Covering stories from blog.ad-ition.com and other relevant classified media news.
This episode’s covered news bits include coverage of two publishers potentially forming a workforce collaborative partnership, what the search giants are saying the economy has done to their advertising business, Gannett and ADTECH, automotive spending, and a review of the top auto, real estate and recruitment sites for the month of June.
By far, Career Builder has been one of the larger jobs sites doing their part to keep abreast to new functionality that proves to have a high engagement quotient. Whether it is niche sites or new applications for the iPhone, they have done their share to focus on their core audience - the job seeker. Knowing all of this, it was no surprise to see Career Builder at the top of Nielsen’s ‘Top 10 Online Education and Careers Destination’ chart.
In 2007, CareerBuilder.com generated $768 million in North America.
The Yahoo! HotJobs group announced this week that they have expanded their Smart Ads product. With the product re-vamp, employers and agencies will now be able to transform job listings into display ads, using the intuitive self service application. All display ads made under the Smart Ad product, will then be presented to job seekers using behavioral targeting methodologies, based on Yahoo’s deep database tracking knowledge (R.E.A.L).
“For employers to remain cost effective and competitive in the evolving recruitment marketplace, they need solutions that leverage technology to efficiently connect them with the most relevant candidates,” said Jeff Kinder, senior vice president and general manager, Yahoo! HotJobs. “Like the groundbreaking R.E.A.L. search algorithm launched in February, the solutions unveiled today are more examples of Yahoo! innovation and research applied to the recruitment industry.”
In addition to the Smart Ad product expansion, Yahoo! HotJobs also released something they are calling ‘Company Profiles’. This product allows an employer to communicate and clearly represent their brand on the Yahoo network, through usage of a dedicated page that spells out the company’s culture and job openings. An integrated video module is also at an employer’s disposal.
The Yahoo! network now garners 140 million unique visitors per month.
Question-and-answer Websites have seen their audience and usage numbers more than double, when compared to the previous year.
Yahoo! Answers sticks out as the clear winner with 74% of the Q&A market share, but there are new players who are quickly growing in size: WikiAnswers, Answerbag and Askville (a beta Amazon site). Q&A sites probably wouldn’t have been as popular four years ago, but with the rising UGC participation online, people are using Q&A sites as legitimate resource tools and sources of authoritative information. I for one was impressed by the caliber of answer I received when I first tried Yahoo! Answers, just after their official launch date.
“As we see user-generated content proliferating in different flavors, this is yet another way people are interacting with social media,” said Heather Dougherty, research director at Hitwise.
The success of Q&A sites speaks to something we have been saying to publishers all along – create an “ask the expert” section to service your niche categories – automotive, real estate and recruitment. And unlike business models such as Yahoo! Answers or WikiAnswers, you rely on a rotation of your larger advertisers in each vertical to own the Q&A. In doing this you not only avoid the staffing costs associated with managing the product, but you also cover a few crucial areas:
Win an advertiser for life: flattery will get you everywhere. Through asking one of your advertisers to own a portion of your site for three months shows that, you not only value them as a customer, but you think they are experts in their field.
Provide more tools and resources for your readers: an Internet user’s biggest pet peeve is not being able to find or access the information when they want it. This is why navigation and site audits are so important. By providing the “ask the expert” section you give users another way – period!
Comply with information gathering and online consumer trends: if it can work for generalist Q&A sites like Yahoo! then it will definitely work for niche categories.
According to comScore, Yahoo! Answers, had monthly traffic of 25.3 million in February (up from 17.4 million in 2006) and an average time spent online per user of nine minutes per session, according to Hitwise.
Jobrate is a new employment portal that while still in beta, totes its dynamic search as its competitive edge.
Unlike traditional job portals that are driven heavily on static job seeker input to show results, Jobrate shows potential job matches with every key word typed. As the Jobrate site tour explains, typing ‘de in n’ will give you jobs of Designer in New York and Web Designer in New York. The primary search has been set up in this fashion to speed up the job find process.
From an employer’s perspective, Jobrate offers a WYSIWYG style allowing employers to see their ad as they build it and any Webmaster looking to add content to their site will be able to do so via Jobrate’s XML Syndication Technology.
As the site is still its beta stages, employers are able to post jobs for free, but it is unclear how long this will remain a non-fee based listing portal.
In addition to the job search capability above, the site also enables job seekers to search jobs by the most viewed, most demanded and top location, via quick access links.
It is important to note however that the site does not allow for personalization features, such as ‘my account’ where job searches could be saved. Instead, they advertise the ‘email job posting’ functionality as a way for seekers to manage the listings they are interested in, as well as RSS subscriptions to relevant job listings.
Already the site has outlaid a few areas where fees could be initiated once officially launched and although they have added many features to improve the employment search functionality, their lack of personalization features could be their draw back.
A new job portal was launched in the
SEO Vacancies, started by Paul Griffiths, is an impressive job board with a sizable amount of listings, even given its narrow focus. The story or concept however, should lead others to think about how they could segment their jobs properties. Is there a particular employment category that is important to your local community, because of industry drivers, that could be turned into a niche publication or micro site? Would having a specialty product enable you to get additional advertisers, with premium positioning because your product would directly answer their industry needs?
What ever the answers to the questions above, SEO Vacancies provides a model of specialty that works. We have seen the stats on growth or stabilization of niche and community magazines. For publishers still comfortable in the print world, this may be a viable and sustainable option.
Another job site has just stepped on the scene, but their primary focus does not seem to be jobs.
Beyond.com differs greatly from the already existing job sites, as it boasts of a network of 15, 000 other websites that through advertising with them, an employer can take advantage of. Their network of sites include ITWorld, America Job Central, Blue Collar Jobs, Job Nut, etc…. They have been able to create a large network because of their job board software. Beyond’s success in entrenching their software in other sites can be attributed to their revenue sharing models. They provide the content and of course, depending on the traffic the partnering site proves, a revenue sharing model conjured. The concept would work especially well for niche bloggers or sites that are industry specific. Beyond could or would aggregate job listings that match the readership profile, in turn providing a value add on the partnering site. The content share does not have to stop with job listings, as Beyond also offers editorial that can be customized.
Where Beyond is similar to CareerBuilder or even Monster is that they too allow for employers to list jobs on their Beyond.com site and seekers to find employment. Providing similar functionality to what already exists today. The site boasts of jobs in over 25 industries and over 25 million professionals in their database.
The founder of Career Builder has launched Jobfox, an employment site that focuses more on the job seeker, as opposed to job listings.
On Jobfox, job seekers create a web page highlighting their skills, experience, receptiveness to relocation and so on. The site then matches candidate profiles via keywords to potential employers. Potential Employers are then alerted and directed to the seekers page on Jobfox and so the talent hunt begins.
Jobfox’s major telling point is its enabling ability for job seekers to track how many times their resume has been viewed, who has looked at it and have the option to receive the alerts via text message on their cell phone.
The CEO of Jobfox, Rob McGovern, alludes to attracting Generation Y audience as a driver for the sites creation. “The MySpace and Facebook generations of young people are now in the workplace,” McGovern noted. “A lot of what Jobfox is about is allowing those people to have a professional existence on the Web.”
One of the largest employment vertical, online partners to the print world has just announced it is cutting jobs in-house, to maintain revenue to cost ratios. The partner I am speaking of is Monster.com.
As Monster made clear that it will cut 15% (800 jobs) of its work force to keep investors happy, at the end of the day publishers already in bed with the elephant will need to be aware of the changes to staffing and how that may affect their business.
The challenge the reduction of staff brings to both Monster and their partnering publishers, is the question of service and reliability. Will something be lost in the shuffle? Keep in mind Monster has a relationship with approximately 59 newspapers, which means that there is a lot at stake here. Press releases indicate that the greatest reduction of staff will be here in
I hope Monster has a formidable transition plan or further reduction in North American market share may be their faith.
This is definitely a story we will be watching closely.
There comes a time in everyone’s life, where you have to make make a choice or choices designed to guide you towards fulfilling what you feel the formidable plan should be – no, will be. Decisions of this magnitude are often times difficult. Making the right choice often hinges on lessons from the past, taught by institution certified teachers and beloved parents and kinfolk of wisdom. In the end however, the landlord of the choice made, is you!
This edition of ‘What Little I know…’ is going to be the first and the last of heavy prose, as it represents a current and very monumental event in my life.
Six-weeks ago, I made the difficult and cognizant decision to resign from my role at a large media organization. It was a role that gave a young leader, such as myself, everything materially that I could ever ask for. Through this job, I purchased a home in a trendy area of Downtown Toronto, Ontario. Through this role, I was able to purchase the car, or at least one of them, that I always wanted and through this role, I was able to travel, often times to destinations I chose at whim. Resigning, on the other hand, gave me a chance to walk away from a mono-dimensional way of living, thinking and socializing. No more consuming 80 hours a week, in a bubble like state. To be honest, the realization of the need to resign and attain ‘more’ came last May, when I attended a funeral for someone I knew in high school. This individual was my age and with, what most would say, a bright future ahead of him. The one thing that really struck a chord with me, as I sat attentively waiting for the funeral procession to begin, was the number of people that came out to say goodbye to my friend. The funeral home was so full that to accommodate all, they had to televise the ceremony in the gymnasium next door. Nonetheless, as I looked at the different faces, races and ages in the satellite location it made me think, how many lives or which lives have I touched over the years and who would feel compelled to attend my funeral? When you looked at our lives, my deceased friend and I, and compared them, on face value and based on the beliefs of common society, many would have thought that I made all the right choices and was living a fulfilled life. However, when I thought about who would attend my funeral, I came up with approximately 15 people, and they were family members who would be somewhat forced, by relation, to attend. Then it hit me – my deceased friend, who may not have had the trendy condominium and fast car, clearly made some strong decision for the preservation of self and all that it means to attain ‘more’- this was obvious when you looked at the number of lives he touched. At that point, I knew I had dedicated everything, my entire being to just a job. I dedicated my life to a thing that really was not fulfilling or aiding me in exploring my passions. Most of all, I spent the past five working years ignoring my loved ones, my fabulous friends, my spirituality and in the end, blindly ignoring me.
So, funnily enough, my resignation comes close to the one-year anniversary of my awakening. It is unfortunate that it took this long to come to fruition, but everything happens in its due time.
In turning a new leaf in life, I look forward to continuing to work, but for myself, pursuing the things that drive me. Although to some around me, this choice that I have made, in their eyes resembles walking away from the greatest boon in a gold mine, I know that with passion, comes drive, with drive comes growth, and with growth comes success.
Now I think I am finally ready and understand what it means to go out and attain ‘more’.
http://www.amazon.ca/Pillars-Earth-Ken-Follett/dp/0451166892%3FSubscriptionId%3D1YNZ339ZCHHAKYFSY702%26tag%3Dsubversionfor-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0451166892
http://www.amazon.ca/Polished-Hoe-Austin-Clarke/dp/0887621341%3FSubscriptionId%3D1YNZ339ZCHHAKYFSY702%26tag%3Dsubversionfor-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0887621341
http://www.amazon.ca/Using-Political-Ideas-Barbara-Goodwin/dp/0470025522%3FSubscriptionId%3D1YNZ339ZCHHAKYFSY702%26tag%3Dsubversionfor-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0470025522
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