A Harvard physician fellow contacts client asking for a job without visiting and prior to speaking with anyone associated with the hospital – unheard of before my Online Job Tour Invention, which will change the $10 Billion Classified Employment Advertising Marketplace.
When I invented Online Job Tour in 2002 (this was when less than 50 million people in the world had a high-speed Internet connection – before Facebook, YouTube, before phones had cameras) I remember telling friends that the Web would take over how we do a great deal of our essential living – including career search. Aghast listeners heard that “one day, how employers appear online will be more important than how they are in person to jobseekers.”
My invention “brought the onsite visit experience to the jobseeker” – and the proposition of hospitals (our test market has been in healthcare) flying in every single person who came across their classified ads could not compete with a “virtual presentation.” Moreover, Online Job Tour would maximize the most marketable features of the client and their community – and unlike any other recruiting product, would never get old or need to be remade because it is web-based.
Our clients are beginning to regularly get inquiries from the highest caliber jobseekers – particularly recent graduates who “grew up Online” who are willing to accept their career openings without a real visit and before speaking to anyone – this is symbolic of this “new time” but also of the success of Online Job Tour. Here is a typical letter our clients receive via their Online Job Tours.
CONTACT FROM ONLINE JOB TOUR
Comments: Jason Scott Director of Physician Development Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital 305 Langdon Street Somerset, KY 42503
Dear Mr. Scott: My name is Dr. xxxxxxxxx and I am interested in the [Specialist Position] opportunity at Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital. I commend you and all those involved for your extremely informative and comprehensive website which provided the online job tour.
My wife and I are particularly excited about the possibility of returning to a smaller, more cohesive area in the Midwest, as is Somerset. We have fond memories of the Midwest, having previously lived in both Indiana and Missouri.
What draws us to Somerset and your facility is the readily apparent collegial atmosphere, the stability of the hospital, the devotion to providing outstanding clinical care including recent expansion projects and new state-of-the art equipment, and the safe, tranquil surroundings with outstanding schools. While we do not yet have children, it is certainly in our plans, and education of children is of paramount importance to us. The low cost of living and low taxes, of course, provide an additional draw.
I am now in my fourth and final year of radiology residency in San Antonio, Texas, and then will continue training at a fellowship at Harvard Medical School. Last year, I served as Chief Resident of my program, which has 40 residents. I will complete fellowship training on June 30, 2011 and am eligible to begin full-time employment in July 2011. I am happy to take my fair share of call including nights and weekends.Thus, the opportunity with Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital is very appealing.
While I realize that this is almost 1.5 years away, I am genuinely interested in the opportunity with Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital and wanted to introduce myself to you sooner than later since I believe I may be a fit. I look forward to speaking with you further about the opportunity with Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital and would be delighted to speak with you at your convenience.
I have attached my CV for your review. We find nothing missing from your presentation other than more specifics about the radiology position and would be interested in seeing Somerset in person if it was mutually beneficial. Your website is extremely comprehensive. I thank you in advance for the opportunity and look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely, xxxxxxxxx M.D.
Attached File: CV.pdf
Lake Cumberland Regional’s Online Job Tour is http://www.lakecregional.com/
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Introducing Burck Smith – get ready, world.
As President and CEO of Promo Web Innovations, a company focused on the development of web and technology tools for the online classified employment advertising industry, which is set to grow to $11 Billion by 2011, part of my position is looking at the world based and how we are changing due to our collective movement toward the incorporation of web and communication technologies into our everyday lives (and of course, how it affects my business). In short, albeit now all encompassing and certainly not simply, our world is moving online.
This phenomenon is to our world like the skin is the largest organ of our body - its influence is now so profound that we are behaving and living, in many ways, without any more conscious thought of “logging on.” The ramifications are broad and interesting to study.
We know based on statistics that “high-speed” Internet connectivity is what was the real “big boom” of Internet technology as it is the "virtual web" (as opposed to the “screech” of dial up with text-only web pages) – it grew from about 40 million using broadband in 2001 to more than 1.5 Billion today - that's hard to grasp.
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Today’s “new jobseeker” and clearly the emerging jobseeker market, moves freely between the real and Internet worlds as though there is no membrane and with no conscious thought of doing it. This is a powerful symbol and truth regarding the need to appeal to their Internet life with classified employment advertising that contains proactively produced Internet content. Being online is – I’m not stretching this – becoming in many ways more intergral to their existence and more important than what exists outside of their email account, their Facebook page, and what's on their computer devices.
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Because I am in focused on the employment advertising business, I like to advise my clients (and encourage the older garde who still have some discomfort with the Internet) that the last two graduation cycles of graduates (8 years) have “grown up online” – they think, communicate, react to web content, have defined expectations, and indeed now live on the Web as second nature. Clearly, my student Interns would die without the Internet (I’m almost not kidding). Today’s “new jobseeker” and clearly the emerging jobseeker market moves freely between the real and Internet worlds. This is a powerful symbol and truth regarding the need to appeal to their Internet life with classified employment advertising that contains proactively produced Internet content. Being online is – I’m not stretching this – becoming in many ways more integral to their existence and more important than what exists outside of their email account, their Facebook page, and what's on their computer devices.
Meet Burck Smith.
Straigherline is the brainchild of Burck Smith, a 39 year-old Internet entrepreneur with degrees from Williams and Harvard, who is bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for almost 500 years. Rather than students being tethered to campuses or an anonymous computer campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in subjects – and competing on price.
How does $99 per month grab you to take college-accredited courses, and take as much time as you need to complete them, no books, you already have room and board at your home, or cave with your wireless laptop, and your professor is available 24/7?
Most people are so invested in the idea of education by institution that it’s hard to imagine another way. Because Web-based higher education is still new and considered a “working class” or “second class” education by perhaps society and possibly employers (whose administrators are “old school” – pardon my pun), consumers see online courses in the same negative light.
Consumers are going to change their tune. It’s an absolute fact – here’s how I know:
First, college is becoming impossible to afford for many. Students are graduating with massive debt. There seems to be an endless spiral of tuition hikes due to a variety of hard costs of running traditional colleges (and their massive football programs, the light bills, maintenance, tenured professors, et. al). If Burck Smith doesn’t offer extremely cheap college to the hungry hordes of consumers seeking higher education and a college degree, which is the ticket to a better job and a better life, another will. The day is coming when it will be a sheer financial decision, anyway.
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– at one time music and mathematics were the only universal languages – today a third language is booming and it is that of the virtual Internet.
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Second, we’re already at a point where high school students have been accessing the virtual Internet since they could read and write. They are comfortable and many prefer dealing and communicating with others online – clearly social networking sites are metaphors for the new virtual language – at one time music and mathematics were the only universal languages – today a third language is booming and it is that of the virtual Internet. Frankly, if you haven’t stepped foot in a high school or onto a college campus lately, it is clear that students are masters of this new language already, on Wi-Fi campuses. There are entire city blocks, even small towns which are Wi-Fi. Soon we will all have a Smart Phone.
All it takes is for one generation of college students to see online courses as no more or less legitimate (that’s a college generation, which is four years – not a lifetime), and a whole lot cheaper, for the consensus of the general public to change.
Older folks remember when the computer was looked at as a curiosity and many resisted giving up their typewriters. Even today, my staff deals with employer recruiting professionals who do not buy into the need to develop proactive recruitment content to appeal to today’s obvious tech-savvy jobseekers – as though they insist on using the typewriter to continue doing their work and are oblivious to the huge losses in efficiency and opportunity.
Another college degree offered by the same professor who teaches at Duke but for $99 a month? Count me in. And set up the turnstile to count the masses that will follow me.
Check out Straighterline at http://www.straighterline.com/
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
This phenomenon is to our world like the skin is the largest organ of our body - its influence is now so profound that we are behaving and living, in many ways, without any more conscious thought of “logging on.” The ramifications are broad and interesting to study.
We know based on statistics that “high-speed” Internet connectivity is what was the real “big boom” of Internet technology as it is the "virtual web" (as opposed to the “screech” of dial up with text-only web pages) – it grew from about 40 million using broadband in 2001 to more than 1.5 Billion today - that's hard to grasp.
--------------------------
Today’s “new jobseeker” and clearly the emerging jobseeker market, moves freely between the real and Internet worlds as though there is no membrane and with no conscious thought of doing it. This is a powerful symbol and truth regarding the need to appeal to their Internet life with classified employment advertising that contains proactively produced Internet content. Being online is – I’m not stretching this – becoming in many ways more intergral to their existence and more important than what exists outside of their email account, their Facebook page, and what's on their computer devices.
--------------------------
Because I am in focused on the employment advertising business, I like to advise my clients (and encourage the older garde who still have some discomfort with the Internet) that the last two graduation cycles of graduates (8 years) have “grown up online” – they think, communicate, react to web content, have defined expectations, and indeed now live on the Web as second nature. Clearly, my student Interns would die without the Internet (I’m almost not kidding). Today’s “new jobseeker” and clearly the emerging jobseeker market moves freely between the real and Internet worlds. This is a powerful symbol and truth regarding the need to appeal to their Internet life with classified employment advertising that contains proactively produced Internet content. Being online is – I’m not stretching this – becoming in many ways more integral to their existence and more important than what exists outside of their email account, their Facebook page, and what's on their computer devices.
Meet Burck Smith.
Straigherline is the brainchild of Burck Smith, a 39 year-old Internet entrepreneur with degrees from Williams and Harvard, who is bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for almost 500 years. Rather than students being tethered to campuses or an anonymous computer campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in subjects – and competing on price.
How does $99 per month grab you to take college-accredited courses, and take as much time as you need to complete them, no books, you already have room and board at your home, or cave with your wireless laptop, and your professor is available 24/7?
Most people are so invested in the idea of education by institution that it’s hard to imagine another way. Because Web-based higher education is still new and considered a “working class” or “second class” education by perhaps society and possibly employers (whose administrators are “old school” – pardon my pun), consumers see online courses in the same negative light.
Consumers are going to change their tune. It’s an absolute fact – here’s how I know:
First, college is becoming impossible to afford for many. Students are graduating with massive debt. There seems to be an endless spiral of tuition hikes due to a variety of hard costs of running traditional colleges (and their massive football programs, the light bills, maintenance, tenured professors, et. al). If Burck Smith doesn’t offer extremely cheap college to the hungry hordes of consumers seeking higher education and a college degree, which is the ticket to a better job and a better life, another will. The day is coming when it will be a sheer financial decision, anyway.
--------------------------
– at one time music and mathematics were the only universal languages – today a third language is booming and it is that of the virtual Internet.
--------------------------
Second, we’re already at a point where high school students have been accessing the virtual Internet since they could read and write. They are comfortable and many prefer dealing and communicating with others online – clearly social networking sites are metaphors for the new virtual language – at one time music and mathematics were the only universal languages – today a third language is booming and it is that of the virtual Internet. Frankly, if you haven’t stepped foot in a high school or onto a college campus lately, it is clear that students are masters of this new language already, on Wi-Fi campuses. There are entire city blocks, even small towns which are Wi-Fi. Soon we will all have a Smart Phone.
All it takes is for one generation of college students to see online courses as no more or less legitimate (that’s a college generation, which is four years – not a lifetime), and a whole lot cheaper, for the consensus of the general public to change.
Older folks remember when the computer was looked at as a curiosity and many resisted giving up their typewriters. Even today, my staff deals with employer recruiting professionals who do not buy into the need to develop proactive recruitment content to appeal to today’s obvious tech-savvy jobseekers – as though they insist on using the typewriter to continue doing their work and are oblivious to the huge losses in efficiency and opportunity.
Another college degree offered by the same professor who teaches at Duke but for $99 a month? Count me in. And set up the turnstile to count the masses that will follow me.
Check out Straighterline at http://www.straighterline.com/
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The Truth about Physician Recruiting – compelling examples of the costs of ignoring wasteful traditional recruiting practices.
Let’s say your hospital or practice decides to open a recruiting project for a Gastroenterologist.
Scenario A – YOU: Let’s say that you work extremely hard, you stay on the phone week after week, you acquire candidates (how you get them is another blog entry!), talk to them, try to cajole them to interview, set up the interviews, etc. You are extremely busy. You eventually fill the position in 4 months, and you celebrate!
Scenario B – Another Recruiter: On the other hand, with all things being equal, another recruiter at your employer fills the same position 3 weeks sooner.
Who is the more valuable recruiter to your hospital?
According to two major and well-known industry studies from Merritt-Hawkins as well as the Advisory Board Company in Washington DC, a hospital loses at least $100,000 for every month a physician job is unfilled. For a specialty physician such as a Gastroenterologist it can be $250,000.
- The other recruiter just made your hospital at least $75,000 filling one opening three weeks sooner than you. Over 7 physician jobs filled with this disparity means this other recruiter saved your employer over $500,000.
So is always being busy, being on the phone all day, and dealing with candidates and setting up interviews and if you eventually fill your open jobs, the way to measure if you are successful?
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Today the smarter employers and recruiters understand that closing percentages of visiting candidates, hiring the better candidates, being in a position of advantage when negotiating contracts, reducing the number of expensive interview visits, retention statistics, saving third party recruiter fees, among many other factors, is the modern and appropriate way to measure recruiting to not just save money, but assure a long term foundation for the hospital and the care that ultimately reaches the patient.
Lesser-quality employees make more mistakes. They aren’t as efficient. If a physician leaves after 24 months what does that say about how he was sold on the job but not sold on the hospital and living in your area – and what is the cost to re-fill that job?
Online Job Tour Test Market: Over a four year test market, simply by providing physician candidate prospects with Online Job Tour, which provides a more comprehensive “virtual site visit experience” than the real thing, our clients have averaged the following.
- Use of Online Job Tour results in filling positions 3 weeks faster (19% faster).
- Use of Online Job Tour reduces third party recruiter fees by 16% (1 in 6).
- Use of Online Job Tour reduces overall onsite visits by 33%.
We calculate for a small hospital filling 10 physician openings and 10 Director-level or specialty openings over a 36 month timeframe (with the assumptions noted below) – based only on these stats, the savings is $947,000.
- These astounding dollars are merely due to reducing the time to fill by 19%, reducing the number of visit needed to fill the jobs by 1/3, and a small reduction in the need to use third party recruiters – which is the smallest return of the three – saving 1 in 10 recruiter fees reduces that total number by less than $50,000.
Naturally, our stats do not include non-physician recruiting, how Online Job Tour promotes a better long-term placement and reduces retention problems, and in many cases, our clients are dealing with candidates where they are the top choice – this translates into hiring better talent and serves to turn the negotiations to our clients’ favor – we have numerous examples of our clients not needed to supply huge bonuses and income guarantees because the candidates want the job and don’t need to be motivated by a big bonus. Most important is the better quality, happier physicians and employees are better workers – lest we ever forget for a moment that patient lives are in the balance.
- As a former third party recruiter, I know the costs of recruiting as well as the costs for being inefficient – they are uncountable and my brightest clients tell me these ROI numbers are extremely low.
A smarter recruiting process with Online Job Tour makes a phenomenal difference.
So the next time you consider how effective your recruiting is, remember for the sake of your patients and your hospital’s budget that it’s not just about if you are busy and you eventually fill the open jobs, especially if your performance is going to be evaluated vs. others using Online Job Tour to reach today's modern, tech-savvy jobseekers.
Recruiting Assumptions for our ROI Study (conservative estimates) - contact me for the ROI study.
· The average number of candidates who interview to fill a physician opening is 4 (2 for non-MD).
· The average number of total site visits with candidates and spouses to fill one physician job is 6 (3 for non-MD).
· The average cost for one interview site visit for a candidate and spouse is $1,500.
· The average time it takes to fill an open physician job is 4 months (2 months for non-MD).
· The percentage physician or high-end positions are filled using a third party recruiter is 75%.
· The average recruiter fee for a placement is $20,000.
· Studies published by Merritt-Hawkins and The Advisory Board, Inc. conclude the average lost revenue for every month a physician opening is unfilled is $100,000. We are assigning $25,000 lost per month for Director/specialist jobs unfilled (contact us for these studies).
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at www.onlinejobtour.com
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Gaffney and its need for Online Job Tour
After a serial killer rampages its community, Upstate Carolina Medical Center faces a huge challenge regarding its future recruiting that will impact the next generation of residents in Cherokee County. Because of the compelling "shift" of jobseeker behavior that has taken place since the emergence of high-speed Internet use, UCMC needs Online Job Tour.
I have the privilege of serving Upstate Carolina Regional Medical Center, in Gaffney, South Carolina, as a client of Online Job Tour. Todd Dixon, the Chief Operating Officer and principal physician recruiter for the hospital, is a rising talent in his company who is web savvy, iPhone-connected, and locked into the fact that his target physician and healthcare jobseekers are online. His wife Jennifer was very kind to me during our meeting, when she stopped by to take her husband to lunch. The Chief of Staff, a younger OB/GYN and beloved in the community, Steven Lewis, MD, was very engaging, and he was great on video as he spoke of his adoration of life and working in the Upstate and Cherokee County.
As Online Job Tour is designed to give a web-presentation which emulates an onsite interview visit, probably my favorite part of featuring clients and their communities is meeting such great people in these places. Gaffney is no different: Bill Pennington is an extremely talented former teacher who is steward of an impressive, burgeoning museum downtown. He could choose to do anything, but his passion is to be in Gaffney and chronicle its history by doing painstaking grant proposal work, pleading for donations, and many other things which go unnoticed to all but those who know the details of his job. One of his former students, upon coming back from a tour in Iraq, sought out Bill before visiting anyone else upon his arrival – including his own family. Former students pour into the museum to Bill to excitedly share their lives with him. According to Jane Waters, a museum volunteer, in her wonderful aristocratic Carolina accent, “Bill’s got two of the most beautiful babies - I could just eat them with a spoon.” Jack Trnavsky, a principal at a local bank and Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, could not be more uncomfortable in front of a video camera, but I needed him, and he came through as we drove through town and he introduced his favorite spots – after all, this is to help to recruit physicians who will care for his friends and neighbors. Jackie Sellers (an appropriate name for a real estate agent), whose husband is a local pastor, is all about developing relationships with people she meets. She is charming, witty, and deeply appreciative of professionals considering living in Gaffney. In all, I met dozens of people who together weave an amazing authentic story of this community.
Located along I-85 about an hour south of Charlotte and between Spartanburg, this is a growing, modern county just far enough outside Charlotte to not be a suburb but an historic place with its own identity. A third industrial park is open with its first tenant, and Lowe’s, Walgreens, a Prime Outlets Mall with 80 stores such as Ralph Lauren, Pottery Barn, Nike, you name it, are next to a 56,000 SF Movie Mega-plex. A new community and technical college campus is there. Another YMCA is being constructed. All this among rolling hills – it’s idyllic and you all but forget the massive urban sprawl of Charlotte is minutes away.
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
I have the privilege of serving Upstate Carolina Regional Medical Center, in Gaffney, South Carolina, as a client of Online Job Tour. Todd Dixon, the Chief Operating Officer and principal physician recruiter for the hospital, is a rising talent in his company who is web savvy, iPhone-connected, and locked into the fact that his target physician and healthcare jobseekers are online. His wife Jennifer was very kind to me during our meeting, when she stopped by to take her husband to lunch. The Chief of Staff, a younger OB/GYN and beloved in the community, Steven Lewis, MD, was very engaging, and he was great on video as he spoke of his adoration of life and working in the Upstate and Cherokee County.
As Online Job Tour is designed to give a web-presentation which emulates an onsite interview visit, probably my favorite part of featuring clients and their communities is meeting such great people in these places. Gaffney is no different: Bill Pennington is an extremely talented former teacher who is steward of an impressive, burgeoning museum downtown. He could choose to do anything, but his passion is to be in Gaffney and chronicle its history by doing painstaking grant proposal work, pleading for donations, and many other things which go unnoticed to all but those who know the details of his job. One of his former students, upon coming back from a tour in Iraq, sought out Bill before visiting anyone else upon his arrival – including his own family. Former students pour into the museum to Bill to excitedly share their lives with him. According to Jane Waters, a museum volunteer, in her wonderful aristocratic Carolina accent, “Bill’s got two of the most beautiful babies - I could just eat them with a spoon.” Jack Trnavsky, a principal at a local bank and Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, could not be more uncomfortable in front of a video camera, but I needed him, and he came through as we drove through town and he introduced his favorite spots – after all, this is to help to recruit physicians who will care for his friends and neighbors. Jackie Sellers (an appropriate name for a real estate agent), whose husband is a local pastor, is all about developing relationships with people she meets. She is charming, witty, and deeply appreciative of professionals considering living in Gaffney. In all, I met dozens of people who together weave an amazing authentic story of this community.
Located along I-85 about an hour south of Charlotte and between Spartanburg, this is a growing, modern county just far enough outside Charlotte to not be a suburb but an historic place with its own identity. A third industrial park is open with its first tenant, and Lowe’s, Walgreens, a Prime Outlets Mall with 80 stores such as Ralph Lauren, Pottery Barn, Nike, you name it, are next to a 56,000 SF Movie Mega-plex. A new community and technical college campus is there. Another YMCA is being constructed. All this among rolling hills – it’s idyllic and you all but forget the massive urban sprawl of Charlotte is minutes away.
- For the right jobseeker who wants a smaller town life with a modern hospital, but close to what is afforded in Charlotte, not to mention being close to the mountains and 3 hours to the beach, Gaffney would appear to be a compelling choice – until last week.
It appears as though a recently-paroled felon, who apparently is not even from Gaffney, murdered 5 people in this community over the course of a week, before being killed in a nearby North Carolina town while burglarizing a house – saving all of us from an arrest, trial, and conviction that would have made everyone relive his heinous acts for another year or more.
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Is Gaffney still an amazing and charming community? Of course. Was this a 100 year “fluke” of a crime spree? Absolutely.
- But the very best, most educated recruiting professionals understand that Upstate Carolina MC and Gaffney have a major problem – this tragedy is being stored into perpetuity on the Internet – and that’s where all jobseekers are today.
- A Google Search of “Gaffney” currently surfaces multiple conspicuous articles and news stories, and photos, of the crimes and of the killer – short of multiple positive stories of equal magnitude occurring over the next decade and beyond, these stories will be omnipresent on search engines for a long, long time.
That a “fluke tragedy” like this one can so negatively impact recruiting is unfair to this hospital and to Gaffney. But life is often unfair, and so can be recruiting.
The best recruiters also know that they are not recruiting in a vacuum – they are aware of the competitive component: physicians and high-level jobseekers often consider as many as 10-12 options when they begin their career search considerations. So when one or two issues can impact the decision of a jobseeker or change their course when comparing multiple job options, this event in Gaffney can have a catastrophic impact on this hospital’s recruiting efforts when jobseekers are referred to the Web by employers, or instinctively log on without any other direction or instructions from hospitals vying for them.
Because our world and culture have made this permanent “shift” to doing many essential life activities online, which includes classified employment advertising, which will be an $11 Billion industry in 2011, while I strongly believe Online Job Tour is a necessity if a hospital wants to maximize their time, effort, money, and competitiveness, Upstate Carolina MC really needs Online Job Tour.
- We access the Internet today without consciously being aware we are doing it – it is the platform for modern living. Web content is reality.
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- The Gaffney tragedy is a quintessential example of my argument that hospitals who merely passively refer jobseekers to a handful of links to websites, which promotes “do the research on your own and ‘sell yourself’” is not a “strategy,” and I have always contended it can be harmful. Referring jobseekers to a school district website, a Chamber of Commerce website, or links to the local newspapers which leaves jobseekers up to their own devices and leaves things to chance, results in finding bad news and worse.
- Another failed strategy is to ignore the web completely which many hospitals still do. Some hospitals in Upstate Carolina MC’s company still mail brochures, or wait for jobseekers to contact them and send DVDs. This is not the 1990s anymore. To wait for jobseekers to contact you to give them your presentation is grossly negligent, unprofessional, and inexcusable in any selling environment, much less one which impacts lives of patients.
- While streaming videos are better options, they are very problematic. While I believe it is critical to control the selling environment and get your prospects into your own proprietary recruitment protocol, streaming videos age quickly and lose authenticity, they don’t cover topics that jobseekers need in enough depth, and nobody today wants to sit through a 10 minute video – in fact, my college interns refuse to do it – and they are the future jobseekers.
Web-based, Online Job Tour is truly the most modern, effective tool: it is constantly malleable – while our intent is to provide a virtual site visit more comprehensive than the real trip that all jobseekers and their families can experience, there is depth of content the employer can be a deep as it chooses, which is needed for jobseekers to feel good about their decisions, and with maintenance it will not get old (unlike any other recruiting material), and it is importantly online.
- Online Job Tour gives jobseekers the “web fix” they need, but in a controlled, proactive selling environment that maximizes the sale and efficiency of the hospital’s recruiting efforts.
- When jobseekers visit Online Job Tour they are really visiting - this is continually missed entirely by uneducated employers to whom we show our work.
Will a jobseeker considering Upstate Carolina Medical Center still go out on their own and Google Gaffney and find the tragedies? I would guess yes. However, properly exhibited and introduced to them, they will likely also have viewed Upstate Carolina’s Online Job Tour, already fallen in love with the uniqueness of the presentation, and settle it in their own minds that the tragedies were indeed a “fluke.” The tragedies will be neutralized. It’s psychological. It’s sales. It’s recruiting.
- The absolute best way to recruit today’s online jobseekers – based on jobseeker behavior as well as addressing the traditional needs of both prospective employees and the employer, is to create a recruitment protocol harnessing high-speed Internet that is controlled, proprietary, and satisfies the questions and needs of both. Online Job Tour was invented to do exactly this.
Employers without Online Job Tour, while they eventually fill jobs, by being blind to their targets, face a myriad of problems that result in lost time, money and competitiveness. The better candidates lost loses opportunity. Even retention rates are affected when a jobseeker could otherwise be much more fully informed before being closed on the financial package and not so much the hospital and community.
In this new era with the new online jobseeker, Online Job Tour is not just a necessity for Upstate Carolina MC which has this terrible tragedy to help its community heal from and then deal with as an archived event to negotiate, but all community hospitals face enormous challenges, which begin and end with the quality of their presence on the Internet.
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Come for an Interview Visit and Miss Everything worth Seeing
Want a sure fire way to assure your hospital will take 4-6 months to fill your most important physician openings, close less than 50% of visiting candidates, waste half of your onsite visits, miss out on the better candidates, and have a poor retention rate? Keep ignoring the Internet in your recruiting, and wait for the onsite interview visit when you give (unprepared) candidate prospects your primary recruiting pitch, where they will merely drive past the important things at your hospital and in your service area – essentially missing almost everything, including your unique story.
The onsite visit separates spouses. Due to time, money, and logistical limitations, the candidate will interview with a handful of their principal peers, and possibly no staff members. The spouse tours the real estate market and the community. Still today, real estate agents are principal “salesmen” for the area – they speak in “cliché bombs” (“Our community is a great place to raise a family,” etc. etc.) which sound the same as the other communities and don’t serve to distinguish you from the 7-8 other places jobseeker prospects are considering. Generally, there is merely a “drive by” schools, downtown, and businesses and stores and event centers, with no time to go into them to talk to residents or community leaders, to learn “the real story” from local residents and what makes your unique thumbprint. They never step foot in a local museum or speak to a true historian of the area. There is almost never a serious discussion with the director of the economic board for the county. There is almost no contact with anyone in the community except an old board member – at best there is a “dinner” with pleasantries exchanged but no “real talk” among people going through the motions. The onsite visit does not include extended family members, children, parents and colleagues – all people who influence the decision but they remain “blind” to the employer and the area.
The onsite interview visit can also be problematic – bad weather, key people can miss appointments, and there can be mixed messages delivered by those people whom the prospect meets.
- For physician jobseekers considering million dollar careers who will drive multi millions to their hospitals and other physicians, and nurse candidates for that matter, they really don’t visit the hospital entirely on an interview visit – there is often no time to take a thorough tour of the hospital campus to see the ancillary facilities and programs that contribute to the hospital’s current and long-term focus. And they simply do not have time to learn the story of the service area they are considering – they fail to learn the area’s history and don’t get a good view of its future. On the site visit, they miss almost everything and will forget 50% of what they experienced in 2 days.
And with all these logistical issues and costs and onsite visits which really don’t work, less than 5% of jobseekers who are exposed to your job postings will actually make this costly, wasteful trip. What about the other 95%? Also, how many candidates are you missing?
If you were a jobseeker, how would you feel about a 2 day interview in the pouring rain, where you don’t see the entire hospital, two of the four principals you where scheduled to meet were 30 minutes late for one hour interviews, you meet few employees, meet no future neighbors, learn nothing of the town's history or economy in order to understand where it is heading, and you were given the primary sales pitch on the community by a realtor?
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If you truly want to recruit the best professionals and maximize your time and budget you must master the Internet because that’s where your targets have moved.
- In an environment where there is no professional selling, time limits, and costs which promote shortcuts, where candidates are looking at multiple options and they are given an expensive superficial site visit and largely left up to their own resources to “sell themselves,” it’s no wonder the results of recruiting seem arbitrary.
Online Job Tour has evolved into a compelling tool that is better and more comprehensive than the real onsite visit in multiple beneficial and important ways. It is mistake-free, it is on 24/7, it offsets the limitations of recruiters with no professional sales experience, negates any lack of Internet acumen, maximizes the employer’s interest in maximizing the sale, all the jobseeker’s family and friends can experience it, and perhaps best of all, it saves time for everyone, leading to faster decisions. Jobseekers become truly interested, “pre-sold” candidates who come to Interview with complete knowledge and comfort on the trip, when they leave they refer to Online Job Tour many times, and this leads to the position getting filled faster.
Our clients are experiencing 75-80% closing records among visiting candidates who are pre-qualified using their Online Job Tour. While we have been test marketing for 4 years, retention among our clients who have placed candidates following our protocol and use of Online Job Tour is double the traditional community hospitals.
- The key to these phenomenal differences is in fully educating and pre-qualifying jobseekers before any substantive time is spent dealing with them – this cannot be effectively done without Online Job Tour.
Take time to review our website to learn more and read our client testimonials.
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Shazam and Apple’s iPhone: Your smart phone – probably the iPhone, will soon talk to you – it will likely converse with you - in 5 years or less.
While just 11-13% of cell phone users have a Smart (Internet capable) phone, this micro technical device will change the world like broadband access did. I’m not kidding. 3G networks of smart phones – soon to be 4G, offer close-to-broadband access to the Internet. In the future, our computers will be mobile and we will carry them with us like our wallets – and the smart phone is a window to that life. Remember when cameras were still film and cell phones (in the US) didn’t have a camera? That was just 10 years ago…. While service providers T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon (Blackberry) and others offer smart phones, and the Blackberry smart phones actually out sold it by a nose in 2008, the iPhone transcends them all. Most of my friends who own a Blackberry tell me it’s because it’s paid for by their companies.
If you are a medical recruiter (my area of knowledge) or a recruiter of higher end professional jobseekers, I promise you that a much larger percentage of your target market of new graduates, advanced practitioners, and physicians have a smart phone.
- My studies now show that top-shelf jobseekers today prefer that you text them through your recruiting protocol.
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The iphone is not just a smart phone but an iconic tool that you will agree is the most unbelievable communication and Internet tool you have ever used when (this is my blog, so I am insisting) you get one – in many ways it is already better than your desk or laptop.
It’s about the iphone’s applications – or “Apps”: Applications are “tools” and games you can download – some for free and others for a cost, into the hard drive of the iphone. The App market and makers of Apps, are exploding. From applications such as AAA, which allow you to, at the touch of a button see where all the AAA discounts for your membership are in your vicinity (in concert with your location as the iphone has a GPS system), to Airfare – a free App that checks every single airfare and provides the lowest prices – from the regional carriers to the majors for your date and destination. Bible verses, games of all sorts, such as a “Labyrinth,” which actually moves a ball/marble through a maze as you balance the phone and negotiate a maze. The endless application list is actually in a library on the iphone itself, which is continually updated – all you do is hit an icon and it reveals an “App store.”
I watch (commercial-free) podcasts of TV shows, and I have last year’s National Championship College Football game loaded on my iphone – when I’m feeling blue I can watch Tebow and the Gators (I paid for this podcast). I have an extensive library of music, and if I had more time, I could download feature films – and sync everything with my computer – which doesn’t have to be a Mac.
How awesome is an iphone? Take this example:
I was listing to the radio in my car with my fianc̩ and a really good song came on the radio which has a very catchy beat to it РI thought it would be one I might like to buy (on my iphone, of course, which is also an ipod, btw). My fianc̩, who also owns an iphone, opened an App called Shazam, and pressed a button on the iphone screen Рthe App first literally listed to the song, and within a minute, identified it, and then the App offered that I could watch the video for the song (for free) or it could be purchased for 99 cents. Remarkable. Thalia learned of the App when she was at City Walk in Orlando and one of her friends used the app by opening it while a song was being played on the PA system.
Within 5 years, you will be driving down the street and your smart phone will beep because you have it on “Real Estate” mode – likely an App, because you are shopping for a house and one that meets multiple parameters and your price range is in the area. When a camera you are looking at drops below a price range, an App will alert you and show you which stores in the area offer it, or when an online store does - you may want to scratch this example because your smart phone will likely have a camera as good as any soon. For Job Searching, this will also happen - and we released a prototype called Online Job Tour Micro in the fall of 2006 in anticipation of this.
Your smart phone – probably the iPhone, will soon talk to you – it will likely converse with you. All this will happen in 5 years or less.
Sure, the persnickety among us have complaints about the iphone –
- There is only a proprietary video player which allows for viewing of only UTUBE videos.
- There is no cut & paste application (yet)
- The keyboard is clumsy and it takes me 2X as long to send texts.
I'm excited to learn of the new iphones, which are now up to 32G vs. my now obsolete 8G iphone - and whether these shortcomings have been addressed.
For hard-core texters who use their smart phones to text as email replacements or for email, you can see why Blackberry still competes with the iphone in unit sales – but all the genius and imagination is in the iphone. Take longer to text or make your texts short. But Blackberry’s are not the future.
Get an iphone. It will change your life for the better. It will promote dreaming. It will inspire you. And don’t forget, soon it will be talking to you.
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at www.onlinejobtour.com
Inconvenient Candidate Interview Trips – their (hidden) costs, and the most important cost factor in recruiting: Pre-qualifying your prospects
Inconvenient Candidate Interview Trips – their (hidden) costs, and the most important cost factor in recruiting: Pre-qualifying your prospects.
Gone forever are the days of airplane travel being glamorous – today’s planes like (full) buses, and the “ordeal” of checking bags after packing, making arrangements for one’s home, the uncomfortable flights, etc., make the entire experience of interviewing for a career inconvenient at best. If your job targets/candidates are physicians – young or old, then I assure you they look at entire travel and interview trip as a “necessary evil” of looking for a job. But this entry is not about the psychology or the angst candidates feel during multiple interviews and site visits to prospective employees – but the practical/logistical problems employers face, and the immense costs regarding the interview trips themselves.
The cost of the onsite interview for one candidate is pretty easy to calculate – the price of airfare (for the candidate and spouse), car rental, the nice (it better be a nice one) hotel, and the meals. What are not easy to calculate are the seemingly endless hours to prepare for them, the people involved at the employer who must be pulled from their jobs (so they cannot produce) or something else they would prefer to be doing (few people like to sell or recruit – and few physicians involved in the recruiting process of physician candidate don’t love it, and certainly aren’t making any money don’t it either).
- There as many as 10 employees or physicians in hospital physician recruiting who are pulled away from productivity during every single candidate interview visit – plus more community people/board members, etc.
So it can be rather crushing when an interview visit is cancelled, bad weather ruins the site visit, or worse, upon stepping off the plane the candidate looks around and decides before their first meeting they aren’t interested – this happens a lot more than you think (I used to be a recruiter and 2 of 5 physician candidates – that’s 40%, told me that within the first few hours of their trip they made a decision about a second visit).
And from my unscientific survey of 10-12 CEOs, they believe that from the moment a physician learns about a career opening and the time they make a “decision of authentic serious interest in the position” takes 3-5 months (and often multiple trips) – it’s a grueling process.
Two studies by major organizations who know a lot about the subject, claim hospitals lose $100,000 for every month a position is unfilled.
- This is certain in physician recruiting – there is a ton of waste. That means there is a ton of lost money.
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I just returned from a production trip to a new client in South Carolina and had my typical great but bruising time – I run ragged during these trips trying to get as much footage as I can, and there are so many pick ups and new things I find and want to feature after already overstuffing my itinerary.
By far, the worst part of the trip, as always, was the flight and the accommodations/hotels – and this is typical of the potential logistical problems that exist during traditional interview visits (which Online Job Tour is designed to emulate and in many ways be better than).
My flight last Tuesday was on Delta from Tampa through Atlanta with a connection to Florence, SC. (Mistake #1, says my mom, a corporate travel agent, was not booking a non-stop flight, but then I would have to go to Charlotte and have a much longer drive to the client - logistics).
Due to bad weather throughout the Southeast, and because every flight on the eastern seaboard seems to go through it, Atlanta’s control tower decided to delay my flight – which was at the gate (with me on the plane already), for 1 hour.
After the captain broke the news, I was on the smart phone to Delta re-booking on another flight out of Tampa to Atlanta – which I was able to get, but I would miss my connector and need to get a later flight to Florence. After booking the flight and getting off the plane (my luggage would stay on and actually make my connection), I was rescheduling every meeting I had that day but my last one, which I was eventually late to. The entire day was basically shot – because of thunderstorms – impossible to plan for.
Now – imagine I was a candidate for an important career position at your business – from a CRNA to a Cardiothoracic surgeon – less being purchased a first class ticket (sorry CRNAs, only docs for that perk), if the interview was going to be that day, overnight, and then the next day, virtually half of the interview itinerary was ruined – all the planning by the recruiter, all the folks – physicians and others, who planned to meet the candidate – the time missed and wasted for the initial interview visit – pretty much a goner. Because of thunderstorms.
Stress. People scrambling to try to make the best of the interview, or worse, canceling it to start over – all while the unfilled job remains unfilled.
- How much money do thunderstorms actually cost employers for their recruiting?
Fortunately for me, I was able to reshuffle my first day pretty easy and there wasn’t any damage done, as I would be at my client for an entire week.
To keep this blog entry short, let me just say that if the rain would have continued, imagine driving through a community and merely peering out windows – driving past stores, businesses, schools, and missing the people and their stories.
- And rain simply delays everything. Aren’t people always coming into meetings from out of a rainstorm and saying, “Sorry I’m late.”?
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Here’s my conclusion based on 9 years of recruiting medical professionals and then dealing with my clients and prospects with my company:
Pre-qualifying the physician is the single biggest factor in the economy of recruiting. “Closing” is important to get deals done, but let me say this – if you close an unqualified professional on a good deal and financial package alone, they ain’t stayin’. If that new employee and their family aren’t fully knowledgeable on the employer and the service area, then “retention” becomes an issue – and that’s another subject altogether that haunts many hospitals and employers in other industries who relocate employees to them.
Online Job Tour works because before the candidate even decides to pursue the job, they get a comprehensive “visit experience” which promotes among many benefits a better education and knowledge of the employer and life in its area – candidates come “pre-sold” to interviews instead of nervous, anxious and unprepared – to say nothing of the competitive benefits as jobseekers such as doctors generally consider 6-10 options.
- Online Job Tour, while providing a better visit experience from the comfort of a computer screen viewed in the candidate’s home or office, requires no flight or interview visit, and no thunderstorms.
Imagine candidates arriving excited to meet you having already “met” you. Imagine when they arrive and the weather is awful and they exclaim, “No problem – we already visited your area using your Online Job Tour – and the weather was great online!” Better yet, imagine candidates offering to accept your open jobs without a site visit – our clients are experiencing that, which is both a symbol of our culture change as well as the effectiveness of our product.
Based on the empirical numbers – Online Job Tour can wipe away the 40% of candidates who otherwise arrive and become uninterested within a couple hours. It has already proven to shorten the time window to fill positions from 3-5 months to 2-3 months. Online Job Tour eliminates the problems (and costs) of thunderstorms.
Or after calculating the hard dollar costs of your interview expenses and recruiting and figuring all the folks involved and what they could have otherwise been doing, if these additional lost dollars don’t convince you Online Job Tour is a no-brainer investment, what may convince you simply getting on an airplane.
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Facebook sends Employers a Message
When I invented the Online Job Tour in 2001, only about 25 million people had a high speed Internet connection faster than 56k – half of those were in universities and the government.
Today, 8 years later, 200 million are on Facebook, Twitter easily gets almost 2 million hits per month, and the wireless industry is now breaking volume records – AT&T sold 1.2 million IPhones and they were bested by Verizon sales of 1.3 million, Alltel added 780,200 (to be fair, Sprint lost a million customers – likely dispersed among a number of carriers). 3G wireless network are being replaced by 4G.
A bad economy? Says who?
Many Dow stock companies (the Dow Jones Industrial Average is comprised of 30 companies) are still taking a beating, US Steel sales dropped 40%, Whirlpool’s net fell 27%, Toyota sales dropped 42% last quarter, Chrysler is now in bankruptcy and Microsoft is down 32% and is also struggling on the price for its Windows 7 “Starter” for netbooks (popular scaled down laptops that basically serve to surf the ‘Net) because their prior operating systems cost more than these machines. Newspapers are dying.
But Internet and wireless are growing. Amazon’s profit jumped 24%. Apple’s climbed 15% (the IPhone is an iconic device, but if the next gen can’t cut and paste or send photos via a text instead of just email, I’m writing Mr. Jobs a letter!).
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
Today, 8 years later, 200 million are on Facebook, Twitter easily gets almost 2 million hits per month, and the wireless industry is now breaking volume records – AT&T sold 1.2 million IPhones and they were bested by Verizon sales of 1.3 million, Alltel added 780,200 (to be fair, Sprint lost a million customers – likely dispersed among a number of carriers). 3G wireless network are being replaced by 4G.
A bad economy? Says who?
Many Dow stock companies (the Dow Jones Industrial Average is comprised of 30 companies) are still taking a beating, US Steel sales dropped 40%, Whirlpool’s net fell 27%, Toyota sales dropped 42% last quarter, Chrysler is now in bankruptcy and Microsoft is down 32% and is also struggling on the price for its Windows 7 “Starter” for netbooks (popular scaled down laptops that basically serve to surf the ‘Net) because their prior operating systems cost more than these machines. Newspapers are dying.
But Internet and wireless are growing. Amazon’s profit jumped 24%. Apple’s climbed 15% (the IPhone is an iconic device, but if the next gen can’t cut and paste or send photos via a text instead of just email, I’m writing Mr. Jobs a letter!).
- The phenomenon of the growth of the Internet and wireless while many other parts of the economy are hurting is a continued sign of our world culture’s “shift” to the (high-speed) Internet to do much of our essential living and communicating, and much more.
Need more proof of it? Last year Comcast, the world’s largest cable TV company, lost almost 600,000 customers. Did these people suddenly stop watching TV? Remember folks, were Americans – they didn’t give up their “boob tubes,” but found a cheaper way to access television programming – thru their computers via their Internet connections!
As you know, my area of focus is on assisting my employer clients reach today’s online jobseekers and advertised and recruit in a manner that reaches them and is more efficient and competitive than traditional “manual recruiting.”
Whether it’s going on Facebook to see the new way people network and interact, tinkering with an IPhone, watching an Academy Award-winning film through your computer, or reading the Wall Street Journal (online), when you see things from this perspective it becomes clear that the question for employers is now how to advertise and recruit online. Don't take my word for it - Facebook's 200 million members are sending a much clearer message.
To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Real Internet Boom
You can scroll back to my first blog entry to learn about the basic history of the Internet and Swiss researcher and MIT professor Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the hyperlink. While an independent contractor at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) from June to December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. On December, 25 1990 he implemented the first successful communication between an http client and server via the Internet.
In 1992, a few of the students at the University of Illinois led by Marc Andreessen came across the World Wide Web protocol released from Burners-Lee and CERN. They thought it was a great idea, but it was clumsy for most people with a minimum of skill with the computer. They decided it would be a fun a potentially worthwhile project to write a friendlier, graphical interface on the browser. Eventually they released it on the Internet, and the downloads increased steadily. In 1993, Andreessen's Mosaic browser was used by over one million people around the world. He had a hit, but he didn't realize it, and it was the school's property.
Think about it. In 1993 (that’s 15 years ago), 1 million people had access to the Internet.
In 2000, seven years later, the number reached 100 million.
- I don’t think the Internet as we know it today was really born yet, because just 20 million had access to the Internet via a high-speed or broadband connection.
- Many people don’t distinguish numbers between Internet users and high-speed Internet users and why it’s important – but I saw a vast difference because the high-speed Internet opened up the possibility of the virtual Internet and what made my invention, Online Job Tour, possible.
My focus since 2003 since the founding of Promo Web Innovations has been to introduce Online Job Tour to selected healthcare employers as the “new approach” to reaching and recruiting today’s and tomorrow’s jobseekers – who are now online with a high-speed connection.
Formerly a “text-based world” because slow dial up Internet made it too difficult to download a single photo, today Online Job Tour is a revolutionary tool that helps employers and jobseekers connect online in today's high-speed Internet world.
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On April 30, 2007 (2 years ago), USA Today published the “Top 25” Internet-related inventions. They are fascinating to review to see how far our global Internet culture has come since Tim Berners-Lee:
1. Tim Berners-Lee invents the hyperlink.
2. Email
3. GUI (Graphical user Interface) Apple featured clickable icons on its 1984 Mac vs. blinking lines of text
4. America Online Chat Rooms/text-messaging really boomed with AOL (35 million subscribers in 2001)
5. Broadband (1% of Internet users had it in 1998. 78% had it in 2008)
6. Google
7. Mosaic/Netcape – Mosaic ruled until Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (“IE”) took off in 1998.
8. eBay – 230 million worldwide customers in 2007
9. Amazon.com - while the stock market was crashing in late 2008, Amazon posted a 7% profit – how is that for a metaphor for the Internet’s powerful growth.
10. Wi-Fi – entire college campuses, and even entire towns, are Wi-Fi (this stands for “Wireless Fidelity,” or wireless access to the Internet.
11. Instant Messaging
12. Yahoo
13. Compuserve/Prodigy – in the 1980s these were the first mainstream companies to offer consumers direct access to the Internet.
14. The WELL – this was the first “virtual community” and now there are many of them – yes, people buy and sell virtual real estate in these virtual worlds.
15. Vices – online gambling topped $12 Billion in 2006 – ever think you were in the wrong business? LOL
16. Spam/spyware – Junk email accounted for 9 of 10 emails on the Internet in 2006.
17. Flash – seen a video lately? It’s likely on a Flash player.
18. Online mapping tools
19. Napster – created in Shawn Fanning’s dorm room, Napster let more than 26 million people tap into free music downloads – record companies shut it down.
20. YouTube – in my opinion, this is a growing revolution – digital video will be bigger than digital photos.
21. The Drudge Report – this was the first blog – remember its first scoop? Remember Monica Lewinsky?
22. Bloggers – this is perhaps the beginning of the end of the traditional newspaper because the world is changing how news is exchanged.
23. Craigslist – yes, it’s named after a real person: Craig Newmark. Free classified ads and the way we find apartments, cars, and dates by users supplying “friendly neighborhood information.”
24. MySpace – the precursor and first major “social networking” phenomenon.
25. Gaming and virtual worlds – here is another industry that defies the stock market. I’m not a big user here only because I’m afraid I would get addicted! And as an “old schooler,” I have a problem with Guitar Hero and think it would be much more cool if people would actually take the time to learn to play the guitar!
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Why is this all important and what’s my point?
So much has happened in the last 5 years that suggests a new world has been created and especially for HR professionals and recruiters for companies, and compelling need to be Internet savvy and understand the Internet is essential to success because all jobseekers are now online.
- A 10/25/2007 NY Times article claimed the classified employment advertising industry in 2007 was at $5.9 Billion and is expected to be $10 Billion in 2011.
- The Economist published an article in 10/4/2007 that said the average American will change jobs 7-13 times and change careers 5 times.
- And the Internet remains on fire as a social networking and new phenomenon to communicate with each other – Twitter has more than 6 million hits per month when it had 1.2 million in all of 2008. Facebook is a monster and Microsoft knew it would be – buying a 1.5% share of it for $240 million in 2007.
These are no longer metaphors or signs but “evidence” that employers today must embrace the Internet and be involved in the “virtual world” born from high speed Internet.
And I didn’t even mention smart phones yet – that’s another blog entry!
Monday, April 13, 2009
On Inventing Online Job Tour™ and how it evolved
Online Job Tour™ is my company’s signature product around which Promo Web Innovations has built tools to support our Health Care client employers and maximize their recruiting efforts to reach today’s online jobseekers.
When I invented Online Job Tour in 2001, less than 20 million people in the world had a high-speed Internet connection. I envisioned that number would explode and create not only a new “virtual world” culture offering many “web solutions” to our lives, but it would also change how jobseekers look for, and research their career changes and options.
When I invented Online Job Tour in 2001, less than 20 million people in the world had a high-speed Internet connection. I envisioned that number would explode and create not only a new “virtual world” culture offering many “web solutions” to our lives, but it would also change how jobseekers look for, and research their career changes and options.
- From 38 million in May of 2003 when I filed for its patent, today there are 1.5 Billion (yes, that’s a “B”) users of broadband Internet.
Online Job Tour is first web-based recruitment system and that provides a holistic picture of a job opportunity, offering jobseekers information needed to intelligently assess a career and life in the client’s community. Unlike prior conventional online attempts to use the Internet for recruitment, Promo Web does not merely provide a short classified ad with a few links to other websites for a jobseeker or candidate to hunt for relevant information. Instead, Promo Web lays out key features of a job opportunity and life in a community, including personally featuring individuals and organizations, in a logically organized self-contained web presentation. What would otherwise require a candidate many hours of research and a personal visit to a job’s location to determine is now packaged neatly and virtually by the Promo Web product in an easy to follow web presentation. Samples of Online Job Tour can be found on our website at onlinejobtour.com
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People often ask me how I came to invent this revolutionary tool, and if you’re interested I thought it would be an appropriate early blog entry because a lot of what I write about is specific to the subject of recruiting today’s online jobseekers.
On January 6, 2000 my father died in transplant surgery aftercare as the result of a mistake made during a routine procedure. Called a “blind insertion” to remove fluid build-up in his chest area, a major artery was punctured and he bled to death internally. My dad's passing was hard on our family. Before then, I had left a successful sales career where I had been my company’s top national producer every year I had been with them, held all the noteworthy sales records, and sought another professional challenge. I had been a consultant and sales trainer and was enjoying it, and the freedom that came with being able to choose my assignments.
I had been introduced to the staffing industry via a consulting project with Robert Half International, a publically-traded accounting staffing company where I learned about the business. Within six months after that assignment I became a medical recruiter.
In founding Healthcare Recruiters of Florida, Inc. my mission was to first learn what I could about the permanent placement recruiting business in health care, and the needs and challenges of employers. Basically, the big picture goal was to recruit for medical employers the best possible professionals – I focused on cardiology and oncology placements – physician placements as well as unusual stuff, from double-fellowship trained doctors to medical physicists for Cancer Centers. I wanted to play my small role in helping employers recruit not just a position, but fill it with the best possible candidates. I did my best to form relationships where I felt the employer client shared my mutual interest in not just filling the job, but excelling.
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Fundamental problems with how recruiting was/is set up for employers and jobseekers:
Almost immediately I noticed that most of the hospital recruiters themselves – even the physician recruiters, had no professional sales skills – they were the hospital's former employees, or someone’s spouse with experience in a public job of some kind, and some had marketing backgrounds. Professionally untrained people doing the same job over and over, while they eventually filled most of their jobs, had bad habits on top of bad habits, and didn’t have a frame of reference to measure their results – sales terms such as “closing percentages,” measuring the times it takes to fill positions, pre-qualifying questions that help to shorten decisionmaking timelines, were not a part of their work.
What I also found interesting is the recruiters did little recruiting of candidates, but instead relied on third party recruiters like me to source candidates for them, pre-qualify them, and actually help to close the candidates.
On the other side, the jobseekers were clearly befuddled – facing many challenges and anxieties about making career changes.
About this time – about 2000-2001, after getting jobseekers on the phone and trying to give them a “verbal pitch” of the job, I saw the Internet as a possible way to help me improve the way I could represent the jobs I was selling and also deliver the information I knew jobseekers needed to know – not just about the employer, but relocating involves many lifestyle factors. I decided to put together these “stat sheets” on the employer with not just the hospital’s information and features, but also information on the clients’ service area – that became more and more comprehensive. With my technology background I knew a lot of people as well as website designers. I felt that the Internet was going to grow a lot (particularly high-speed Internet, which allowed for fast downloads of content but also digital photos and images, etc.) and it would be a better way to deliver the details of the jobs I was representing directly to prospect jobseekers.
Two friends of mine who were website designers helped me place my "presentations" onto websites. They became more elaborate presentations focused in traditional “jobseeker categories” (the subjects jobseekers of all sorts generally need to know in order to make career decisions).
With my sales background and as an advocate for my clients, I understood the advantage of creating a presentation which maximized the marketability of my clients – and because my clients’ own recruiters didn’t have much sales training, the presentation was important to help to offset their limitations.
Another interesting thing was happening was that jobseekers themselves were outpacing employer recruiters with their use of the Internet, which was becoming a big problem.
I started to see that what I was doing might one day be a "bridge" to not just connect employers and jobseekers, but offset these many limitations inherent in the "manual" recruiting process.
Fast Internet connection speed struck my curiosity:
At the time the Internet had passed 100 million users, but I was more interested in the burgeoning broadband connection growth – I was convinced that the faster download speed would allow for immediate viewing of rich content (pictures/images/video/music) and much more robust presentations.
- There were only about 20-25 million users of broadband Internet which had connection speed faster than 56k modems (remember those days?). I envisioned a day when everyone would have full-bore, high-speed Internet access.
How I went about making the early Online Job Tours, or “Web brochures:”
In 2001 the goal was not just to provide a “recruitment presentation” but also to have them emulate the onsite visit experience – I began to see the advantages of using the Internet not just to “bring the onsite visit to the jobseeker,” but my sales experience was such that I knew the “Sales 101” importance of getting your prospect to take a “test drive” of the product you are selling them.
In order for me to obtain the kind of content necessary for me to create the web-presentations I wanted to make – which included particularly photos and testimonials from employers as well as people in the community regarding the jobseeker-needed content I wanted to feature, my own onsite visit was necessary.
- Thank heaven that at this time digital photography was becoming popular – I was not a photographer. The first full-content Online Job Tour I created was with a simple, rather bulky 3.0 megapixel camera that had a very small zoom lens.
Although I was working on a contingency basis, which meant that I was not paid unless one of my candidates was placed by my clients, in a couple cases I had their trust and believed that I was their principal recruiter source, so I took a chance and with my own money I traveled to the clients to take the photos needed to create a more elaborate website presentation.
The goal on my trips was to pretend that I was the physician on the actual interview visit and I structured my questions to profile the people I met around the kinds of questions a physician jobseeker would ask them (by this time I had been recruiting doctors so I knew what they and their spouses wanted to know) – I met hospital administrators and employees, physicians, and then I went out into the community featuring and meeting people and business leaders, schools, country club directors, community theater directors, the mayor, the hospital board chairman – I even interviewed high school seniors about growing up in the area.
After getting tons of this information and hundreds of photos (video would come later!) I came back to my home and sorted it all out and then started to “tell the unique story” of the client and its relationship with its service area around the features of the career position I was representing.
My friends and I then put it all on a URL and I got back on the phone and started cold-call recruiting jobseeker prospects – whenever I got someone interested in my verbal “pitch” over the phone and peaked their curiosity about having a “web-based” presentation to email to them, I sent the “online job tour presentation/web brochure.”
Reactions from Jobseekers and Results overwhelming & growing the invention:
I experienced many “Eureka!” moments, based on the overwhelmingly positive response.
The proof was that I was filling positions and getting letters and emails from both sides encouraging me to grow my idea.
Over a six month stretch in 2002 I made placements equaling more than $230,000 and I decided to leave the recruiting business and start Promo Web Innovations with the full-time focus on building upon this “recruitment website presentation” invention.
Since founding Promo Web® Innovations I filed for a US Patent on the invention and we have tested a model template of Online Job Tour with 17 hospitals across 15 states – clearly the clients who committed to using it have experienced tremendous results. While staying true to the original design of the invention, we have grown the product considerably as web design and development tools have grown.
We produced a Promo Web Micro presentation prototype for smart phones in fall of 2006, and the movement of videotape to digital (much like cameras went digital) led to embellishing the Online Job Tour.
Software Development:
With the long-range goal being for the product to be simple but powerful and for corporations, there has been a focus on keeping a core design that can be remade via a software program. I am currently taking to a number of organizations/programmers with the goal to have a template design tool available by 2010 which will allow for efficient large-scale deployment for a large company for multiple affiliates.
Employers Must Adjust - Jobseekers have moved to the Internet with a broadband connection and Online Job Tour is a proactive tool and web solution for both sides.
All jobseekers are online now. Continuing to recruit while being blind to them loses time, effort, money, and candidates. Today and in this poor economy, the smarter companies no longer judge their recruiting success merely by whether they eventually fill open physician and staff jobs.
- Closing percentages, saving third party recruiter fees, hiring the better candidates, making a better long-term fit which lessens turnover, saving wasted interview/site visits, and filling openings faster - these all dramatically influence the budget and quality of care provided.
The Online Job Tour invention has proven to make the recruiting process more efficient and our test-clients are more competitive, and their jobs are easier – with staff recruiters still without professional sales training and many who do not use advanced technology tools, it is a “bridge” to jobseekers who are wireless and many who “live online.”
Here we are in 2009 with tech-savvy jobseekers and particularly larger corporations who have not adapted well to their target market and how the Internet’s growth of broadband created a “virtual lifestyle” for the emerging jobseekers.
We are excited to be able to “open this compelling new door” for our client employers to “reach” today’s jobseekers in our unique way with Online Job Tour!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Internet's History
While virtually all of us use the Internet, few know its origins, so I thought that my first blog entry should be dedicated to giving you a brief history lesson on how this amazing tool, which will make or break our clients' recruiting, got started and evolved:
Carl’s Internet History Dateline/Lesson – did you know the Internet was invented during the Cold War to effectively deliver messages to military leaders in the event of a nuclear attack?
The Internet has an amazing history – knowing it isn’t just cool coffee table conversation.
1968: US Government think tank invents IP (“Internet Protocol”) as a communication system for launch codes for nuclear warheads.
1972: IP is published globally (prevents “mutually-assured destruction”).
1975: mil.net – created in Berkeley/Stanford primarily for university and military use.
1981: City College of NY/Brooklyn creates BitNet, which is the precursor to the DNS (Domain Name System).
1985: NSF (National Science Foundation) takes over the Internet – this is the official date where the Internet moves more to educational control away from the military. Congress (and yes, Al Gore is on the subcommittee!) strikes a deal with MCI to build an “internet
backbone” on fiber cabling for $85 million – the “Information Superhighway” was born.
At this stage, there are approximately 10,000 users of the Internet
1990: Tim Burners Lee at CERN (Swiss University for Particle Physics) theorizes a “web” of (shared) information (first mention of the “web”) and publishes it. The theory postulates that if there were a way to connect research published online to “link” directly to sources, a true “web” of communication would result.
1992: Two grad students at University of Illinois contact Lee that they have created Mosaic, which created the “hyperlink,” which Lee endorses.
The creation of the “hyperlink” (today we call it a “link”) was the birth of the world wide web – as differentiated from the Internet.
The students create Netscape and offer to sell it to Bill Gates for $100,000. Gates turns them down. Microsoft would go on the copy the Netscape system and engage in many legal battles with Netscape – so when people tell you Bill Gates invented the web, you can tell them the real story!
1995: Web is opened to commerce (“e-commerce”). At this stage, it is estimated the Internet passes 1 million users (mostly use for emails).
2000: The “Dot Com Boom” emerges, growing the Internet to 100 million users.
Early 2000s brings the advance of "high-speed" ("broadband") Internet/Web access - to me, this was a second and more profound "boom" as it would eventually lead to today's "Virtual Internet" promoted by real-time downloads of rich content.
In 2001 when I invented the Promo Web Online Job Tour, less than 30 million had broadband and when I filed for the patent on it in mid 2003 it is estimated that the number was 60 million.
Today in 2009, the number of high-speed Internet users has exceeded 1.5 Billion (that's a b).
Now THAT is a Boom, and many of my blog posts will be based on how this massive shift of our world culture to the Internet world has changed the dynamics of recruitment, from the expectations of jobseekers to impacting the costs of recruiting, and everything in between.
I hope you enjoyed this review of the the Web's history!
Carl
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