Monster founder Jeff Taylor just announced that he's spinning off the obituary classifieds section of Eons, his social networking site for Baby Boomers. The obituary site, Tribute, is intended to aggregate obituary listings placed by funeral homes much like Monster was one of the first job boards to aggregate job listings placed by employers.

I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Jeff at a recent International Association of Employment Web Sites conference. He sat on a panel and was a vocal participant in a number of issues where his experience and advice was invaluable to many members in the room. Other than some warm fuzzies, it is unlikely that he got nearly as much out of the meeting as most of the other attendees but he didn't seem to mind. If Jeff's new venture is half as successful as the industry that Monster helped spawn then this is yet another blow to the viability of newspapers.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 6, 2008 at 9:22 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I recently completed watching Battle 360, a multi-part series on the History Channel about the famed World War II carrier, the U.S.S. Enterprise. Our primary contact at client Enterprise Rent-a-Car gave me the heads-up about the series and am I ever glad that she did. It was fabulous.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car was founded in 1957 by Enterprise by Jack Crawford Taylor, father of current CEO, Andy Taylor. Jack served as a fighter pilot on the U.S.S. Enterprise during World War II. The History Channel series did a very nice job of tying the men and women of Enterprise Rent-a-Car together with the proud legacy of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Continue reading "A Great Gift to Our Nation" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 5, 2008 at 3:07 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Kudos to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) for creating the All That Jazz blog to help engage their members and hopefully increase the attendance at this spring's annual conference in New Orleans. The NACE annual conferences are very well attended and offer a wealth of content, but given how the career service office, employer, and other members are so spread out geographically it must be very difficult for NACE to engage with them throughout the year.

NACE asked for volunteers to write for the blog. I jumped at the opportunity and so did a handful of others. The entries and related comments so far have been diverse, regular, and interesting. A great example is a post about low student attendance at career center programs and ideas for what to do about it.

If you're looking for insight into the hearts and minds of those who live and breath college recruiting each and every day, then read the All That Jazz blog.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 17, 2008 at 11:29 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the fringe benefits of running a job board and being an active blogger is that you receive a regular stream of career-related books. Most are quite good. A few, well, not so much. But definitely falling into the former bucket is Alexandra Levit's How'd You Score That Gig?

Alexandra's book provides an in-depth look at the 60 careers that over 500 Gen Y and Gen X voted to be the coolest jobs. But the book does more than just give examples or describe the jobs. It also helps the reader determine which jobs are most suitable for them through a unique self-assessment.

What I really loved about this book is that it includes insider accounts. So rather than just taking Alexandra's word for what a particular job is like, you'll be able to learn about the jobs from peers who actually are employed in these cool jobs. And if their experiences resonate with you, the book then walks you through how to get the job.

We regularly advice job seekers to conduct a series of informational interviews with people who work in the types of jobs which are of interest to the job seekers. The job seekers should not ask these people for a job but instead they should ask them to describe their work and how they got their jobs. This book is a great supplement to that process it will enable the job seeker to walk into these informational interviews with a lot more insight into the jobs they are considering and likely save them a lot of time by helping them include jobs they may not have considered and excluding jobs that they didn't realize were not suitable for their competencies, interests, or values.

Bravo, Alexandra! The bookshelves of every college career service office should include at least one copy of the superb How'd You Score That Gig?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 15, 2008 at 10:12 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I recently read an article at ERE and noticed a comment posted to it by Lisa Graham, Client Relationship Manager for FurstPerson / Sprint. Lisa's comment caught my eye because she wrote that she's made four good hires from MYSpace and had multiple potential candidates ask questions about her positions and express interest in them. She's had similar responses from Facebook. And to make her comment even more intriguing, she admitted to being a relative newbie as she's only been using MySpace and Facebook for about six months.

I emailed Lisa to ask her to share her wisdom and she very kindly obliged right away. Lisa hires for Sprint's contact center in Oklahoma City. They focus on tech support but have some customer service positions available as well but the customer service department is smaller and her group does not hire for it very often.

Continue reading "Do Employers Really Hire Candidates from Facebook and MySpace? FurstPerson / Sprint Does." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 3, 2008 at 7:06 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the biggest frustrations in running an Internet job board like CollegeRecruiter.com is trying to accurately measure the value that we deliver to our employer clients. The problem, simply put, is that the most of them don't know either.

The vast majority of medium to large employers use applicant tracking systems and the vast majority of those do not properly track the source of those applicants. Most of them do a fine job of tracking the applicants from the point of application but for an employer to understand where their recruiting dollars are best being spent they also need to track the source of the applications.

The ATS companies and many of their clients insist that a drop down box listing different sources used by the employer suffices. The reality is that these candidate self-identification systems only suffice in providing inaccurate information to the employers. A recent study by Don Firth's JobsInLogistics indicates that self-reporting mechanisms like these notorious drop down boxes result in the misidentification of the source some 83 percent of the time. In other words, five out of six job seekers do not know how they found the employer's on-line career site even though the bulk of them probably just clicked through from a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com, a targeted email, cell phone text message, etc.

Continue reading "Internet Job Boards Number One Source of Hire" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 2, 2008 at 9:24 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

We regularly hear from college students searching for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs that one of their biggest frustrations is getting interviews. Overwhelmingly they believe that if they can just get an interview that they will be able to demonstrate their worth to the recruiter or hiring manager. Many times the student or recent graduate is correct, but the question remains: how do you secure more interviews.

Tony Beshara recently wrote an article for the free recruiting content exchange service RecruitingBlogswap.com in which he provided this excellent, excellent advice:

Continue reading "How Students and Recent Grads Can Get More Job Interviews" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 31, 2008 at 9:48 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A tip of the hat to John Sumser of Recruiting.com and Dan Kurt of CareerCam for letting me know about an innovative recruiting program recently implemented by Steve Fogarty's team at Adidas.

Rather than flying a candidate to their corporate office in Portland, Oregon at a cost of about $1,000 a trip plus a couple of days for the candidate and the hiring managers, Adidas instead gives to the short listed interviewees an Adidas-branded web cam and tells the candidates to keep the web cam whether they're hired or not. Candidates are then interviewed in real-time through the CareerCam system.

The result? Faster turnaround for both interviewee and interviewers and I have to believe that Adidas is much more likely to therefore land the best possible hires and build significant good will amongst the candidates who were not hired yet remain in their talent pipeline.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 25, 2008 at 7:56 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Dauby O'Connor & Zeleski, LLC (DO&Z) is a small Indianapolis-based accounting firm that specializes in real estate. Conventional wisdom might indicate that a small firm like this wouldn't have the resources to recruit interns other than locally but the reality is that this firm is doing some great guerrilla marketing.

DO&Z has a Facebook page (although not much appears to have been done with it yet) and a video on YouTube that gently pokes fun at the menial work that a lot of interns do for big accounting firms while pointing out that DO&Z interns do meaningful, challenging work from day one.

Continue reading "Small Accounting Firm Uses YouTube and Facebook to Recruit Interns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 21, 2008 at 10:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Dennis Smith of WirelessJobs.com recently posted a video shot while he was driving to work. In the video, he advices job seekers to look around and see what other job seekers are doing and then do the opposite.

For example, if 95 percent of the job seekers are applying to advertised job openings, don't. If 95 percent of college students searching for internships are doing so primarily through their college's on-campus recruiting system, don't. If 95 percent of recent college graduates hunting for entry level jobs are doing so primarily through on-line job boards such as CollegeRecruiter.com, don't. Instead, network, network, network.

Continue reading "Do the Opposite of What 95% Are Doing" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 20, 2008 at 9:50 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Gerry Crispin posted a short but great blog article about how employers sometimes deviate from their standard hiring practices and hire people who aren't qualified on paper yet prove to be exemplary employees. It reminded me that we did something similar about 1.5 years ago thing when we hired Mike Palmquist, our national account executive.

Mike was a good friend of mine and Faith, my wife. We had known his family for years. He happened to mention to Faith that he was looking to get out of his career as a potter (amongst other things he'd also been a sous chef) and really liked cold calling. Faith and I talked and agreed that we should see if Mike would want to work for CollegeRecruiter.com as a sales representative. He was interested and it didn't take long for him to start. And thank goodness that he did as he's been a wonderful addition to our organization.

We joke with Mike that we hired him for all the wrong reasons yet he's one of the best hires we've ever made. Working with Mike is a pleasure and we look forward to doing so for as long as he's willing to put up with me.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 14, 2008 at 11:26 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I recently read about a new job board, Barefoot Student. It actually isn't a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com and other premium boards are which focus on job posting ads. Instead, Barefoot Student focuses mostly on its resume bank, which isn't as much of a resume bank as an opportunities wanted board. You see, students post information about themselves and what type of work they want to do.

Want to babysit? Post your experience and describe the positions you want there. Want to mow lawns? Same.

There's always room for another good job board or, in this case, opportunities wanted board. Welcome!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 13, 2008 at 8:43 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of attending the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference this past Friday. It was again organized by Paul DeBettignies, again located at the Best Buy world headquarters, again sold out, and again attended by well over 100 recruiters and other human resource professionals. About 60 percent were corporate recruiters/HR, 20 percent consultants, 15 percent third party recruiters / headhunters, and five percent oddballs such as me. Next date is Friday, May 16, 2008. Be there or be square.

The first session was by TJ Conley, an attorney with Leonard, Street & Deinard. About the only thing that I can take credit for is that I helped to connect Paul and TJ.

The presentation by TJ covered a fair amount of ground but the area that was of most interest to me was about the legal risks to employers when they use Google or other Internet resources as part of their background checking process. Those risks include:

Continue reading "Reporting from the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 3, 2008 at 12:15 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of speaking to about 75 students and staff at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York earlier this week. I was invited by the school to talk with the students about how employers are using the web to both include and exclude them from the hiring process. What an impressive group of students.

During the hour long and very interactive discussion we talked how many Gen Y'ers thinks nothing of posting photos and other information to sites such as Facebook and MySpace under the mistaken impression that employers either can't see it or won't care about it. I showed some examples of students using the web to enhance their employment opportunities and others who are killing their chances because of what they've posted on-line. We also talked about what candidates can do to remove harmful information that they've posted or which has been posted by others and to bury information that can't be removed.

Continue reading "Students Not Using LinkedIn" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 27, 2008 at 10:51 AM | Leave a Comment (9)

Willy Franzen of the Secrets of the Job Hunt career advice social network launched a new web site a few days ago. Fabulous. OneDayOneInternship.com profiles the internships offered by a different employer each day.

Willy, you're a genius!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 21, 2008 at 1:44 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Andy Headworth of Sirona Consulting says has a good reminder for employers who are considering hiring college students for internships or recent graduates for entry level jobs:

Generation Y'ers, with their 'different' approach to work, at the same time are demanding more from their jobs and their working environments. They are really looking for a sense of purpose and worth in their jobs, and because of this, the 'job for life' mentality has gone well and truly out of the window!

Continue reading "Gen Y Not Interested in Job for Life " »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 11, 2008 at 9:14 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I just read a great blog article at Bootstrapper, a resource for any small business owner operating on a shoestring budget, and provides tips on financing, cash flow, low-cost marketing and small business loans. They posted a list of more than 50 tools for candidates to change their career paths by helping those job seekers find the best careers for them and how they can get there.

The article is divided into sections for assessment, career exploration, advice, getting (re)hired, and transitioning. Want a taste? Here's what they wrote about assessment:

Continue reading "50 Tools to Change Your Career Path" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 7, 2008 at 9:41 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

Shally Steckerl, one of the most knowledgeable sourcers ever to walk the earth, recently emailed me to let me know that he is now blogging at http://jobmachine.net/blog/shally and also to provide my readers with a few choice resources that have helped him:

Continue reading "Shally's Tips for Bloggers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 21, 2008 at 7:15 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Thanks to Super Dave Mendoza, I just learned that sourcing mavin Shally Steckerl recently interviewed Jason Davis about the value of the Recruiting Roadshow Unconferences. Jason was a third party recruiter when he started Recruiting.com, sold that business to Jobster, and is now running RecruitingBlogs.com and working to increase the number of recruiters who subscribe to the excellent Fordyce Letter.

Shally's interview of Jason took place this past fall in Atlanta at the second Unconference. I had the pleasure of being one of the keynotes and spoke about how recruiters can and should use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. They mention my presentation a few times during the 11 minute interview, but what I really got a charge out of came at the end when they were interrupted by one of the attendees. Her evaluation of the conference was candid and great. Have a look:

Continue reading "The Value of Recruiting Unconferences" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 15, 2008 at 8:44 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of meeting Super Dave Mendoza at a conference in his hometown of Denver. We were both speakers at a Bayard Advertising recruitment advertising event. I flew into Denver International a couple of hours before the event started and then spent what seemed like four hours driving through three states to get to downtown Denver. Got to love $80 cab rides. One way. Dave was up all night. In our college days that was something to be proud of. But his reasons were far too lame to go into here, although I can be bribed at quite reasonable rates. But I digress.

Continue reading "Dave Mendoza - Blogger Extraordinaire" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 11, 2008 at 6:53 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my favorite corporate recruiters is Mark Liston of Valpak. He's a fountain of energy and passion and cares deeply about his work and the people that he serves. And Mark understands that the people that he serves include but are not confined to his superiors at Valpak. They also include the Millennial college students and recent graduates that Valpak recruits for some of the best entry level sales opportunities in the land.

Well, the blog article that Mark posted yesterday was typical Mark. Some stream of consciousness mixed in with a lot of great, practical advice. Including what he refers to as the ABC's: "Always . . . Be . . . Coachable."

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 4, 2008 at 12:01 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the greatest changes that I've seen since we became engaged in the world of college recruiting in 1995 is the rise of the formalized internship program. In 1995, few organizations had interns and those who did rarely made good use of them. It was unusual when you heard about an organization that looked upon its interns as strategic resources and converted even a bare majority to permanent, full-time employees. My position then is the same as it is now: if your organization does not convert at least 75 percent then you are failing your interns and your shareholders.

But how does an organization without an internship program or with a failing internship program reach such a goal? One way is to pick up a copy of Total Internship Management: The Employer's Guide to Building the Ultimate Internship Program and implementing the many views and tips that it includes. The book by Richard Bottner of Intern Bridge, Inc. is based on the New England Internship Study, which was one of the largest internship research projects ever undertaken. The book also is based on the real-life experiences of more than 6,000 college students and 240 employer organizations. It walks you through the steps from understanding if your organization is ready to start recruiting to properly evaluating your existing interns to identifying which ones should receive offers for permanent employment to retaining those future employees.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 24, 2007 at 10:16 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The Minnesota Headhunter has a great blog article on how parents who hover over their kids and therefore can be described as being helicopter parents are getting a bad rap.

As a volunteer at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), he has a lot of contact with Gen Y college students and their parents and feels that they can do their kids a lot more harm than good by giving them rope but not enough to hang themselves with. That's a great analogy and his advice is especially meaningful because it comes from someone in the recruiting world who works both with college students and their parents yet is neither a college student nor a parent. He's knowledgeable yet objective. And he's got a lot of wisdom.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 19, 2007 at 7:47 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

One of the benefits of our partnership with CareerTV is that I've been able to learn a lot about how employers can and should use recruitment videos to help them hire the best possible candidates. So I was delighted when I recently read in Interbiznet's Electronic Recruiting News some great tips from Helen Luttemo, Director of Public Relations for CareerTV:

Continue reading "Best Practices for Recruitment Videos" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 5, 2007 at 6:40 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the skills that is critical to the success of any entrepreneur or intrapreneur is the ability to see around corners. That is, to be better able to predict the relevant future than your competitors. Those who have the skill are at a huge advantage as they are able to better position themselves and their organizations than are their competitors. Corporate recruiters who want to peer around the corner to see what practices will soon be popular need only look at what the various branches of the U.S. military do, including the U.S. Army.

For decades, the Army has used the promise of money for college as a recruiting tool. But starting this January, their message will change. Rather than promising tens of thousands of dollars in money for college, the Army will instead promise up to $40,000 towards the purchase of a home or the creation of a business. And rather than directing the messages at the potential enlistees, the Army will direct a significant portion of the messages at the parents and other adult "influencers" of the enlistees. "If you want to get a soldier, you have to go through mom, and moms want to know what kind of future their children will have when they leave the Army," Lt. Col. Jeff Sterling, the program's architect, told the Wall Street Journal.

Continue reading "Army Targets Influencers: Why Don't All Employers?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 4, 2007 at 1:43 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Great news out of Texas: the Dallas Recruiting Roadshow Unconference is sold out. My congratulations to Ami Givertz and John Sumser for organizing such a great line-up of presenters and marketing it so well to recruiters and other human resource professionals. CollegeRecruiter.com is proud to be one of the sponsors and looks forward to continuing to partner with these gentlemen.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 30, 2007 at 7:21 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Paul DeBettignies a/k/a The Minnesota Headhunter has done it again. No, I'm not talking about his almost completely irrational devotion to University of Minnesota football. I'm talking about his great job in organizing the second Minnesota Recruiting Unconference.

The conference kicks off (pun intended) tomorrow morning at 8am and concludes at 2pm. In between, the attendees will be treated to breakfast, some great networking opportunities, great speakers, some great networking opportunities, lunch, some great networking opportunities, and then some more great networking opportunities. Did I mention that there's no charge and no selling from the podium?

I was privileged to be one of the presenters for the first conference. This time around, CollegeRecruiter.com is privileged to be one of the sponsors. If you're within driving distance of the Best Buy headquarters in suburban Minneapolis tomorrow, you need to sign up right away and join us.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 29, 2007 at 3:06 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

One of the great new additions to the world of recruiting blogs a/k/a the recruiting blogosphere is Mark Liston of Valpak. He just posted a great blog entry in which he gave an example of how a Gen Y sales rep would handle his work differently than his Gen X and Baby Boomer counterparts:

Continue reading "Gen Y vs Gen X vs Baby Boomers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 21, 2007 at 11:22 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

There was a great promotional event held today at the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis. Papa John's, one of the nation's largest pizza chains, unveiled a new ordering system that is designed to appeal primary to Gen Y customers. Rather than calling in an order, you can now use your cell phone to text it in. As fun as that was to watch, it was even more fun to see Jason Bakker of CollegeRecruiter.com client and vendor, Campus Media Group, being interviewed on local TV about the idea.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 15, 2007 at 8:11 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've had the pleasure of meeting Art Koff of RetiredBrains.com before but I've never been able to spend as much time with him as I have over the past two days at the great recruiting conference put on by the folks from Kennedy Information. Art is caring, smart, passionate, and funny. And does he know how to pick a dinner entree.

A group of speakers and attendees had a nice dinner together Monday evening at Orlando's Samba Room. Art ordered the yellow snapper special. People actually applauded. Wow.

Continue reading "Art Koff is the Big Fish" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 14, 2007 at 6:21 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Just heard from Jason Davis that the most recent entries to the Recruiting Blogswap free content exchange program are now being featured on the home page of his well regarded RecruitingBlogswap.com site.

The Recruiting Blogswap is a great way for recruiters and other human resource professionals to share their opinions by authoring articles which are then automatically distributed by the Blogswap software to the next publisher in line. The publishers are recruiting bloggers who want to provide more content and more diverse content to their readers. There is no charge to participate. We run this program as a service to the recruiting community and it also builds links back to CollegeRecruiter.com as each entry includes a "sponsored by" link at the bottom. Win-win-win.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 13, 2007 at 9:29 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

It hasn't been formally announced yet, but earlier today one of our partners, Beyond.com, acquired another of our partners, HRHQ / JOBANIMAL.COM INC., owner of hundreds of niche job boards. My congratulations to both parties.

CollegeRecruiter.com has worked with Beyond.com for the past 4.5 years and we referred HRHQ to Beyond shortly afterwards. Since its founding in 2000, HRHQ has seen tremendous growth in revenues yet managed to stay small, nimble, and client focused. It is a true pleasure working with them.

Beyond provides job search and resume bank functionality to JobAnimal, CollegeRecruiter.com, and 15,000 other career sites. Although you could describe JobAnimal as the holding company for hundreds of niche job boards powered by Beyond, what really defines JobAnimal is their “Short-List PRO” technology, as well as customizable, scalable services, and the application of sound recruiting to provide their clients with the best, qualified candidates.

Unlike the practice of simply advertising in local newspapers or on job boards that may simply overwhelm the clients of JobAnimal with resumes or applications from all kinds of unqualified candidates, JobAnimal effectively does the upfront work of qualifying a short list of candidates and providing them to its clients in the manner that best suits their current hiring strategy. In addition, JobAnimal's fees are based on a volume of candidate leads model and that tends to significantly reduce the costs of the employer's recruitment process.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 6, 2007 at 4:48 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the most interesting ideas that came out of my participation as a panel member on Minnesota Public Radio's In the Loop show was something contributed by audience member, Liba Herman. She works for The Carney Group, a Minneapolis-based marketing communications and design firm.

The Carney Group regularly interviews and hires Gen Y candidates. While the candidate is being interviewed, the interviewer will ask them for the address of their Facebook and MySpace pages. The interviewer will then bring those pages up on a computer screen and walk through them with the candidate. Is Carney doing this to criticize the candidate or dig up digital dirt? No, and that's why I love this idea so much. Instead, they're bringing up these pages in order to allow the interviewer and the candidate more opportunities to better know each other. If the candidate's page shows that she loves football and the interviewer saw a great game the day before, they have an increased personal connection and that's going to increase the likelihood that the candidate will want to work for Carney and that Carney will want to hire the candidate.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace present grave dangers to candidates and employers, but also tremendous opportunities. Kudos to The Carney Group for recognizing and implementing the latter.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 19, 2007 at 12:09 PM | Leave a Comment (3)

We can probably file this blog entry in the "this isn't quite news but it is still interesting" category. A few weeks ago, private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson announced a majority investment in on-line job board, Vault.com. My congratulations to both parties. I've long been a fan of Vault for the quality and quantity of employment-related content that they produce. We've also been around for about the same period of time. We went live 12 years ago. They followed a year later.

Just two short years ago, Vault laid off one third of its staff (25 people) in an effort to become profitable. I did some research on-line but wasn't surprised when I wasn't able to turn up any type of reliable profitability measurements for Vault. Is it profitable today? Probably. But it is certain that today, with its revenues reported to be $9.6 million, it is valued at $60 to $85 million. If so, that's a pretty rich revenue multiplier of 6.25 to 8.9 times as compared to some other niche job boards. For example, Dice Holdings, Inc., the owner of information technology niche job board Dice.com, is trading at 6.59 its annual revenues. All things being equal, a public traded company usually trades at a premium over privately held companies because investors prefer to be liquid.

Continue reading "Vault.com Acquired by Veronis Suhler Stevenson Private Equity Firm" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 15, 2007 at 7:13 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Ami Givertz deserves a huge slap on the back for a job very, very well done. He was the driving force and organizer of the second Recruiting Roadshow Unconference and did a masterful job by pulling together John Sumser and some other great speakers. The conference on Tuesday was attended by about 150 mostly corporate recruiter and human resource manager attendees.

I had the privilege of delivering the post-lunch keynote on how employers can and should use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. It was interesting that the material was new to almost everyone in attendance. I've spent a lot of time thinking, writing, and speaking about these issues over the past year or two so it was great to be able to help those in attendance become aware of the issues and hopefully to help them understand that the sites are neither evil nor silver bullets but used wisely can become another arrow in their recruiting quiver.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 27, 2007 at 11:49 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

New York state Attorney Generl Andrew Cuomo has launched an investigation into social networking site Facebook after New York undercover investigators posed as children as were allegedly solicited by sexual predators.

Cuomo said that agents posing as children were solicited by adult sexual predators and that the agents could easily access pornographic photos. Agents contacted Facebook but their complaints were often ignored. Facebook, to its credit, did take down some of the offending material and close the accounts of some of the predators but to its shame it apparently failed to do so on all and perhaps most of the time.

Facebook is only three years old. It was founded in 2004 in the dorm room of Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, and opened its site to everyone in 2006. The company says it now has more than 42 million users. Unfortunately, some of those users are scum and we should be thankful that Cuomo and his staff are working to keep this wonderful resource as safe as possible for all.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 26, 2007 at 5:23 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Ever used Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia? It is written by some of the most brilliant and, ahem, not so brilliant people in the world in a collaborative manner that is truly remarkable. You can post an article about a topic you know a lot about, or about a topic that you know nothing about, and I can edit your words to improve, or damage, the quality of your article. The theory is that if enough people edit an article, the quality of the article will be improved. That's the theory and it usually works well. Usually.

The reality of Wikipedia is that because anyone can post an article or edit someone else's article, all articles must be read with some skepticism. The errors in the articles may be accidental or deliberate and very few of the contributors are scholars.

So along comes Scholarpedia, which takes the best of Wikipedia but using similar wiki technology but gets rid of the worst but only accepting articles and edits from actual experts. Here's how they describe their venture:

Continue reading "Size Matters Not" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 20, 2007 at 7:58 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm more of a feminist than many females that I know and thank goodness as I am the father of a bright and strong seven year old daughter and husband to a bright and strong wife. I joke that my sons, both of whom are older than my daughter, need to learn to be overly protective of her, but I have no doubt that she's able and will continue to be able to take care of herself along with those around her. So it was nice for me to see the Satisfying Career - Happier Life Career Blog entry by Shweta Khare that Millenial (also known as Gen Y) females are stronger and more confident than the Generation X (my generation) working females.

Continue reading "Rock On Sisters!" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 22, 2007 at 7:35 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Ernst & Young LLP hires more than 5,500 college students and recent graduates a year for internships and entry level career opportunities...and that's only in North America. How does an organization with such huge hiring needs find enough highly qualified candidates? In addition to the traditional on-campus recruiting efforts, employee referrals, and advertising on job boards and other media, E&Y now has a page on the social networking site, Facebook, which is one of the most popular sites amongst college students.

Continue reading "Ernst & Young Becomes First Employer to Use Facebook" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 9, 2007 at 9:55 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

My hat is off to Jason Goldberg of Jobster. It appears that high flying Jobster, for which I have tremendous respect, is about to lay off a significant number of its employees in an effort to become profitable in 2007. Unlike most CEO's, Jason has been open and honest with the readers of his blog about what is happening. I'm sure that there are things that he has not been able to discuss because of the fiduciary obligations that he owes to his VC and other shareholders, but it is truly amazing how he has been willing to not only acknowledge the very difficult issues in his blog but also link to blogs and other articles that are trash talking Jobster. He even approved a comment from a disgruntled parent of one of his recent college graduate employees.

This is a difficult time for Jason, his shareholders, his employees, his clients, his vendors, and others who care about Jobster. Yet when they all look back upon this period, they will trust Jason more and because of that Jobster will be stronger and even more respected than it already is.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 30, 2006 at 9:36 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Two of my favorite members of the recruiting blogosphere are Dave Mendoza and Joel Cheesman. Both care deeply about their clients and profession and are very knowledgeable. I always learn something whenever I talk with them. For a fully recovered lawyer, that's hard to admit.

At least as importantly as Dave and Joel being class acts professionally, they're also class acts personally. They're a real pleasure to be with. So isn't it great that they're receiving the accolades they deserve from their blogging brethren? Dave's blog won the Recruiting.com popular vote as the best recruiting blog and Joel's blog won the judge's vote as the best recruiting blog. Folks, there aren't any losers here. They're both winners.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 28, 2006 at 4:52 PM | Leave a Comment (0)