www.philly.com/monster is the first site launch between the # 1 job board, Monster, and print media, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. Years of battling local newspapers for job listings have prompted Monster to take this radical approach.

For Monster to be a long-term force, it has to have a significant presence in the local markets, and since they can never build the same daily frequency and reach as newspapers, they are teaming up with other print media companies.

Monster hopes that the newspaper partnerships will give it the local edge it needs to stay competitive with rivals like CareerBuilders, which was set up by several newspapers a few years ago specifically to combat Monster. Monster also faces an even greater challenge from Craigslist in a growing number of major cities. Craigslist offers free job listings, which has made them the leader in several large markets.

Although competition is steadfast, an executive at Monster insists that Monster has many advantages to offer employers --"Employers will pay us more if we generate more applicants than our rivals" -- "Monster 's site attracts 40,000 resumes daily and more than three million applicants monthly.

To compete with the cheaper and free services (Monster - 395 for 60 day posting) of other sites, Monster is offering clients more services, including recruiting tools and promises to deliver high-quality candidates. This strategy seems to have paid off, 2005 revenue was up 17% from 2004 and the trend continued in the first half of 2006.

Even though competitors like CareerBuilders and Craigslist are nipping at its heal, worldwide brand recognition allows Monster to stay #1. Today, it operates its job service in 25 foreign countries and analysts say "global business will drive future sales".

The ERE just launched the results of their survey on advertising effectiveness and guess what- online job board spending is rising and--- it's effective. The average annual spending on job boards is about $25,000.

But its effectiveness is still second to Employee Referral Programs. (I know we've discussed that already.)

One thing that I laughed at was the confession that a majority of the respondents used social networking sites but weren't quite sure about their value. "Social networking sites are used by 43 percent of the responding recruiters and HR managers, but a common sentiment revealed by the study is that the jury is out on their overall effectiveness as a recruiting channel."

The conclusion is that there is a place for everything in the recruitment spending MiX.

And, now that you don't have to buy the report- you've just saved $495.

Here are more details for those who are interested--

About the Respondents

Our respondents hold a broad cross-section of positions (from recruiters and a few hiring managers to vice presidents), in a wide range of company size and industries. Total recruitment advertising budgets ranged to a high of more than a million dollars. The majority of respondents control budgets exceeding $50,000. Several dozen industries were represented with the largest numbers coming from banking and finance, IT and related consulting, healthcare, retail, biotech and engineering.

Respondents based their opinions on value, telling us that the number of hires made compared to the cost was the most important criterion in determining effectiveness. They also took into account the number of offers generated and the quality of the candidates in relation to the amount spent. Using that yardstick to decide effectiveness, respondents told us:

• Print is an ineffective medium for recruiting candidates. It received the lowest effectiveness rating of all the advertising methods we surveyed. Almost 60 percent of respondents rated print "ineffective" or "very ineffective." Only 13 percent of respondents, the lowest of any category, said they expected to increase their print spending.
• Job sites generally rated well with nearly 50 percent of respondents calling them "effective" or "very effective." Some respondents said they make over 50 percent of annual hires from online job sites.
• Niche job sites and national boards are more effective than others; diversity sites, for example, received low marks. In fact, diversity job sites was the only category we surveyed that did not receive a single vote as being a "very effective" means of recruiting.
• Fewer than 2 percent of respondents indicated that they did not use online job boards, and only 8 percent of respondents indicated that they did not use print media; on the other hand, over 40 percent indicate that they do not use social networking sites. Fifteen percent said they did not use career fairs to recruit, and 12 percent said that they did not use employee referral programs.
• Career fairs, while not seen as a particularly good value, have their supporters. Survey comments indicated that many see career fairs as a branding tool and as a way to quickly hire large numbers of workers.
• Respondents appear ambivalent about the effectiveness of social networking sites, and at present, a majority of them spend less than $25,000 annually advertising on such sites. However, respondents said they would increase rather than decrease spending.
• Ninety percent of survey respondents said their organization had a corporate career site.
• Over 60 percent of respondents said they used an applicant tracking system to capture recruiting data on candidates. The most commonly tracked metric was the number of hires; after that, in order of most common, was the number of offers extended, the number of candidates that applied for a position, the number of interviews generated, and the number of resumes received. Survey respondents indicated processing about 1,000 resumes a month against about 50 open requisitions monthly.

we heart hr

On a serious note -- and not just because I'm having a terrible week-- I wanted to info share with you in case you have not seen the recent article in USA Today--

More employers are launching disaster plans that ensure employees get paid or business continues if the worst happens. The precautions come in the wake of concerns over natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the anniversary of Sept. 11 and ongoing fears over terrorist attacks and bird flu.

What some companies are doing:

• Capital One Bank, based in New Orleans, has set up an incident-response team made up of employees who work within the bank and in customer service. When a storm looms, team members in markets that may be affected are relocated to hotels and alternative workspaces and help plan operations. Continuity plans are regularly tested to make sure functions can continue.

• Dayton Ritz & Osborne, a 30-person insurance agency based in East Hampton, N.Y., has disaster preparations that include a $25,000 automatic electric generator, an off-site phone-answering service that incoming calls can be directed to and precut plywood shutters to protect the windows.

• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island, with more than 670,000 customers, has an incident-management team from information technology, finance, human resources and other departments that meets yearly to assess plans and go over a mock disaster. It has an offsite backup computer facility in Sterling Forest, N.Y., with all the data needed to continue processing claims.

"Being the major health insurer for the state, we owe it to our customers to have our operations up again if a disaster happens," says Tom Bovis of the Providence-based health insurer. "This is critical to people."

But serious gaps in disaster planning remain. Some companies have plans but have not communicated them to employees or practiced what to do in a mock disaster. And others have done nothing. About 25% of organizations have not communicated or tested their plans, according to a new survey conducted by the Brookfield, Wis.-based International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans.

This is the part where I plug our ability to help you communicate this plan or benefits plans or business plans or professional development plans or anything that touches your internal population. Unfortunately, because this week has been a disaster so far (but on the bright side-- anything can happen at any time to change the downward spiral) I'll leave it to you to fill in the blanks.

Call with questions/post your comments/ we love feedback

OK, should I be re-thinking my Candidate Care support group? For many years I've been saying that we should be nice to candidates because they-- particularly for consumer product and retail orgs- are also discretionary investors in our company.

The way they 're treated might end up on blogs, on YouTube, on EyeWitness News for goodness sakes. But we should be nice to them anyway because they applied for a position within our firm! Right?

But several things happened that made me re-think this. The first was an interview with someone who crossed the line of pithy professionalism by being a bit too overzealous about the potential job opportunity. I can't really go into details (email me offline for the juicy tidbits) because we never know who might be reading this in bed tonight.

But lets just say that if the applicant was a movie title it may be "I Know What You Did Last Summer" or possibly "Scream!"

The second thing made me laugh and hopefully it will make you laugh too-- Or maybe you're just so used to this that in addition to firing people in the conference room with a third party nearby every recruiter will have an interview buddy -- or maybe we'll be doing the pre-employment screening way before the interview!

Anyway- here's what happened when my good friend Heather tried to have some candidate care in rejecting someone for her job opportunity-- She got the following letter back.


Thank you for your letter rejecting my application for employment with

your firm.



I have received rejections from an unusually large number of

well-qualified organizations. With such a varied and promising spectrum

of rejections from which to select, it is impossible to consider them

all. After careful deliberation, then, and because a number of firms

have found me more unsuitable, I regret to inform you that I am unable

to accept your rejection.



Despite your company's outstanding qualifications and previous

experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not

meet with my requirements at this time. As a result, I will be starting

employment with your firm on the first of the month.



Circumstances change and one can never know when new demands for

rejection arise. Accordingly, I will keep your letter on files in case

my requirements for rejection change.



Please do not regard this letter as a criticism of your qualifications

in attempting to refuse me employment. I wish you the best of luck in

refusing future candidates.

Sincerely,

I know this is New York City but has everyone gone crazy?