Mrshafrir.com

More praise for TheLadders.com.

One key here: TheLadders.com is ideally suited for people who are afraid of, as this job seeker puts, having their "resume proliferated around the net." We don't allow in recruiters that are looking to fill commission-only, work-at-home, franchise, blah blah blah, and all the other junk that shows up on, ahem, the other boards.

Here's what Andy Belval of Ballwin, MO has to say about TheLadders.com:

After eight years with the same company I was given my general release in October of 2006. After reviewing ten or more career websites I was only impressed by one, TheLadders.com. SalesLadder was the only place where you have the opportunity to search for truly "pre-qualified" $100k jobs and network with recruiters at the same time. Even though I was unemployed, and thankfully receiving severance, it was important to me that my resume and bio not be proliferated around the net. Salesladder was a wonderful way to get connected with professional companies looking for top talent and keep my information as confidential as possible. It also provides the most in-depth descriptions making it easier to determine if the proper synergies existed between my skill set and the requirements for the position. I have recommended SalesLadder to all of my colleagues. Best of all, I am now the VP of Sales for a company that was listed on SalesLadder! Thank you for all of your efforts and keep up the good work!”

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The CEO of Cramer-Krasselt -- he of the agency dumped by CareerBuilder -- responds with an internal memo.

Here's the money shot: "We made them famous."

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Update: Upon further review, it was the same agency that did both the monkey spots and the new ones. In either case, the agency was fired after the new ads performed dismally. Bring back the monkeys!

I really liked the old CareerBuilder ads where a guy works in an office surrounded by monkeys. For one thing, I really like monkeys -- they just seem really funny. For another, the ads really drove the point across: If you hate your job, visit CareerBuilder to find another one (I make no claims about the efficacy of these statements). The ads also tied in nicely with some other marketing campaigns CB ran on both the recruiter (they had live monkeys at the big SHRM conference one year) and the job seeker side (the thing you could do where you made the monkey say something and then you could send it to your friend was pretty strong viral marketing).

Anyway, people were pretty surprised when CareerBuilder decided to drop the monkeys and go with people running through the jungle (corporate jungle I suppose). The new ads, pretty predictably, bombed.

Turns out, the decision to drop the monkeys was based on a straw poll in USA Today. Now that's what we call market research!

Here's some online scuttlebutt about the decision. As you might expect, the CEO of CB's old advertising agency went pretty ballistic.

Scuttlebutt #1

Scuttlebutt #2

Scuttlebutt #3

Scuttlebutt #4

Well played CareerBuilder.

Here's my favorite of the *old* ads. Two parts of this really get me:

1) The part where the human is showing sales figures on a chart and the monkey tell him to flip it around, instantly creating sales growth!

2) The part where the monkey is lighting his cigar with a $100 bill.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago I attended the Talent Unconference. In addition to limping to a 7th place finish in the Recruiting.com Charity Poker Tournament, I spoke about Meaningful Connections in the afternoon session.

Video (gulp!) is now available here.

You’ll notice I tell a really hilarious joke about recruiting. I also shuffle back and forth a lot which is something I’ll work on…

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I attended the Talent Unconference back, one thing that struck me was how great a working environment Electronic Arts had at their headquarters in Redwood City. A full gym, soccer fields, great cafeteria, and of course, video games everywhere.

How do you translate that to people who are working at a video game developer in say Boston, who may never make it out to Redwood City?

Enter YouTube.

EA's Jeff Hunter (on the SimplyHired blog), points to a short recruitment video EA put together for their Los Angeles campus. I've embedded it below...this is smart recruitment advertising that goes well beyond a simple job listing, banner, or microsite. It appeals to both active and passive job seekers and while it's definitely "produced", it's not too corporate or condescending.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1) Is there a site that gives you the HTML code to embed stock charts on your blog?

2) Why does http://pr.monsterworldwide.com/ redirect to the Investor Relations site for Mastercard? UPDATE: fixed

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry, I don't like to swear on this blog, but this press release made me mad.

Two things:

1) If you're going to take thinly veiled shots at your competitors, step up and name names:

6FigureJobs.com also asked its members if they thought it was appropriate to pay for "searching and applying to jobs" as required by certain niche job boards. The survey revealed that eighty percent (80%) of 6FigureJobs' executive and senior-level members felt that it was not appropriate that they should pay to search and apply to jobs on other niche job boards. 11% were indifferent. Only 9% felt it was fair to pay.

2) Don't lie.

6FigureJobs, which boasts the largest active recruitment database for senior executives on the Internet, and whose site is unique for its focus on employment opportunities that pay at least $100,000 annually, is used by hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies and seven of the top ten retained executive search firms. The 6FigureJobs database includes more than 500,000 pre-screened members and adds more than 10,000 new registrants each month.

TheLadders.com has 1.2 million registered users and is adding about 40,000 new users a week, but hey, when you put out your own press releases, who's counting?

Of course, I suppose that if I worked for a company whose stock chart looked like this, I might resign myself to bullshit.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, so far this week we've covered TheLadders.com and our:

1) Best-of-breed customer service.
2) Unmatched ability to help mid-and-senior-level job seekers find their next $100k+ job.

But we haven't touched on the other side -- the fact that we work for $100k+ recruiters.

Here's some kudos that came across the wire this morning from one of the 26,000 recruiters using TheLadders.com to hire top talent:

Thank you for your assistance. Just to let you know those of us in our office that work at the executive level and use The Ladders are greatly impressed with the quality of candidates on your site and the customer service you provide. Every day we ask ourselves in the morning meeting how much more we could have grown as a company if we had known about The Ladders earlier.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, that's not true, although we do have an awesome snack room at TheLadders.com.

What are we actually here for? To connect the nation's top job seekers with the nation's top recruiters. If it sounds simple, it is. We make some phone calls, type some stuff on a keyboard, and voila!

And guess what, we're pretty good at what we do (and getting better and better). See for yourself here on our recently updated Success Stories page.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back when I started at TheLadders, I worked on the Community team. Community handles, among other things, all of our job seeker customer service. It was easy to forget that of the 100's of emails you'd send out each week, every single one of them was 1) reaching a real live person on the other end and 2) had the chance to either make-or-break your long term relationship with both this customer and one or ten or a hundred of their friends.

In reality though, most of the time you'd send out emails and hear nothing back. Which is OK. Success in customer service can sometimes -- but not always and definitely not over the long haul -- be defined as "no news is good news."

There are times though where you find out that what you're doing is working. So when Marc (our CEO) says one (of two) of our rules is "Love the Customer" and when you send a team of managers over to Japan to learn Japanese-style customer service, and when people are blogging about the great service they received from TheLadders.com it feels pretty darn good.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My friend from Brookline High, Nate Lasche is currently working in Uganda for the Clinton Foundation. Very cool stuff. He's "working with the Ugandan government to help fill whatever gaps they identify in their current HIV/AIDS
treatment/testing/policy" (from an email he sent me).

Anyway, you can follow his experiences here, on the appropriately named blog: Nathan's African Experience. Nate lives/talks/walks at a million miles an hour which is very evident in these first few postings.

We've come a long way from watching South Park and then playing basketball is his backyard in the dark!

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, stepped down today. He's being replaced by a CEO who was brought in to "build the organization, while Hoffman will focus on products and strategy."

I don't have enough (any) experience in this type of move -- founder steps down/stays with the company/company brings in a CEO to "manage" as opposed to "build" -- but from my reading of various pundits, it seems like a pretty typical move for a company getting ready to go public.

Fred Wilson, as usual, has an interesting take on the move. He calls it a "step up" as opposed to a "step down".

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flopped the Nuts?

Doubled down?

All-in?

Popped out a kid?

The money shot:

Callender, who has worked at Resorts since it opened in 1978, said the birth was a first for the casino as far as he knew. "We've had people die here," he said, "but we've never had people born here.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's good to see that the statute of limitations on stupid ways to describe people hasn't expired.

Posted by Michael Shafrir at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)