Social Media Headhunter

Jobaphiles Makes You Bid On A Job?

I first saw a posting for Jobaphile over at Edgelings and thought that indeed the gates to Hades had been cracked open, and the souls of the undead had taken over Human Resources departments.  There's a good reason not to believe headlines, as this job auction site is really just a version of eLance or other freelance gigs.  It seems that you're bidding on getting jobs, but you're not actually paying for the right to get hired, you're bidding on how low you'll work for a project.

It really is a reverse-auction site.

Still makes it creepy.  I've been in staffing for 10 years.  Nothing new is under the sun, and that includes social media and job auction sites.  Jobaphile, in addition to being poorly named, is another example of people wanting to get something for nothing.  $15 for a Ruby on Rail developer?  Not in this country, bub.  And if that's your max bid, what do you really want to happen?

If you're a candidate or an employer, know this - the old idea that something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it is true, but if you treat human labor like a commodity, you've got to add in the cost of compliance and legal fees.  You may be able to get someone to be a deli clerk for $9 rather than $10, but the cost in getting someone who doesn't hurt your business is usually worth the extra buck.

Chalk it up to another story sensationalized by poor reporting.  Move along, and careful what you read on the interwebs. 

Interview: Fabrice Grinda Of OLX Classifieds

I've got a warning for you Craigslist.  OLX is coming for you.  OLX is a global classified advertising site, and they are one of the world's top 100 web destinations.  Think of them as the biggest company you've never heard of.  How big?  OLX has 50 million unique monthly visitors, 400 million page views, and they're in 87 countries with dozens of languages.  And they've set their sites on the US.  Craigslist in particular.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time speaking with Fabrice Grinda, the CEO of OLX, and a certified entrepreneur, who has built several companies, including the ebay of India and Brazil, as well as the mobile wallpaper and ringtone site, Zingy, which was sold for $80 million after just a few years.  Suffice it to say Fabrice has proven he knows how to build an online business.

Who is Mr. Grinda?  Born in Nice, France, a Princeton graduate, and a fan of Craigslist and eBay, Fabrice has taken the ideas of these internet giants and applied them to the global economy.  Don't think he's a copycat.  Understanding how to market to a global audience is no small matter, and while OLX is built on the same idea as Craigslist, it features a numer of quality improvements that Fabrice feels Craigslist should have done, but decided not to.

What improvements?

1) OLX is completely free to the user, and will remain so.  The classified are ad-supported (clickthroughs are higher than social networks because they're targeted to the products).
2) Mobile Site - mobile is big in Japan and Europe, and OLX has a tested mobile site that allows you to use OLX with your phone almost as well as you use the site.
3) OLX allows you to host video and pictures straight from the site, while Craigslist forces you to host them elsewhere.
4) You need HTML to create an ad in Craigslist that isn't boring. OLX features a WYSIWYG Ajax editor that is much easier for non-technical folks.
5) OLX has sophisticated search functions based on usability and location.
6) OLX is connected to social media sites, allowing you to drive traffic to and from your network profiles.
7) OLX allows businesses to upload products through an XML feed.  You can to that as a PowerSeller on eBay, but it costs a fee (This is a killer small business application).
8) 24/7 Customer Service.

I have to say - what Fabrice was saying is pretty cool.  I just recently completed a training on selling products using social media, and I specifically covered the use of retail locations using Craigslist to sell.  OLX offers a richer interface, and if they can build traffic, they may be the Facebook of the Classifieds (clean design, sexy apps, and sophisticated networking).  That's a powerful combination with the money and traffic from the global sections.  Add in partners in other countries looking to break into the US market, and you have a potent competitor.

That information was great, and I'll definitely be looking at OLX, but one tough question remained. Craigslist is an internet darling because they're not pretentious.  They aren't looking to beat anyone, because they aren't really into it for the competition.  They're insanely profitable, keep a low employee count, and aren't interested in taking over the world.  How do you compete with someone like that?  how do you compete with someone who isn't trying to monetize their site? Newspapers haven't figured out how to do this yet, but Fabrice thinks he has the process in place.

First - they already are the global leader.  The US is gravy to them, and even if they end up number 2, they'll end up a very profitable number two.  Second, Fabrice thinks Craigslist is sitting on their laurels, and lacking capital and drive, won't be able to compete with the changes and superior usability of OLX.  From a design standpoint, Fabrice is right.  There really isn't a comparison.  The real question is whether the simplicity of Craigslist is more desirable than the full sevice of OLX.

Inertia is a powerful thing and one only has to compare early Macs and PC's to see a better product isn't always the winner in a marketplace.  Craigslist rules the roost, but they've not faced another free competitor.  OLX doesn't need to build marketshare to survive. With 125 employees, OLX has one more big advantage - a customer service staff of over 60 people.

I asked what 60 people could possibly do, and Fabrice explained they manually go over entries.  Because they're free, and because people do things like ship bicycles to Nigeria and expect payment, fraud and spam are the two biggest concerns of any online site.  Automatic filters catch half of the spam (over six million entries), but fully 2/3's of the posts that get through are manually deleted in a battle to ensure legitimacy.  That's the price of free, and while that means the company incurs heavy costs, it also means they can adapt to the marketplace.  Actively working to monetize the site provides the resources needed to make changes.  Craigslist may be obscenely profitable, but they're not hungry.

It's too early to tell how much of an impact OLX will have on the American market.  It certainly piqued my interest, and I'll be testing it for my products and clients.  The real question is what consumer's want.  Craigslist works, but do we want more?  I'm not sure, but I wouldn't bet against Fabrice Grinda. 

Bob Bishop, St Louis Marketing Headhunter On Social Media

Yes, I've bought a tripod since shooting this, but here's an interview with Bob Bishop, a St Louis Marketing Headhunter who blogs at the Perfect Fit.  Bob has gone through personal training with me, has several of my training DVD's, and you can see the results here in this video.

Again, sorry about the shakiness, but three cups of coffee will do that to you.

Bob's site is Bishop Partners, and his retained search blog is The Perfect Fit.

Twitter Is A Great Employment Tool, For Other People

RecruitingBlogs.com has a bunch of information up on Twitter for Recruiting - and it's for free.  I love those guys, but you get what you pay for.  Between people complaining that it's worthless, and others giving you technical details about hashtags and twitter search, the elemental issue of human contact is completely ignored.

And like all bad systems, recruiters who don't understand this will find the community routing around them.

Twitter for recruiting is best used in three ways.

1) Sourcing - using advanced Boolean searches, you can identify candidates and their current positions in their profiles.

2) Referrals:  Once you've built a network focused on your industry, you'll become a known quantity for the people you engage.  If you tweet correctly, you'll get referrals (most people do it wrong - they're just spamming the site and wondering why that doesn't work).

3) Industry research - Twitter works great as an informal Q-and-A for information.  From real time intelligence on your clients, promotions, hires, layoffs, and projects, to asking your network how to answer questions on buzzwords, lingo, and technical matters, Twitter works to give you information quicker, making you more interesting on the phone.  Think of it as a giant phone-a-friend from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Of course, the reason most people don't get this is they only want to post jobs and magically have candidates appear.  That doesn't work. In fact, the posted jobs have the same problem they do on job boards - it's so easy, that most posts are worthless.  Twitter is not a job posting service.  If that works for you, count those days as numbered.  Anything that easy is going to get overused to the point of being irrelevant. 

What is the difference between posting on a job board and posting on Twitter?  Very little.  It's just garbage in and garbage out.  Do you really want to post a job on Twitter and have everyone follow up with you?  Didn't we learn our lessons from posting to job boards and getting hundreds of resumes from unqualified candidates?  Learn this - identifying a candidate is not the same as recruiting them.  If you put little value into your tweets, you're not going to get much value out of it.  And the community will route around you.

Social Networking is an easy target these days, and one of the complaints is it's growing so fast you can't keep up. It's a valid argument, and let me explain why.  Let's say you follow 500 people on Twitter.  There are 7,000,000 people and growing on Twitter.  No matter what you think of Twitter, you're getting only a tiny, non-representative portion of the community.  Like blogs before it, Twitter is already to big to really understand.  Your perspective is going to be shaped by who you spend time with.  Thus your statements will be true only for you and some of your followers.  You cannot understand the entire matter.

Thus we are left with one simple choice when it comes to Twitter (and all things social media).  Does it work for you, or does it not?  Does your time online yield a useful result, or does it not?  Yes, this means there is no one right way to use Twitter.  But there are hundreds of wrongs to use Twitter.

Twitter for business can be boiled down to one simple question. 

Are you making money from your actions, and are you making money for other people?

If you can't figure out how to do that, the problem is between the seat and the keyboard.