I've heard from a number of insiders at big general job boards like Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs that 90 percent or more of their revenues are derived from the sale of job posting ads and resume searching. If that's true, it is no wonder that they are reluctant to follow our lead by eliminating resume searching in order to help the candidates using our sites obtain the security and privacy they deserve. But that's another topic for another day. Well, almost.

Unlike the big general boards, our niche board has for years generated most of its revenue from non-traditional job board products such as targeted email campaigns and targeted cell phone text messaging (SMS) campaigns. I know that we do a great job for the vast majority of our clients and occasionally fall flat on our faces. But as frustrating as it can be when we can't drive the right traffic to our client's web site, it is even more frustrating when we've driven the right traffic yet they're not seeing it. More often than not, the problem is with the web traffic tracking software they're using or how they're using it.

Judah Phillips recently published an article that did an excellent job of outlining a number of causes for why a publisher like CollegeRecruiter.com may track X number of click throughs to our client's web site yet the client tracks Y number. You'd think that if we tracked 1,243 clicks that the client would track the same or virtually the same. But if so then there would be an excellent chance that you'd be wrong.

Quite simply, "counts of the identically named metrics from ad servers don't match the web analytics tools, which don't match the for-pay third-party audience measurement tools, which don't match the free audience measurement tools, which never match any of the homegrown internal measurement tools. And none of them ever match each other." The differences are due to a variety of reasons, including:

• Different data collection methods are often used by different software programs. Banner ad serving software such as ours uses javascript page tags but web analytics software such as Google Analytics use page tags, log files, packet sniffers, or a combination of these. Oh, and each of the tools have different algorithms for processing the data so even if your software appears to use the same method as mine, they don't.
  
• Some clients rely on audience measurement tools such as Alexa or Compete but these panelists must install toolbars or other software. Few workplaces allow the use of such software so the audiences are heavily skewed to home users and heavily skewed to those who are willing to have such software on their computers. Quite simply, these are not random panelists so to rely on the traffic measurements that they produce is pure folly. Perhaps a decent rule of thumb, but not accurate and definitely not scientific.
  
• A number of software packages rely on small files called cookies being placed on the computers of those who view and click on the ads. Unfortunately for the vendors who sell this software and the clients who buy it, cookies are not a reliable measurement tool. The new browsers routinely silently block third party cookies, meaning that if someone comes to CollegeRecruiter.com and we use a third party to serve our banner ads (we do) and that third party serves a cookie onto the computers of our visitors to help better target the ads (it does) then those cookies will often be blocked by the browsers of those users and any software trying to accurately count how many visitors we have or how many pages they've looked at will end up with inaccurate counts. Similarly, if we deliver a targeted email with cookie-based tracking then the vendor trying to count how many people looked at the email, clicked on it, or otherwise responded to it is in for a very difficult process. Actually, they're in for an impossible process because the data simply isn't there in order to accurately measure the traffic.
  
• Different data models are used by the software that serves ads and the software that measures traffic to web pages. Ad server software serves and counts impressions, clicks, and other such measurements. The metrics are based on how many ads have been requested from the ad server, not on which page the ad was served to. In other words, ad serving software isn't looking at impressions the same way that web page tracking software does. The definitions are simply different.
  
• Some web pages are missing the code needed for the web tracking software to do its job. This isn't really a software problem because the software is counting what it is told to count and that doesn't include those pages, but it is another problem that occurs because ads might send people to a page that doesn't have the web traffic software code on it or there may be one or more links on the page to other pages that don't have the software properly added. No code means no tracking of traffic.
  
• More users are blocking javascript or other ad serving software. Some of these allow the ad to be served but then don't display it on the screen. So the ad serving software counts the impression but the web tracking software doesn't because the ad didn't appear.
  
• Web traffic tracking software is notorious for not properly tracking unique visitors or page views whereas ad serving software tends to do a much better job at this. If one visitor goes to a page 10 times, web traffic tracking software will tend to count that as one views. But ad serving software is concerned with displaying 10 different ads to that person so counts that as 10 views.
  

So what can we do to help our clients when they see a different number of click throughs to their web page than we report? We need to do a better job of explaining that the software they're using may be using the same terminology as our software but they're actually tracking two different things. Apples are great and so are oranges and they're both fruits but they're different. And so it is with web traffic and ad serving software.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 30, 2008 at 4:25 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We've been receiving a steady diet of questions from college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities since we re-launched CollegeRecruiter.com five weeks ago. The number of questions haven't been overwhelming but many are the same or very, very similar. Time to get more efficient.

We just added a short Frequently Asked Questions section to our Contact Us page. Now rather than the candidates having to wait hours or perhaps even a day or two to get an answer back about some issue, they will normally be able to have their question answered even before they ask it of us. That's better for us and better for them.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 26, 2008 at 5:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

A tip of the hat to Julie Hays Bartimus, Vice President of the Alumni Career Center for the University of Illinois Alumni Association. She tipped me off to a blog article by Business Week's Stephen Baker about resumes and word clouds.

Run your resume, job posting ad, or any other document through word cloud (a/k/a tag cloud) software. The software extracts unique words from the document and increases the size of each word the more often it is used. So the most frequently used words appear as the largest clouds while the least frequently used words appear as the smallest clouds.

Why should anyone care? Well, because Google and other search engines do. Everything else being equal, the more frequently you appropriate use a keyword the more relevant your document is likely to be when someone runs a search using that keyword. So the more you use that keyword, the higher in Google's search rankings that word appears.

The same is true for many of the better applicant tracking systems and job boards as they have built-in search engines. If your resume or job posting ad includes the keywords that your targeted user is most likely to enter when searching for your resume or posting then your resume or posting will come up higher in the search results and therefore be more likely to be read. Of course, if your document doesn't contain the keywords at all then it is unlikely to come up at all. So rather than posting a document that includes a keyword phrase such as "registered nurse" but not "RN," post a document that includes both. And preferably include a few references in the document to those keywords if those are the keywords most likely to be used by someone searching for the information that you've posted.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 25, 2008 at 12:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I attended the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) annual conference last year in Las Vegas and again this year in Chicago. Even though the Vegas metro is much smaller than the Chicago metro, the Vegas conference was much bigger than the Chicago conference.

I didn't go to the sessions and I don't know how many attendees SHRM had for the two conferences. I spent all of my time in the exhibition area so that I could get some great face time with clients, vendors, and partners. As wonderful as email and the phone are, nothing beats looking someone in the eye and figuring out how to better help each other.

So what was bigger about Vegas? The number of exhibitors. It took me 1.5 days last year to walk through the exhibit hall. This year it took about half that time. I'm in much better physical shape this year than I was last year but that's not it. I bet there were 30 to 40 percent fewer booths this year and some of the booths had nothing to do with human resources, such as one for Sleep Number beds and another for Mercedes cars.

Is SHRM hurting because of the economy? Or did the exhibitors expect Chicago to draw fewer attendees than Vegas? Or something else?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 24, 2008 at 4:44 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

One of the thought leaders in the recruiting space is third party recruiter, Bill Vick. He interviewed me for XtremeRecruiting.tv about the decision CollegeRecruiter.com made to eliminate resume searching access when we re-launched our site a month ago.

As you'll see in the video, we had two primary reasons for continuing to allow candidates to post their resumes to CollegeRecruiter.com but not making those resumes searchable by recruiters, employers, and others.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 19, 2008 at 3:43 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

CollegeRecruiter.com has made many significant enhancements over the past weeks and months, including our successful re-launch over the weekend of May 16, 2008. Some of the changes have been obvious such as our completely new Google-esq look-and-feel while others aren't as obvious.

One of the changes that wasn't as obvious to a casual observer was the rapid expansion of the other sites in our network of career sites. When an employer posts a job to CollegeRecruiter.com, that job runs on our site as well as on the thousands of other career sites in our network. We recently updated the page listing those sites to reflect the 2,707 four-year colleges, two-year colleges, and technical schools which run our postings.

The obvious and not-so-obvious changes to our site have proven to be a huge success. Rather than about 10 percent of candidates who view a job applying to it, about 50 percent now do. We've received a lot of very positive feedback from our clients about the quantity and quality of those applicants. More changes are in store. Hopefully they will add additional value to the employers and candidates who connect with each other through CollegeRecruiter.com.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 18, 2008 at 11:52 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Mozilla. Sounds like some overgrown reptile that repeatedly invades and strikes terror into the hearts of Japanese everywhere. Well, at least those who watch a lot of old B movies.

But those of us who use Firefox know that Mozilla is a global community of thousands who believe in the power of technology to enrich people's lives. It is a public benefit organization dedicated not to making money but to improving the way people everywhere experience the Internet. And it is an open source software project whose code has been used as a platform for some of the Internet's most innovative projects.

Why do I tell you this? Because today Mozilla launched Firefox 3.0 for free download. I've read a number of very, very positive reviews about it. One indicated that it is again the world's best browser. Its speed and features handily beat those offered by Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari.

I just downloaded and installed a copy. It is noticeably faster than the previous version. All of my tabs and bookmarks moved over without any effort. If you're using an old version or, perish the thought, aren't using Firefox yet, download and try it out. You'll be happy you did.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 17, 2008 at 2:37 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

A lot of high schools, colleges, and employers are concerned about the phenomena commonly referred to a "helicopter parents," which typically are Baby Boomer and older Gen X parents who are constantly hovering over their teenage and adult children. I think that it is safe to say that most experts feel that parents who accompany their children to job interviews and even complete their work assignments for them are doing a disservice to their kids.

But not everything about the behavior of a helicopter parent is negative. In an article published through the free recruiting content exchange service, Recruiting Blogswap, Marcia Robinson of Bullseye Resumes argues that parental involvement at the college level could enhance rather than hinder college student graduation rates.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 16, 2008 at 10:05 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my favorite job board industry people, Peter Weddle, contacted me about an opportunity where I could help the members of the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS). The messenger and message were both great so I immediately said yes and I'm even more excited now.

The IAEWS has a strong, engaged membership base comprised of virtually every major job board and dozens of small niche players as well. The Association has been hosting two Member Congresses a year but some of the feedback that Peter has been receiving from members is that they'd like to participate but aren't always able to attend. In short, can the IAEWS find a way to bring the Member Congresses to the offices of its members in a virtual manner? Peter, always looking for ways to say yes rather than ways to say no, figured out that an attendee could blog about each session in real-time and solicit feedback from those who are attending virtually.

As you might have guessed, I'll be the blogger for the September 8th Member Congress in Chicago. I'll be providing my commentary on the sessions and file my posts in a special thread on the Forums in the Members Only area of the IAEWS site. I'll provide my take on each of the sessions and solicit the thoughts and comments of our members.

Members of the IAEWS may log on at any time during the day and see what's happening at the Congress and add your thoughts and views. I will then take the podium during the closing session of the conference and present the feedback I've received so that the views of all members will be included in the member-to-member dialogs even if some of those members are unable to attend in-person.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 13, 2008 at 7:49 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

So Detroit Red Wings goaltender Dominick (The Dominator) Hasek has decided to retire at the tender age of forty-two. For two decades this incredible athlete has stopped puck after puck that he had no right in even seeing let alone touching let alone stopping.

But this blog entry isn't so much about Hasek as what we can learn from him and his decision to retire.

The Dominator, or Dommy as some in the media have referred to him, earns a lot more money than the vast majority of us yet he has repeatedly demonstrated that he isn't all about the money and that's a breath of fresh air from the sports world. There was the year when he refused to cash millions in dollars worth of paychecks because he was hurt. He didn't feel that he earned the money so refused to take it. Granted he was in a financial position where he had the ability to make that decision but I wonder how many who are able to make that kind of decision refuse to accept pay they're entitled to because they believe that their employer hasn't received good value in return?

And his decision to retire now is incredibly classy and smart. Until the first round of this year's playoffs he was one of the best goalies in the world. Many, including the coaches of the Detroit Red Wings, regarded him as the number one goalie on the number one team in hockey. He simply dominated opponent after opponent in the regular season. Then, for whatever reason, he lost his edge in the playoffs and Detroit almost became the Dead Wings. So Hasek sat on the edge of the bench for the rest of the playoffs and watched his former backup, Chris Osgood, provide mostly solid and at times stellar goaltending.

So good was Osgood (sorry, couldn't resist) that the Wings won the Stanley Cup. And there was Hasek on the end of the bench pulling slivers out of his butt. But he wasn't pouting. He was the consummate team man. He supported the decision to play Osgood as he knew it was right for the organization. Again, how many of us would have the class and foresight that Hasek did to understand that the work that we desperately want to do is better left in the hands of someone junior to us?

The hockey world will miss The Dominator but the way he played the game on and off the ice will be remembered. He created a wonderful legacy. But now take a good, long look in the mirror. What is your legacy within your organization and industry?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 12, 2008 at 1:29 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

The feedback continues to flow in from stakeholders in the job board industry regarding the decision by CollegeRecruiter.com to eliminate resume searching. Our two primary concerns were:

1. Illegitimate organizations, most of which were international, using the resume data for illegitimate purposes such as identity theft. Most job boards have done of good job of preventing that by manually verifying their clients.
   
2. Legitimate organizations, most of which are domestic, using the resume data for illegitimate purposes such as pitching credit cards and other financial products to high income earners or those who have the potential to be high income earners, such as the college students and recent graduates who are the primary users of CollegeRecruiter.com.
   

The feedback we've received from other job board owners has been decidedly mixed with those who rely on resume searching revenues tending to fall into the negative camp while those who have never offered resume searching all falling into the positive camp.

Chris Russell of AllCountyJobs.com and the creator of social network JobBoarders mentioned that he uses JobTarget to power his job board and I know that many boards work with JT or one of their competitors. But if a well known financial services company signs up for resume searching and pays with a legitimate credit card, how do you know whether they're using the data for employment purposes or to pitch credit cards to your users?

While it might be tempting to say "buyer beware" (candidate beware) and to fool ourselves into thinking that what they want more than anything is for their resume to be distributed as widely as possible in order to maximize the likelihood they get a job, I think a better long-term, more ethical perspective is to ask yourself what truly is in the best interests of the candidate. Getting credit card pitches and having their identity stolen are not outcomes that they likely contemplated when they posted their resumes so it is disingenuous to argue that the candidates assumed the risk. If they didn't know the risk existed, how can they have knowingly assumed it?

The pursuit or profit is noble and drives capitalism. I'm all for it. But the blind pursuit of short-term profits at the expense of others in the short-term and our own profits in the long-term is foolish.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Chris and many of the other members of JobBoarders. And I like the people at JobTarget. But they and we have an honest disagreement over the future of resume searching. I feel that it is a product that most job boards are better off not offering. I suspect that many of them would agree if they felt confident that they could replace the revenue that they would lose if they followed our lead. But they aren't so confident so are unlikely to eliminate resume searching unless it is forced upon them. I hope it isn't forced upon them, but I believe it is only a matter of time.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 9, 2008 at 8:02 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Bowling Green's newspaper has an interesting article on how some employers admit to using social networking sites such as Facebook as part of their background checking efforts.

One employer was quoted in the article as saying that if their background checking company spots students who are depicted as partiers then their applications are rejected. The company, a chemical engineering firm, doesn't want to hire people who party in college. Huh? Are they trying to say that none of their Gen X or Baby Boomer employees partied in college or just that they weren't photographed partying? Or are they really saying that the technology didn't exist 20, 30, or 40 years ago to take a photo of your friend while they're at a party and instantaneously upload it to a social networking Internet site?

Let's be honest with ourselves, folks. My Gen X generation and the older Baby Boomers all partied when we were in college. We all did stupid, immature things. We all wish that we could take back some of what we said, did, and wrote. The only difference between what our older generations did and what Gen Y now does is that the technology now exists to make it incredibly easy and popular to share our antics and those of our friends with the world. Can we honestly say that if the technology existed when we were in college that we wouldn't have uploaded photos and written blog articles about the party we went to last weekend? Is our performance at work any better because of the lack of technology? Of course not.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 5, 2008 at 6:55 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

I leave tomorrow afternoon for the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Employers 2008 annual conference in Harrisburg. I'm honored to be the keynote and will wrap up the conference on Friday from 11:30am to 12:15pm with a discussion how employers can and should use social networking sites such as Facebook as part of their recruiting strategies.

The conference looks like it will be very informative for employers and college career service office professionals. Topics include:

• Students, Service-Learning and Experiential Education
  
• German-U.S. Fullbright Experience
  
• Passive Candidate Recruiting
  
• Campus Recruiting Day: A Creative Approach to Connecting Candidates with Employers
  
• So Why Should I Hire You? What Makes a Superstar?
  
• Everything You Wanted to Know About PennACE, But Were Too Afraid to Ask
  
• Online Communities
  
• Parents - Pests or Partners in Your Career Development Operations?
  
• How a Career Services Advisory Board Can Enhance Relationships
  

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 4, 2008 at 3:46 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've been receiving a fair number of kudos recently for some of our policies, some of which are new and some of which are old.

An example of a new policy for which we've been receiving a lot of praise is that we stopped selling resume searching when two weeks ago we re-launched our web site with new back and front ends.

But we're equally as proud of some of our old policies, such as our effort to be as transparent as we can. I recently wrote about how after our re-launch we've seen daily job applications increase by about 100 percent. Today I'm happy to reveal that since our re-launch we're also seeing an increase in the number of job applications per posting increase by some 140 percent. Prior to the re-launch, we typically saw about 10 percent of candidates who viewed a job posting apply to that job posting. We're now seeing about 24 percent apply to viewed postings.

Some might argue that increased applications isn't a good thing but our clients would disagree. The vast majority of our clients regularly comment on the number of applications as a key criteria for how they decide whether to use a job board and to what extent to use that job board. Almost every large employer has an applicant tracking system or other software that helps them identify the best prospects for a particular position so rather than having each job board try to infer which candidates are best and then having different and often incorrect standards applied to those candidates, it seems to me that it makes the most sense to put those decision into the hands of the party best suited to making them and making them consistently: the employer.

We're not screening applicants. We're not testing them. We're not running background checks on them. We see our job as connecting quality employers with quality candidates. And we're cognizant of the fact that what makes for a quality candidate to one employer makes for a horrible candidate to another. So rather than asking our employer clients to re-enter their selection criteria into our system so that we can screen, tier, or otherwise rank candidates inconsistently with the employer's own software, we've made it as easy as possible for those employers to receive applications from the candidates using our site. At most the candidates need to complete four fields of data in order to apply: name, email address, resume and/or cover letter, and their geographic location. That's it.

We've come to the conclusion that less is more. Less intensive graphics make for a faster and therefore more enjoyable experience. Less clutter makes for a more easily navigated site. And less application fields makes for more applications, more candidates who are happy, and more employers who are happy.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 3, 2008 at 4:10 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Generation Y a/k/a Millennials promise to:

1. Hold only productive meetings. Hallelujah!
   
2. Shorten the workday by focusing on productivity.
   
3. Bring back administrative assistants -- even if Gen Y pays for them out-of-pocket and even if they're virtual.
   
4. Redefine retirement by taking multiple mini-retirements.
   
5. They'll find real mentors by teaching older workers about technology and in return be guided through office politics.
   
6. Put human back into human resources.
   
7. Promote people to management based on their managerial skills, not their seniority.
   
8. Continue to value what their parents have to offer because Gen Y respects their parents and their parents respect their Gen Y children.
   
9. Trade off potential raises and promotions for higher starting salaries.
   
10. Re-invent the performance reviews by increasing their frequency from semi-annual or even annual to on-the-spot.
    

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 2, 2008 at 1:52 PM | Leave a Comment (1)