Lessons Learned by Employers Impacted by Hurricane Sandy

Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

By Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

Four weeks after Sandy, life is getting back to normal – or is it? Walking the dog around a relatively unscathed block of homes in central NJ (miles from the shore), reminders are everywhere. Tons of debris in front of every home (more than 40 homes); the noise of still more 75-foot oak trees being cut while leaning precariously over homes rends the air; blue tarps draped over roofs (5 homes) that were speared with limbs weighing tons; and a flatbed truck finally easing up behind a flattened neighbor’s car (where my 75 foot oak fell). I check to make sure he doesn’t accidentally take the new car next to it.

Sandy was a storm that has little comparison even to Katrina although we can take some comfort that lessons learned from that catastrophic event seven years ago were likely responsible for preparations last month that saved lives – response speed and pre-positioning among them. Continue Reading

With Unemployment High for Returning Vets, Nine Tips for Acing the Job Interview

Jim Camp, Vietnam vet, and President and CEO of The Camp Negotiation Institute

There’s bad news and good news for post 9/11 returning veterans, known as the Gulf War Era II vets. The government’s October 2012 employment figures show that the unemployment rate for Gulf War Era II vets is 9.7%; but for the youngest vets, age 20-24, it’s a whopping 14.5% (compared to 12.1% for nonveterans), and for vets age 25-29, it’s 11.5% (compared to 8.7% for nonveterans).

Despite GOP and Fox News Claims to Contrary, 7.8% Unemployment is Real

First it was Fox News. Then it was former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch. Then it was former and current windbag Donald Trump. I was disappointed but hardly surprised when those conspiracy theorists and die hard Republican supporters accused the Obama Administration and Bureau of Labor Statistics of falsifying last Friday’s employment reports. Sometimes the truth hurts, even when the truth is that almost 900,000 more Americans are working now than a month ago and that fact should be celebrated. But I was surprised to see someone that I have a lot of respect for — former Chief Operating Officer of the Society for Human Resource Management China Gorman — join the naysayers. Say it ain’t so, China. Say it ain’t so.

Without producing a shred of any evidence — even questionable evidence — to the contrary, conspiracy theorists and GOP supporters across the conservative media outlets have slandered the ethics of the non-political appointee economists who compile and publish the monthly jobs reports for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These conspiracy theorists were apparently disappointed to learn that almost 900,000 more Americans are working today than a month ago and that more Americans are now working than were when President Obama took office. That disappointment — thinly veiled by many of them — is sickening. That almost 900,000 more Americans are working than a month ago and more Americans are working than when Obama took office undercuts their argument that only Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan can right the economy and the job market and that they will do so through the austerity measures which have devastated our state and local governments as well as the governments in Europe. Continue Reading

More Employers Hiring Military Veterans, Yet Assistance Still Needed

The transition for military veterans back into civilian life is not easy.  This is also true for employers who want to hire them, but need a better understanding of what they have to offer.

A new poll from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) released this week shows that the majority of organizations—64 percent—have hired military veterans during the past 36 months, an increase over the 53 percent that reported the same in 2010.

Though more than six in 10 organizations have hired military veterans during the past three years, the number could hit 10 in 10 if only the civilian and military sectors widely understood the other’s job skills jargon. Continue Reading

Video: Taking Your Recruiting Message Mobile: Why, How, and When

I had the pleasure of delivering this 75 minute presentation a couple of months ago in San Diego, California at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2010 annual conference. The description of the presentation was as follows:

Learn why your organization needs to have a mobile recruitment marketing strategy and how best to implement it so you can recruit the candidates you need and stay within your budget.

Virtually every member of Gen Y and about 90 percent of Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers care enough about only one electronic device to carry it with them virtually everywhere they go: their cell phones. If your organization’s web site and recruiting message are not fully accessible to your most sought after candidates on their mobiles then those candidates will end up becoming employees of your competitors. In this highly interactive and humorous presentation, learn why your organization needs to have a mobile recruitment marketing strategy and how best to implement it so you can recruit the candidates you need and stay within your budget.

Employ Media Publishes Evaluation Criteria for .Jobs Domains

I received an email earlier this afternoon from Ray Fassett of Employ Media to announce that they are now accepting proposals from organizations and people who wish to own a non-company name .jobs domain. The link to the Request for Proposal (RFP) form did not work for me so I replied back to Ray to tell him so and ask him to email the PDF to me. He replied back within minutes with a note saying the links on their web site worked for him and he included a link for me that worked.

The domains which Employ Media is now marketing include geographic names (i.e., NewYork.jobs), occupational field names (i.e., engineering.jobs), and dictionary words (i.e., diversity.jobs). One of the key objections that I’ve had to this entire process has been the lack of openness and transparency by Employ Media and the other driving forces behind this expansion of the dot jobs charter: Direct Employers Association and Society for Human Resource Management. I’m disappointed but not terribly surprised to read in the PDF application form that the RFP process will be anything but open and transparent. Keep in mind that if you buy a .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, or just about any other type of domain you just head over to GoDaddy, Network Solutions, or any of thousands of other registrar sites, pull out your credit card, and buy the domain name. Anyone can buy any domain name and the process is completely open, transparent, and honest. Compare that to the evaluation process that Employ Media just announced:

6.7.1 Employ Media reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to alter the schedule of proposal evaluation as it deems necessary or appropriate. Dates listed may be changed by posting on Employ Media’s Website without notice to any Applicant or prospective Applicant.

6.7.2 Employ Media will assess Proposals by applicable criteria, including but not limited to the following criteria
(i): quantity of Domains of Interest;
(ii) community value, impact and investment;
(iii) enhancement of the .JOBS brand;
(iv) business plan, capability and sustainability;
(v) technical and financial capabilities;
(vi) general company (or team) information;
(vii) compliance with the .JOBS Charter;
(viii) compliance with any and all applicable policies, practices and business rules which govern .JOBS;
(ix) compliance with all applicable ICANN requirements;
(x) quality, innovation, choice and differentiation;
(xi) the nature and strength of the applicant and/or any named partners, including historical business practices and further including historical activities and actions as such have related to the .JOBS sTLD, Employ Media, SHRM, ICANN, the Community and this request for proposal process, including Employ Media/ICANN contractual amendments and Employ Media/SHRM Policy Development Process amendments;
(xii) the effect, if any, on the Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”);
(xiii) the ability of the proposal to deliver as set forth, including business and technical capabilities of any relevant parties,
(xiv) willingness to work cooperatively with other applicants and third parties; and
(xv) compliance with the terms of this request for proposals. Individual criteria may be given varying weight depending upon the nature of any given Proposal.

In any given instance, one or more of the criteria listed above may be dispositive in terms of Employ Media’s evaluation of a Proposal, but need not be so. Employ Media may, in its sole discretion, choose to ignore or decrease in importance, or increase in importance, one or more of the criteria listed above, and Employ Media may do so on a proposal-by-proposal basis.

You also must agree to negotiate with them, they can reject your application for any reason, they can for any reason pull the domain from you after you go live even if you’ve managed to build it into something valuable, you must indemnify them if they’re sued for anything related to your domain, and they can do whatever they want with any information they collect from you including publish on the Internet the financial statements and business plan that they’re requiring you to provide.

Okay, so let’s say you can live with all of that and you still decide to proceed. What’s the cost? Who knows? Your application will cost you $250 and that’s non-refundable. They don’t even have to consider it. They can just pocket your money and tell you to buzz off. But let’s say they do cash your check (no credit cards!!) and give you the positive news that they are willing to temporarily lend to you one of the domains (remember they can pull it back whenever they want). How much will the domain cost? Who knows? You need to tell them how much you’re willing to pay. Maybe that’s where revenue share comes into play. If you have big plans and they are convinced that you can properly execute, it seems to me that they’re going to be far more likely to approve your proposal if you promise to pay them even one percent of your revenues than if someone with a plan which is equally as good and is equally as likely to executive promises to pay them dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.

Wow. What chutzpah! (defined: Yiddish for unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity)

Open Letter to Ray Fassett of Employ Media Regarding Revenue Share for Dot Jobs Domains

Dear Mr. Fassett,

Thank you again for your “courtesy call” yesterday in which you asked me to retract the portion of my comment at the Wall Street Journal web site and CollegeRecruiter.com Blog in which I wrote, “Ray Fassett of Employ Media has been asking job boards for revenue shares for the domains.”

Although it was difficult for me to understand what the courtesy call was regarding as you seemed reluctant to directly state your concern and instead seemed to want me to identify for you what was of concern to you, I ended up understanding that you wanted me to retract that statement and if I didn’t that Employ Media would take legal action against either CollegeRecruiter.com, me, or both. After ending our call, I considered the issue and essentially reminded myself that my primary concern wasn’t about the revenue share and that I didn’t want that to distract Employ Media, CollegeRecruiter.com, or any other entity from the crux of the matter. In addition, I had no written documentation to substantiate the revenue share statement. As a result of both factors, I retracted the statement both on the Wall Street Journal site as well as on CollegeRecruiter.com.

Two job boards later posted comments to CollegeRecruiter.com Blog indicating that they did have a revenue sharing discussion with you. One of the two comments unequivocally indicates that you raised the revenue share option. The other comment generally supports the first but does not directly indicate whether the option of a revenue share was raised first by you or the representative of the second job board.

I’m hoping that you will choose to participate in an open, honest, and transparent manner by posting a comment on CollegeRecruiter.com Blog regarding Employ Media’s requests for a share of the revenue from job boards or other organizations who seek to own a dot jobs domain. I suspect that you’ve made no such requests of direct employers as that wouldn’t be consistent with their model — they don’t make money by hiring people. But given the statements of the two job board owners, I think that seeing your response would be helpful to the job board, staffing, association, newspaper, recruiter, and members of other communities who object to Employ Media’s plans for dot jobs.

Clearly the two job board owners on one side of the discussion and you on the other can’t all be correct regarding the issue of whether you requested a share of revenues from them should they wish to obtain a .jobs domain. You ended up being pretty clear with me yesterday in our call that no one from Employ Media, including you, had ever requested a revenue share from anyone in return for a .jobs domain. I’m hoping that you can explain your perspective on this issue to my readers and me.

Sincerely,

Steven Rothberg
President and Founder
CollegeRecruiter.com

Wall Street Journal covers the dot jobs domain scandal

For employment and now small business writer Sarah Needleman penned an article for today’s Wall Street Journal that does a pretty good job of summarizing the scandal launched by Employ Media, Direct Employers Association, and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) last year when they tried to expand who could use the top level domain .jobs and for what purpose. ICANN, the international governing body for domain names, created .jobs five years ago after SHRM promised to be the watch dog and ensure that only employers purchased and used the domains and only to promote their own jobs, so you’d have toyota.jobs to promote Toyota’s jobs but you wouldn’t have Monster.jobs to drive job seekers to Monster’s job board.

As Sarah’s article did a good job of pointing out, all of that may now be changing if Employ Media gets its way. ICANN approved the request to expand the charter, apparently paving the way for Employ Media to create tens and probably hundreds of thousands of new domains such as diversity.jobs, great.jobs, newyork.jobs and many, many, many more. What’s the problem with that, you say? Isn’t this just job boards whining about more competition? Well, for some job board owners that’s all this is but they’re missing the point as is anyone else who thinks that’s the issue. The issue is the process this has followed has been fundamentally flawed and has lacked openness and transparency. If you want to buy just about any domain, you can go to a registrar like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, pull out your credit card, and buy it. You know that they won’t keep the best ones for themselves or their friends and they won’t ask you for a share of the revenues generated from the domain. If Employ Media gets its way, it will apparently keep the best domains for itself and its friends and it has already approached job board owners to request a share of revenues if Employ Media grants their request for their .jobs domain name.

Remember that ICANN approved the creation of .jobs to allow employers to drive traffic to their own career pages and SHRM was to act as the watch dog. Sarah’s story unfortunately mischaracterized that when it stated that SHRM was supposed to ensure that the users of the dot jobs domains are in the “job-site realm.” That’s not correct. That would mean that job boards and perhaps also staffing companies, third party recruiters, etc. could purchase .jobs domains to drive candidates to their job sites. The dot jobs charter which was awarded by ICANN five years expressly forbids that and limits the use of the dot jobs top level domain only to employers. So Toyota can (and has) purchased toyota.jobs to drive job seekers to its own career section but Employ Media has been forbidden to sell domains such as CollegeRecruiter.jobs if we were to use that to drive candidates to our job board. In other words, you can promote your own openings with your own dot jobs, but not the openings of other organizations. So job boards have not been able to buy dot jobs domains.

What Employ Media is trying to do is continue to be the registrar by being the organization that decides who gets what domain and at what price (Ray Fassett of Employ Media has been asking job boards for revenue shares for the domains) and also the owner of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of job boards that it creates. Yes, there’s now an RFP process, but no one outside of Employ Media seems to know the criteria that will be used to determine who gets what domain and at what price.

Follow-up note from 12:20pm — Ray Fassett just called and said he was making a “courtesy call” to tell me that if I didn’t retract the revenue share statement that Employ Media would take legal action against me. I don’t have written proof of that and whether Employ Media has or will ask for revenue shares or not isn’t really the point. So, Ray, consider the statement retracted. I have no desire to get into a legal battle with you or anyone else at Employ Media. We can agree to disagree on the merits of what Employ Media wants to do with .jobs and not make our lawyers wealthier in the process.