There is so much in the marketing world about the interaction between customers in the blogosphere and the companies that make products or services for those customers. From the iPhone, to the Dodge Challenger there are robust communities all over the web making or breaking products through the power of word-of-mouth stimulated by social media. Very little of this interaction is sponsored by the makers of the products, but these voices no doubt affect the direction of the products, and future marketing decisions.

Jobs and labor are no different. In fact, one could argue that the transparency of company and consumer attitudes toward labor, from the advent of labor unions, to the existence of F*ed Company has a far more rich history than some contentious discourse about your crappy computing device.

Transparency is Coming to Legal Staffing
In the past year, this issue has come to the forefront for more legal staffing firms. Employees are not so afraid anymore of getting fired for blogging, even though this, this, and this suggest they should think otherwise. While online conversation had been the perview of IT workers since Usenet, it seems fairly recent that legal professionals have taken to blogging en force.

I first started to look into the online presence of legal professionals in 2005 when I noticed a small website, paralegalgateway.com sending a bit of traffic to Hudson’s websites. Upon further review I found that it was Jeannie Johnston’s site (a Hudson employee at the time) who through a small link in a blog post, had driven some traffic toward us. I was very curious to see one of our own interacting in a very meaningful way with a targeted talent pool from which she would recruit. This sparked more curiosity in me as to where blogging and online community were taking place within the world of our legal staffing practice. I knew that entry level legal professionals were hanging around the Monster Legal channel that we helped to establish in 2007. Still, there didn’t seem to be a voice of the practicing temporary attorney who was doing the large-scale document review which was becoming common.

The Awakening of 2007
With the exception of “Tom the Temp” who started his blog in late 2005, it seems that in mid-2007 the temporary attorney blogosphere became more populated and interesting. Joe Miller posted his first JD Wired entry in August of 2007, as did another anonymous temporary attorney in Washington DC. All of these blogs bring a very real voice to the marketplace that is useful market intelligence for legal staffing firms.

The good (from Tom the Temp):

Anonymous said…
reality check has the right of it. I’m an attorney working at the Newark site, and the original post couldn’t be a bigger bunch of bs. The Hudson people are courteous, pay on time, treat us like professionals, and have made the environment as pleasant as possibly given some constraints by the client (i.e. no phone use in the coding room). Whoever gave you the info for the original post either was fired on the first day for being a slobbering idiot, or needs to work on his fiction.

I’ve only been to this blog for a few weeks, but I already can see it’s just a bunch of WATBs. You cry babies have probably never worked a single day of your pampered lives at a real job. Whah whah whah.

$35 an hour plus time an half for coding isn’t good enough for you? Go get a “real” job then. Most firms aren’t looking to bring on board pouty, bitchy juveniles who think the world owes them, but hey, you might get lucky.

The bad (from Tom the Temp)

I really hope this is true. It’s time for some structure, people. The firms, temp agencies, predatory banks, and TTT law schools are continuing to eat us alive. How much more non-dischargeable law school debt will they be allowed to pile on top us? For the fifth straight year, will you just sit back and allow them to yet again “deflate your rate”? Will you lose yet another P.T.O. (not just any P.T.O, but one belonging to Dr. King), while profits per partner continue to soar? I hope not.

The ugly (from my attorney blog):

John Smith Says:

December 13th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Hudson totally screwed me out of referral fee because I was not staffed with them at the time. What a joke! I will never refer anyone to that agency again.

While marketers base their reputation on being publicly accountable for their thoughts, it appears that temporary attorneys see the opposite. Much of the commentary on these blogs as well as message boards like JDUnderground is anonymous and incendiary. To some extent this helps you get a pulse of the industry better than any employee survey could. Salaries and benefits are down, demand is less than supply, and work conditions are sometimes less than ideal.

I will admit that reading the content is entertaining, although somewhat like watching a car wreck. Hudson has put hundreds of satisfied people to work that are already speaking on our behalf within these social media. So far, my role is to know what is being said – to listen. Not only that, but Hudson’s front-line staff are listening. The real question for an interactive marketer then is how to join the conversation in a meaningful and beneficial way.

photo by mr oji

The game was great. Much as it pains me to say **hurray** when a Giants team that at one point in its history put a dagger in my heart (Wide-Right), I did in fact jump out of my seat when Eli Manning played Houdini on one play, then hit Plaxico Burress wide-open in the end zone for the game winning touchdown.

The ads were less than great. The ‘follow your heart’ spot was a provocative stunt which definitely got people talking…mostly in the way they would talk after leaving a movie with gratuitous gore. The ‘Firefly’ ad was dopey. For some reason it took me until my second and 3rd viewing today to really grasp the punchline. I think it was a lot of story development in 30 seconds, and my slow brain just couldn’t keep up. It could also have been that it was later in the game when fatigue and beer had already set in.The CareerBuilder ’08 SuperBowl ads plus 2 others in the series are posted here.

Let’s see what the market has to say. I’m very interested in a lot of aspects to the campaign. I’ll list them below and continue to update this post as I find out more and more.

1. What is the overall sentiment toward CareerBuilder after it dropped the motherlode to buy those ads?
• Answer #1. USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter ranks ads 38th and 45th. Wasn’t this the metric that got CB’s Ad Agency fired last year?
• Answer #2. Nancy Colasurdo, Life Coach at Foxbusiness.com thought the CareerBuilder Ads Send an Important Message. Hmm…I don’t think most watchers are as cerebral as she.
2. How much web traffic did the ads generate? How many additional resumes, job views, applies, etc.?
   From my CareerBuilder Rep:
   

   Feb 08’, CareerBuilder.com hit a record high in unique visitors (in the Career Services and Development) with 25 million! Most importantly, right after Super Bowl commercials aired (Monday and Tues following)….CB internal data showed a substantial increase in EOI. It increased by 26%. EOI stands for “Expressions of Interest”…meaning # of people applying to jobs. In those 2 days following, there was a 26% increase in people that applied to jobs.

3. With social networking more mainstream than ever, how well does the campaign reach into influential social and professional networks?
   • Answer #1. The recruitosphere, which is NOT the target audience was discussing the ads pre- and post- Super Bowl:
     Why Recruiters Love Super Bowl Ads
     Cheezhead getting busted by W+K for posting the ad pre-bowl
     Cheezhead saying the ad was a flop
     Pamela Skillings really liked them
   • Answer #2. Twitter activity gave real time opinions of the ads. Look what people had to say.
   • Answer #3. Gizmodo (the influential tech gadget blog) rated Firefly the Lowest Kick to Disney’s Balls.
4. How much do the interactive/online components to the campaign contribute to its relative success?
• Answer #1. Charles Armstrong was impressed with Tide and not with CareerBuilder. I agree. Tide blew me away, and I’m getting all sorts of errors with CareerBuilder’s Personal Gruntledness Index today.
• Answer #2. Reprise Media gives CareerBuilder a “Touchdown” for integrating its paid search placement with its ad campaign. Tip o’ the hat to Matthew Grant at Aquent.

I’ll keep my ear to the ground on CareerBuilder campaign happenings as well as on the Monster ones to see who is getting it right, and who is treading water. Ultimately, it has an impact on where we invest our precious marketing budgets. Stay tuned.

CareerBuilder has action, Monster has aspirations. CareerBuilder’s 2008 marketing assault is taking a different tact toward driving job seekers than is Monster’s newly minted global ad campaign. Here’s the agency-created promo that was shown to CareerBuilder employees.

This video is from www.careerbuilder.com/marketinghighlights

CareerBuilder’s ad campaign, just like the rest of their product offering aims at immediacy. It is all about getting the traffic, driving applies, and ultimately delighting the clients who pay them for those candidates. For me, CareerBuilder’s recent success is more about their Recommended Jobs engine. The campaign is only going to augment the effectiveness of that product feature, and ultimately drive staffing firm success.

Case in point. Recommended jobs are present in every part of the job seeker experience. From the home page, to the thank you note you get after applying to a job, CareerBuilder drives users to that next opportunity that is relevant to what they know about you. It is a very Amazon-like experience, a site famous for leveraging knowledge of its customers to provide information about what you should do next. On Super Bowl Sunday, when Sally job seeker gets convinced it’s time to leave her sucky job, she’ll go to CareerBuilder and find 25 targeted recommendations on how to fix that problem. Even if the recommendations based on her zip code and uploaded resume lead her to my competitors, she’ll likely see Hudson jobs that could solve her problem too. Because of CareerBuilder’s product these are the types of seekers we’ll be looking for.

Monster has taken the aspirational high road, choosing to inspire people to find a job they are really passionate about – even if it’s in another industry. I’m not as cynical about their campaign as some, but I do find the following scenario a likely result.

Hmm…my calling is calling. Let’s see if I have a shot at being an executive chef. Keywords=chef + $100k, Apply Now. Ooh…I’ve always thought coffee was fun to drink, how about a career as a barista? Keywords=coffee + training available, Apply Now. Because the site isn’t telling Ms. Aspirational Accountant that the Contract Tax Manager position right up the street is in her wheelhouse, she’s almost encouraged to spread her application to any number of stretch positions. It’s a great marketing message for job seekers for sure, but for over-burdened recruiters and staffing firms with a mountain of unqualifieds on their desk, it’s a nightmare.

I’m eager to see whether the data supports my theory, or if I’m off my rocker. I’m certainly not the only armchair critic this year. Happy Super Bowl everybody.

I recently came across the Wired & Hired blog when looking for staffing firm blog best practices. I found one of the posts was particularly well done, and have been tracking the site ever since. Apparently others in the blogosphere think similarly, as the site won best job hunting blog of 2007 on Recruitingblogs.com. So in homage to the victory, and to help all of us staffing firm marketers with our own blog strategy I scored an email interview with Ryan Watkins, TalentZoo’s Web Editor. I wanted to know the secrets to success and Ryan was happy to oblige. Here’s what I learned.

Tell me about your blog strategy, when, how, and why did it come about at TalentZoo?
Talent Zoo has several blogging sites, each of which serves a different industry and reader. The overall goal is to spread our name throughout the blogosphere to drive readers, job seekers and industry professionals to TalentZoo.com.

The blogs were created long before I came into the picture. Our company saw the importance of interactive marketing, and there is nothing more interactive than blogging. Creating a relevant dialogue with our readers was, and continues to be, the basis for the blog sites. Our authors have valuable information that we feel will help our readers in their careers, job searches or even personal lives.

Your title is Web Editor. What does that mean, and where does your role fit into the organizational hierarchy?
I belong to the Development Department here at the Zoo. It is my responsibility to ensure that all of the written content on any page on any site we produce is correctly presented. There is a lot of content on our sites, but I’m a wordsmith – I enjoy editing, proofing, and writing as much as I enjoy any off-the-job activity.

Wired & Hired is recruiters speaking directly to the Creative job seeker masses. How did you find the right recruiters for the job?
Our Wired & Hired writers come directly from Talent Zoo. I have to admit that I don’t have anything to do with the hiring process, but our HR department does an excellent job of brining in smart, driven recruiters.

Most of the writers on our recruiting sites are Senior Level. They have the experience and the smarts to present their knowledge in a meaningful way. They’ve been around the block a few times and will gladly share their opinions to anyone who will take the time to listen. The advice they give the readership also makes their jobs easier, so who can blame them for that?

Do you give your bloggers any oversight or content ideas? Do you dictate any tone guidelines or stylistic hints?
I rarely give any input on the content. As I said, our recruiters know their game – they know what fits and what doesn’t. My job is to make sure their content is proofed, properly worded and relevant. The tone and style remains their responsibility. I have never had an issue of having to pull or send back a submitted article. These guys make my job much easier than it could be.

What has been the biggest challenge of the project? What advice would you give to other staffing firms that are trying to enter the blogging arena?
If you’re interested in blogging, it’s an inexpensive marketing resource. The only advice I can give anyone would be to choose quality writers and posts. You may not always know who that will be in your company, but it’s worth finding out.

Presentation can go a long way, as well. There are hundreds of templates and dozens of excellent reference books on blogs and blogging tools. The more seriously you take blogging, the better your results will be.

We work in a high turnover industry. What is your approach as your recruiters who blog come into and exit from the TalentZoo organization?
Like I mentioned earlier, most of our bloggers are Senior Level. They’ve been with Talent Zoo for a while and have created a niche for themselves here. Recruiting does have extremely high turnover, but a lot of industries do, as well. We’ve yet to lose any of our bloggers since I was brought on. In fact, we’ve actually added a few!

What is the approach you are using to measure the ROI?
We keep track of how many users find our homepage from our affiliate sites. When a marketing or ad professional finds the perfect job after reading through one of our sites, we certainly consider that a major success. Of course we monitor traffic, incoming links and comments on all of our blogs, but the primary goal is to drive job seekers to Talent Zoo’s homepage and ultimately to our job board.

That’s not to say we sacrifice any aspect of the blogs’ traditional purposes. It takes excellent, relevant content to keep the readership returning. Without solid contributions from all of our writers, we would cease to expand our readership. We have the most knowledgeable contributors in the industry and their insights are readily available to the world. That sort of information is valuable to anyone who reads our content, and that in itself is strong ROI.

What are your immediate goals in the coming months, do you see your approach changing?
Our immediate goal is the continued expansion of our readership. We’re going to continue to provide the best content possible. We’ve found a stride in recent months with our sites and will continue to ride the wave.

Monster, and its new global agency BBDO Worldwide have created a much ballyhooed new ad campaign, “Your Calling is Calling”. I haven’t yet seen all of the TV spots, but from what’s been posted on YouTube (not by BBDO or Monster, mind you) the campaign is nothing short of brilliant.

My question is. WHAT were they thinking with their treatment of their global website homepages? The company line…

Monster visitors will experience a fully refined site offering greater usability and reflecting the tone of the “Your Calling Is Calling” campaign. The updated “My Monster” homepage provides instant access to personalized information, such as job search history, for easier job search management. Also, Monster’s award-winning content is integrated throughout the experience, delivering relevant insight and advice as seekers navigate through the site. Currently available in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands, the new look will be rolled-out to other countries in the coming months.

In addition, Monster has deployed a new search engine across all of its sites around the world after seeing the number of job applies increase significantly following the technology’s implementation in the U.S. last year. The engine allows job seekers to more effectively refine, modify and augment their searches and helps them more easily manage the overall application process.

The execution is scary…literally. Have you ever gone on a journey up a rasta-businessman’s nose? Now you can. On Monster’s new homepage, you too can waste your precious time by selecting one of 3 misfit workers (rasta-businessman, Ivy League frat-boy chef, or cheerleader turned auto mechanic) and see how to reach your “true calling”.

As a paying client of Monster I’ve got more than a few thoughts on why what is there today is so wrong.

1. Questionable Candidate Targeting. I get it. You can do anything, find a job to match your personality, stretch beyond your boundaries blahbeddy-blah. Here’s some positions we look for all the time: Experienced Accountants, IT Business Analysts and Developers, Contract Attorneys, Marketing and Sales Professionals. These are the professionals that run Corporate America. While being a chef or an auto-mechanic are admirable professions that they might be “Called” to after retiring from knowledge work in the cube farm, these images certainly don’t attract placeable candidates.
2. Branding Instead of Utility. Apparently using your homepage as a gigantic billboard is the in thing to do these days to pitch products. Take a look at Adobe, Volkswagen, and Xerox to see what I mean. That same approach is awful when it comes to a job board, which is a productivity application at its core. Save the branding for TV, splash pages, YouTube, whatever. Your precious homepage real estate should be dedicated to the one thing; getting paying customers’ jobs in front of the right audience as quickly as possible.
3. Keeping the Personalization Buried. Why is it, that when I log into LinkedIn everyday, it gives me all sorts of information customized to me, right from the homepage? What about Monster’s direct competitors Yahoo!HotJobs and CareerBuilder? Same thing. So, has Monster differentiated itself in a positive way by consuming the homepage with brandware and burying it’s personalized My Monster on a secondary page? Maybe, they did this so they can continue to put interstitials in front of my face before I can even get to the part of the site that is useful to me.

   
   An interstitial that stops me from getting to “My Monster” Homepage

   After I’m logged into My Monster account and return to the homepage, It’s like the site doesn’t even know me. Instead I can suffer through the same ad all over again.
   

4. Lack of Social Web Imagination. The TV ad is a smart, and unique take on the rate race that I’m sure the masses can identify with. Does it seem like the homepage campaign and the TV ad are even from the same company? Shouldn’t the online have been an extension of the TV? Couldn’t the campaign have become a game complete with battle arena and weaponry to fend off the impending week? Or Facebook prizes you can send to your friends to help eclipse the work week? The payoff for sitting through the brand ad sequence is a link to “Find Your Calling” which dumps you right back to the Job Search tool. **Thud**
5. Global. Really? I very much admire the fact that Monster was able to unify their homepages globally. I’m shocked that they used the same exact campaign images and verbiage only translated. These are pretty far from the European aesthetic.

The new Monster TV campaign has the potential to really attract some high quality candidates that recruiters so desperately look for. The problem is when the candidates reach the website, they may run for cover. It is a bit frustrating that Monster goes to such great pains to listen to customer feedback yet customers have to wait until the site has been changed for the wrong to provide our candid observations on marketing campaigns. For a company that started on the web, they have a ways to go with their interactive marketing. Think I’m wrong? I’m all ears…

UPDATE 1/8/2008, 10am
I can tell the healthcare contingent has influence. This image has been thrown into the mix. That seems like a more appropriate image that addresses one of Monster’s largest customer segments.

Healthcare image used in ad rotation on Monster.com

UPDATE 1/8/2008, 3pm
Ivy League chef is gone. And YouTube does have the other commercial from the campaign – ‘Slots’.

Matthew Grant over at Aquent offers an introspective look at the voice he uses while blogging on behalf of his firm.

What are the characteristics of the “corporate voice”? It is essentially educated, relatively formal (no cursing/minimal slang), and thoughtfully diplomatic. More significantly, the topics it discusses are “safe.” Aside from being relevant to the business of the corporation itself, in my case, “marketing staffing,” it shies away from topics that could potentially offend any of my more or less anonymous, more or less accidental readers. That means: no direct discussion of political or religious issues (to the extent that the two can be separated in the United States), no commentary on the actions of our current or potential clients, and, naturally, no criticism of the staffing industry or particular staffing firms.

This gray area of corporate transparency that distinguishes an individual blogger’s views, style and approach from the corporation’s (especially a public one) seems to be getting in the way of his voice. Matt goes on to mention:

But what if using the “corporate voice” was not in the best interest of this blog? What if the blog would be more popular if I spoke in a voice closer, if not equivalent, to my own?

This is a really timely topic for me as I think about the tone and structure of the Hudson voice in the blogoshere. The point of blogging for a corporation (as opposed to the more formal marketing website) is to bring your own voice to the matter. I doubt anyone is going to hang out very long at a blog if it lacks the author’s true voice. I’ve always read Matt’s content as authoritative, if perhaps only a little dry. Sure, it reflects very well on the Aquent brand as does the design of their website, and the other authoritative video content they put out there. Aquent comes across as knowing their stuff in marketing for sure! I think perhaps the only mistake Matt is making is that he’s the ONLY voice. Tim Donelly’s But Less About Me, a blog written more in his own voice, functions very separately from Matt’s. I have no clue who is getting more traffic, but I’d bet Tim is. The corporate voice of Aquent is the sum of the talent they’ve chosen to retain. Why not bring the two closer visually and architecturally so that both blogs serve to support the corporation. And why not invite more Aquenters into the mix?

Another interesting staffing voice is the Manpower Blawg. I have no doubt that Mark Toth is using a voice other than the corporate one of Manpower. It seems to be a bit off kilter to me from a corporate branding perspective, yet at the same time his blog is a very targeted and engaging read. Surely not everyone at Manpower is an employment law expert, yet the fact that a high ranking employee of the company is using his voice does say something about the company and its corporate culture. Similar to Matt at Aquent, I do think that more voices from Manpower need to join the conversation for it to become a meaningful corporate communications vehicle.

Google Trends is a fun toy to play with if you are trying to figure out whether Paris Hilton or Britney Spears is more popular on Google. There are other interesting comparisons within Marissa Meyer’s Google Trends Tutorial that coincide with an analysis of the hottest searches of 2007. My question is, how can this Google popularity contest be used if you work at a staffing firm?

Competitor Popularity
Google Trends analyzes how many searches have been done for the terms entered. From reviewing Hudson’s own weblogs I know that a LOT of incoming traffic to our website is from users typing our company name into Google and not the browser address bar. I often use this as a gauge of name recognition. A person heard our name someplace and is on the hunt to find us. Let’s have a look at a few staffing firms shall we?

Vendor Popularity
Can we then find out the popularity amongst the general public of our job board and sourcing friends by seeing their relative popularity in Google Search? Try putting in your favorite vendors and see how they’ve been trending over the last few years.

Job Market Popularity
You can get a general sense for the size of different job categories by feeding those into the tool. It is interesting to see that the searches on all of the categories follow a volume pattern that decreases from Q1 through to Q4, except in 2007 when Q3 seems to have more seekers in the market.

Perhaps you can comment with other interesting Google Trends you see that are relevant. Once the impending API for Google Trends gets released, maybe some smart developer can make a website out of Google Trends for recruiting. I would love to see it mimic the “Today’s Hot Trends” list, and make it be Today’s Hot Job Trends.

Ring, Ring…Kris checks the caller ID: ‘jobclicks.net’…he frowns and ignores the call. Kris already knows it is a vendor cold call and not someone important from the office. 15 minutes later, just wanting that voicemail light to stop flashing, he listens to a message so annoying that he wastes 5 good minutes of his life transcribing the call into Notepad for inclusion in this very blog.

Hi Kris,
This is Jason S___. I’m calling with JobClicks.net? Uh…I was giving you a call today to offer you access to candidates seeking employment through our partnered websites emailmyresume.com and resumezapper.com. The service is free to you and can provide the opportunity to receive great candidates to fill your job openings. If you could at your earliest convenience, please return my call. I would like to demonstrate what these sites can do for you. I can be reached at 540-372-3009 xt. ___. Thanks Kris, have a great day.

People who know me well understand that I have a voracious appetite for all that is new on the internet. Most Interactive Marketers at staffing agencies would tell you something similar. So, let me give out some friendly advice to all job board vendors, and other marketing software/service vendors for that matter, on what is wrong with your cold call approach.

1. You Don’t Do Your Homework. Before you even pick up that phone you ought to know that you are calling a centrally based marketing director not a recruiter. You would therefore know that I have no need to find candidates for ‘my openings’. I work for my 150 field recruiters. Somehow you managed to find my name. The least you should do is find something out about me and my company.
2. Your Message Isn’t Targeted. Does anybody need more random, unqualified candidates filling their recruiters’ inboxes? That’s what I hear when someone offers ‘great’ candidates for free. If you had done your homework you would at least know the types of candidates we place by simply looking at our online job board.

   Even saying you have more great IT candidates wouldn’t have gotten a response from me though. If perhaps you had sent an email to me prior to the cold call with some statistics on how many resumes you get in the niches our company serves or sent some example profiles, you might have at least gotten some interest.

3. You Don’t Respect My Time. Do you really think you are the only vendor that calls on me? I average 4 cold calls per week. You first ask me to return your call, and then scare me into thinking that the results of that return call will be a boring demo (which usually average 30 minutes). Both of which disrupt my day. Trust me when I tell you that I enter the demo with the wrong attitude, and leave the demo saying no thanks to any sort of purchase. Now you’ve wasted both of our time.

   Instead, you should already know that anyone buying products or services of any kind today is going to research you online first. So why not acknowledge that? You should only ask me to review your website at my earliest convenience. You should then follow-up 2 times with reminder phone calls to see if I have looked at it. If you still don’t get me to pick up my phone, you can assume that I didn’t like or need what I saw. Move on to another prospect.

I understand that everyone has to put food on the table and I truly don’t consider myself to be an un-responsive professional. But, for my own personal productivity I’ve got to help end the deluge. If you cold call me please try to follow the rules. Otherwise, don’t plan on hearing from me.

original photo by markhillary.

Hot damn this is a good blog post from a staffing firm. Apparently Talent Zoo, has enlisted a recruiter named Michael to write for their candidate-focused blog Wired & Hired. Michael takes his real world creative recruiting experience and wails on the non-website building creative class. Then he tops off the post with the obligatory hideous dog pic. Well-done Michael!

Of course the title of my post is a bit of a misnomer. The Wired & Hired blog is a beacon in the fog of boring staffing firm blog content. Staffing firms that recruit creative and marketing professionals are definitely the most clever. While these firms’ marketing departments have created online publications like the Creative Group’s Ezine, finding recruiters within the business who can blog is a high art. Could it be that they are themselves frustrated creatives who found more dollars sourcing the best talent rather than being the best talent? Hey, whatever it takes. Find me an engineering or IT recruiter that can capture candidate attention and build an audience. I mean it…seriously…no really, ’cause I want to read some of their stuff too.

I found John Sumser’s analysis of Talent Pools today to be easily applicable to staffing firm blogs:

• Talent Pools are not (primarily) ownership vehicles. They are places where value flows from the employer to the potential employee. The potential employee is better off because of their membership in the pool.
• Value is not another word for job listing. Value is better understood as cash or cash equivalents. White Papers, Training, Networking Opportunities, Technical Information, Advancement Aids, Parties, Vacations, Discounts. For a talent pool to work, real value must flow towards the Potential Employee.

If the care and feeding of Talent Pools is on your list of blog goals, then DO NOT put a job listing in the body of a blog posting. That’s just tacky. Put them in a sidebar like on the Aquent Talent Blog, or perhaps a separate bloggy looking page like this one for the MN Headhunter. Candidates will find you and your jobs when they’re good and ready, as long as you’ve provided value.

Value, is the challenge we face when creating a blog within Big Staffing. Just Look at James Durbin’s comments.

If you want a candidate blog, you need a local blog, and the local line recruiter is swamped with too many job orders. The time and effort to create a local recruiting blog, while I believe it will pay off in terms of placements or hires, is not yet regarded as the best use of time.

If you can get your recruiters to provide the insight, technical information, job market pulse, and local humor relevant to the talent pool in the local market via a blog, by John’s definition, there’s real value to the candidate. Would it be better for your recruiters to do it via the phone? No way! You can only scale your company’s expertise if it is available to a much wider audience.