In the book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”, David Meerman Scott talks about gauging your marketplace — he encourages from PR Personnel, Marketing Executives, Project and Product Managers all the way up to the CEO to read the blogs in the marketplace. Your blog is NOT complete as long as you do not read what is going on in the marketplace. Get the buzz from the market place and find out where you stand and comment on other blogs as well!
In the focus of my blogs, Recruitment and Applicant Tracking Systems I focus on one particular Blogger called Cheezehead – in his recent article on Careerbuilder’s Video and its reasons for failure, he highlights the mediocrity of Careerbuilder’s page and its promotion. There were no ground rules to the game, in other words the rules of the game were never defined to the end user – questions such as “Who is going to view my resume?” “Will it become just another piece on YouTube where I will be jeered by eighteen year old’s?”
I think Careerbuilder has a fantastic idea – definitely something out of the box and all they need is a solid plan to get it out in the market place and have people buzzing. The following are a few suggestions:
1. Videos should be a Premium Service – Companies that require a video resume should list it as a requirement from their candidate.
2. All Premium Services should be complemented with professional resume writing provided by Careerbuilder – if the end user pays a premium price for services, then he/she should be afforded premium services.
3. Careerbuilder must also protect these videos so that they are not pulled and embeded or linked on to some other site. These are private videos, and their privacy must be maintained.
The problem is that the product was never really launched right – it came out as a haphazard answer to other major players in the market, HotJobs (a division of Yahoo!) and Monster.com, both of whom have a lions share of the market place.
Allow me now to beat my marching drum about CATS. CATS is a very intelligent Applicant Tracking System which will allow you to be super efficient. CATS lets you import resumes, keep contsant tabs on the state of your candidates and let you be a more organized recruiter. With CATS your placements will be more to the point, less beating around the bush — more effective placements with CATS.