Showbizjobs Blog

In the middle of the late ‘90s tech bubble startups and conglomerate media companies alike were all scrambling to grab a share of the web money that poured from public and VC firms. In the LA entertainment/media market this capital all went into ventures like Creative Planet, IFILM, Hollywood Stock Exchange and Pop.com. In the midst of this activity we shopped the Showbizjobs brand and services around for a valuation and possible suitor. Time and again we were rebuffed not on our business plan or profitability but because nobody saw value in job postings as a viable market offering, even though Jeff Taylor at Monster and Richard Johnson at HotJobs had clearly paved the way.

Today we’re in a post-bubble double-digit unemployment recession and everyone is going out of their way to claim to be in the jobs business. Ad agencies, social network groups, search engines, aggregator sites, newspapers, trade magazines, radio stations, car washes, you name it. On the surface you would think this makes for good economics for both the recruiting companies and the ever-growing candidate pools, when in fact almost all of these derivative forms of job boards are missing the fundamentals of what makes job search, as a true business, work.

Online Recruiting Fundamentals

1- Fresh Jobs

Social networking darlings LinkedIn and Doostang make great claims to be the new ‘jobs frontier’ but have you looked at the age of the jobs there? You can’t deny the power of the professional network LinkedIn has, but if you can’t feed and maintain fresh job content what value is it? Also when anyone can post the job, there is no validity to the post or accreditation of the ‘hiring’ company.

A product manager I interviewed at job aggregator Indeed mentioned that when company job boards are ‘scraped’ or ‘wrapped’ by them, the company has no way to control the run time of the jobs on Indeed. No wonder you find 60+ day old jobs out there. Companies and job seekers lose in this scenario but they continue to knock on our doors and set meetings to review their slick deck of PP slides.

2 - Niche Focus

Why throw a net as wide as the ocean when you know where the fish are? Niche corners of the web do exist. When you evaluate candidate outlets it isn’t always about volume. One ATS group likes to promote their offering as ‘The most powerful sourcing platform on the planet...extract thousands of resumes within 14 days’. You don’t need thousands you need one.

Aggregator boards such as Indeed, SimplyHired, DiversityJobs, Fresho, etc. rarely have direct connectivity to recruiters much less relationships with them. Job advertisements are data they use to attract eyeballs which they broker back to the content sources (companies and job boards alike). Far flung and with limited filter consideration, especially for what we term Entertainment Industry job disciplines, these services offer zero original content.

The broadcast equivalent would be if they lifted episodes of Heros, rebroadcasting them on a site, then returned to NBC/Universal and said ‘We can get you a better market share if you want to sponsor those episodes’. It would be an MPAA IP attorney feeding frenzy. But in the jobs world it’s OK because aparently job content is really not that valuable (see paragraph 1).

3 - Clear Goals of the Service

When job ad services or boards offer free job postings to companies they are making money from alternate sources. Even on high-traffic sites, banner revenues are nominal and trending lower. Whenever you see a ‘free’ job site, bet that candidates are being asked to pay the freight via direct subscriptions, advance notice premiums and the banner ad blitzkrieg. That is no way to filter for key ‘A’ player candidates. But it sure feeds the need to manage high volume responses that come into a recruiter’s inbox or ATS.

If you are a hiring manager or staffing manager who interfaces with the wild world of jobs on the internet you need to take a step back for perspective in order to make correct choices on where to allocate your time (read: resources). The carpetbagger gene is pervasive in not only the list of ‘new’ web candidate sources but also within HRIS offerings, staffing outsource groups, executive search firms, ad agencies, and the list goes on.

The term ‘ATS’ (applicant tracking system) has been distorted to mean almost any system that handles digital resume files and requisitions. It has also been expanded and merged with ad distribution systems, so the value proposition is now ‘more, faster, further’ but no real method besides keyword analysis of targeting who you want to hire. Today, many of these entities who offer agency + ATS services (for a fee) charge content providers like SBJ up to a 10% premium on top of standard agency rates. So not only are they in the way, they are costing companies more for the same reach into niche audiences. Don’t ask how that happened.

ATS providers and job ‘broadcasters’ promote the value of ‘middleware’ that often adds zero value to the actual job sources, quality of candidates, or aids in the art that is true recruiting. Capital allocation to these distractions siphons money from already anemic staffing budgets... away from resources that are efficient, strategic, and performance-oriented (ie: smart, intuitive, niche audience job boards).

System Dysfunction

The systems have become so all-encompassing that the recruiter (who knows the most about what they’re looking for) is unable to control the flow. A key example is that postings that are made via ATS systems and sourcing networks rarely channel traffic to a specific job posting or response page on the client company side.

Vendors claim accuracy and that reports detail this, however it our experience that the connection is missed half of the time on the first pass by the ATS or agency placing the ad. The recruiter never knows it, the selected job board looks bad on the clients traffic report, the ‘A’ candidate never gets on the radar and the search doesn’t reach its potential. This happens every day. The last thing a recruiter who is juggling 10 + searches needs or is adept at, is to audit of HRIS system for reporting accuracy.

Despite automation, the dominant complaint among job seekers is the utter lack of feedback and receipt confirmation they don’t get when applying for jobs online. Not SBJ or Monster sending an email, I mean the hiring company actually reaching back to the candidate and saying “thanks we’ll be in touch” or the like. Many report shock when it actually occurs.

Finally

One True Test. I put it to you that the one measure of a successful targeted campaign is the ability of that choice site, network, or promotion to drive quality talent not only to your doorstep but to your hiring manager within 7 days of going live. Seven days. If you use this as a goal then benchmark the locations your job is being delivered to against freshness, niche / filtered delivery, and targeted reach, you may find that 50% of your resources are causing 80% of the mess that middleware offerings offer to clean up for you.

This Old House is the highest-rated home improvement series in television history. It also happens to be a favorite of mine dating back many years. As I start this new series focusing on career paths in the entertainment industry I will be interviewing folks from all corners of the biz to share with you. So when I had the chance to speak with host Kevin O’Connor I jumped at the opportunity.

Kevin is starting his seventh season as the host of the legendary PBS television series. You would think he came to this gig with a construction education, artisan experience, acting history or some combination thereof. As it turns out he used to be a banker, which is only one of the things I found intriguing about our discussion on career paths:

PB: You came from a traditional finance and banking background. MBA in finance, big bank experience, then boom you’re the new host of This Old House. How did that happen?

KO: My wife and I bought a fixer-upper north of Boston and at one point we hit a dead-end on one of the many projects in the house. So we sent an email to the This Old House web site and the producer contacted us. They were doing 6 minute min-segments for their new show ‘Ask this Old House’ and thought our issue and our house would be a good profile. So they showed up at my house and we started working on the project. During breaks I would grab Tom Silva, the show’s general contractor, and barrage him with questions about different issues I faced in fixing my house. I knew that when they walked out, I’d never get that level of consultation ever again.

As it turned out, the producer is there watching all this go down. The segment turned out to be what they wanted and there was a good vibe during the production. A few weeks later they reached-out to me with an offer to become the third host of This Old House. How could I say no?

PB: Have you ever thought about where you would be if you didn’t get that offer?

KO: Probably not doing so well in the banking industry right now.

PB: When you think about it, This Old House was one of the original reality television shows. How do you compare it to what is out there now, like Extreme Makeover and the like?

KO: We don’t do product placement in the segments which is the exact opposite of others that are out there. We are PBS, and that has its own culture. Plus, unlike so many reality shows based loosely on houses, ours is about the house, first and always.

PB: Do you guys shoot just a ton of video and work things out in the editing room?

KO: Not at all, this is another difference with that comparison. I’ve done other shows where they have four cameras rolling all day long and you really don’t know what will come out of the editing bay as the final show. On This Old House, we don’t operate from a script. The guys on the crew have been working on the show for 30 years, and came to it with a ton of experience, so my job is to break-down what is obvious to them and translate it to the viewers. We try to shoot complete paragraphs, explaining things that a layman would understand. Sometimes we will shoot a segment and look at it come out of post and realize we never stopped rolling.

PB: Looking back at the last six years what one quality can you say was the most important thing you brought with you to this new phase of your career?

KO: Curiosity. I am naturally curious about how things are built, how they come together and how guys like this crew overcome things. As it turns out that’s the quality the producer knew was important in the host role and its how I ended-up getting cast.

PB: Would you say you’ve achieved Rock Star status out there in viewer land?

KO: I don’t think the PBS audience is the target demographic to make something like that happen. My ‘Q’ factor does go up when I go to places where that demo hangs out, like museums and what not. Then I am catcalled as “Hey, Old House” or “Old House Guy”. It is humbling.

PB: What’s next for Kevin?

KO: I am working on doing a few new things that work in with my schedule here. Prior to this I never viewed the media world as a career and I guess I still don’t. I would love to stay and become an old timer on the show...it’s that unique of a situation for me.