conduit), upon which it can capitalize. Furthermore, there are the classic Internet issues -- more ambitious, incumbent job boards can just add a bounty mechanism, assuming it wouldn't cannibalize their own revenues.

Verdict: I think this company is going to make it. We'll be watching.

Jobster.com the HR mashup

So Jobster.com is a jobboard mashup. It displays salary information for jobs from payscale.com, and various job postings via some kind of spider (I think) that pulls them from other sites – if they’re not directly posted to Jobster by members.

 

Hmm. There was a time when I looked at Jobster with grudging respect for its lovely big Web 2.0 features and smooth integration of the above features, but my sense now is that they’re jack of all trades, master of none. As a mashup, they have a decent web interface, but are not integrating enough features and services, not applying strict enough logic to the integration, and not consistently adding enough value to the whole mix.

 

My Analysis leads me to believe that people don’t seem to network there. The job postings seem redundant – I wonder whether the same position is often pulled from multiple sources. Blogging?...I think that’s gone now...

     

Now, their founders may chastise me as ignorant of their success – perhaps adsense and direct job posting revenues (a minimal fee) are making the company cashflow positive…but I have my doubts. Without a clear idea of what I am doing on a website, and what it can offer me, I tend to leave. I don’t want to network on jobster. I don’t want to search for jobs. I don’t want to be there. But, I do want to visit again in a few months.

            

Analyzing stuff...

 

While the network was undeveloped and the job board content seemed shakey, one feature of interest were the jobster's "inside scoop" feature, where members can talk about their experiences at certain companies. This seems to be available for companies with associated jobs posted directly to jobster. Unfortunately, as most jobs are pulled in from external sources, "inside scoop" is a very inconsistent feature. Additional tabs for members and jobs associated with the company reminds me a lot of Liquid CV's Corporate CV layout. [ Read more on the analysis ... ]

   

My suspicion is that Jobster shares our Liquid HR vision, but hasn’t found a way be a component in the Liquid HR economy. They hint at understanding the importance of bi-directional information, by providing members with a way to talk about experiences at the company. But this is a start – I don’t think the feature goes far enough to elicit or structure the feedback, and is inconsistent across the jobs and companies listed. Jobster hints at understanding the importance of standardization of information flow (by allowing job applicants to be exported via XML), and probably by importing some jobs via XML, but this doesn’t go far enough. Probably can’t get the partnerships (yet?). Jobster hints at understanding the important of Liquidity of Information Flow, by importing job postings as well as value-add services (e.g. payscale.com), but again, not far enough – the data (jobs) doesn’t seem to be clean. The member profile information is negligible.

   

My suspicion is that jobster is doing the right thing in trying what they’re trying, but their strategy is all over the place. Their mix of structure and unstructured information makes the interface messy and the user experience inconsistent. Their global, pan-industry focus distracts from capturing an audience or attracting specific jobs that might foster a better user community or more consistently structured information to accompany jobs.

Jobster, bless you for trying, bless you for being the leading competitor in the Liquid HR vision, and bless you for all your mistakes that we can learn from. We’ll watch. We’ll talk.