The Most Original Employment Site Conference Ever!
That’s no exaggeration. The 2013 IAEWS Fall Congress will be an industry conference like no other you’ve ever attended.
What makes it so different?
- The format. Organized as an “unconference,” the Congress has coupled every presentation and panel with an equal period of time that offers you two options: you can join a discussion of the presentation/panel topic or you can network with colleagues and business prospects. In short, you’ll have more opportunities for peer interaction than ever before.
The agenda. From the Opening Industry Keynote by Mike Durney, the new President & CEO of Dice Holdings, Inc,. to the Closing HR Keynote by Mary Kay Baldino, the head of recruiting at Outerwall, Inc. of Redbox and Coinstar fame, this conference has speakers you will not hear anywhere else.
The venue. If you’re tired of conferences in high ceiling hotel ballrooms, this Congress is your dream come true. It will be held in a private conference facility in the heart of Chicago’s famed Loop. In addition to its collegial environment and coffee bar, there’s WiFi throughout and even a room set aside for calls to the office.
Conferences often say that “seating is limited,” but in this case it’s absolutely true. The Congress conference facility can only accommodate 110 people. No exceptions. Given that almost 150 executives attended the Spring Congress, it’s important that you register early so you don’t miss out on this one-of-a-kind event.
The Congress will be held at the Holland and Knight Conference Center on October 14-15, 2013 in Chicago, IL USA. Early registration discounts are available, but last only until September 15th. In addition, a limited block of discounted rooms ($219/night) has been negotiated with The Palmer House, one of Chicago’s premier hotels, which is located just around the corner from the conference center. These discounted rooms are available only until October 1st. So, don’t delay; click here to reach our registration portal right now.
The New Talent Ecosystem
An excerpt from The New Golden Rules of Job Board Success: Four Principles for Optimizing Operational & Bottom Line Performance.
From the earliest days of their introduction, job postings were seen as a novel and effective weapon for waging the War for Any Talent. They put employment opportunities in front of millions of people who had the skills and knowledge to do the work. And, in significant numbers, those individuals applied for the openings. When the respondents to WEDDLE’s 1999 Survey were asked how helpful their online recruitment advertising had been, 60 percent said Very Helpful. Just 7.1 percent described it as “No more helpful than other recruitment methods.”
Battlefields are highly dynamic environments, however, and the battlefield known as the job market is no exception. Indeed, that battlefield changed dramatically in the first decade of the current millennium. The War for Talent morphed from a quantitative to a qualitative competition. It was no longer a War for Any Talent; it had become a War for the Best Talent.
The pace of technological development greatly accelerated, significantly changing the skills required in traditional occupations and creating entirely new ones. In addition, overseas competitors emerged in both domestic and global markets, often with workers who had the very latest knowledge and skills in their occupations. As a consequence, employers and recruiters no longer needed more workers, they needed smarter ones. They were (and still are) in the market for workers who could excel on-the-job.
At the same time, a plethora of new communications channels emerged. Job seekers could now conduct their job search using any or all of a range of media, platforms and venues. Whether it was LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, general purpose or niche job boards, search engines or aggregators, their desktop computer or the cloud, their lap top computer or their smart phone, they could be anywhere at any time on any of a host of devices.
The options are numerous and becoming more so, which inevitably splinters the workforce into smaller and smaller cohorts. As a consequence, no one medium, Web-site or platform can provide the scale necessary to be used exclusively or even with a limited number of other channels to wage the War for the Best Talent. At least, not if the goal is victory, and the definition of victory is an organization’s success in capturing more than its fair share of those with rare skills and those who are top performers.
This unlimited array of limited options creates an entirely new talent acquisition ecosystem for employers and recruiters … and by extension for job boards, as well. Although some have characterized this development as a rejection of job postings, nothing could be further from the truth. Whether it’s on job boards or social media sites, employers and recruiters continue to see great value in online recruitment advertising.
Further, when respondents to WEDDLE’s 2012 Source of Employment Survey were asked to rate the quality of candidates sourced online, 36 percent described them as “among our best employees” and 42 percent said they were “above average employees.” And, when those same respondents were asked to evaluate the diversity of candidates generated by online recruitment advertising, almost six-out-of-ten (59.2 percent) said it was excellent or above average.
Unlike the situation with newspapers, then, the new talent ecosystem doesn’t indicate a flight from job boards or their bread and butter – job postings – but rather a continuation of employers’ and recruiters’ efforts to follow the breadcrumb trail left by job seekers in general and the best talent in particular.
What’s this new talent acquisition ecosystem look like? We’ll provide some answers in our next newsletter.
WEDDLE’s User’s Choice Awards
WEDDLE’s User’s Choice Awards are the only accolade in the only employment services industry in which the winners are selected, not by pundits, but by the job seekers and recruiters who actually use the sites.
How does the selection work?
WEDDLE’s publishes a list of those sites that have asked to be included on the User’s Choice Awards ballot posted on its Web-site. Votes are collected all year long, and then de-duped at the end of the year to determine the thirty sites with the most unique ballots. Those sites are designated the User’s Choice Award winners and featured in an array of media throughout the next year.
Winners also receive a special Selectee icon to post on their site and in their marketing literature. Think of it as a Zagat rating of 30 – the best of the best as selected by customers.
Is this process a scientific survey? Absolutely not. But, as with All Star voting in Major League Baseball, it is a clear indication of the level of support enjoyed by the winners. And, of course, there’s simply no greater distinction than to be saluted by your customers.
If you’d like your site to appear on the WEDDLE’s User’s Choice Awards ballot, please contact Peter Weddle at peter@weddles.com. Participation is totally free.
A Holiday Gift for the Ages
Ditch the fruitcake and fuzzy Holiday cards. This year, give your customers and special friends something they’ll value long after the Holidays end.
Give them Talent Slow Jams: The Smoothest Practices in Talent Acquisition.
This 52-page booklet will be branded with your organization’s name and logo and provide informative, engaging articles on:
- The Smoothest Practices in Job Posting
- The Smoothest Practices in Social Recruiting
- The Smoothest Practices in Online Networking
- The Smoothest Practices in Optimizing the Candidate Experience
Instead of giving your customers something they’ll forget by January 1st, give them a resource they’ll use over and over again … and every time they do, they’ll see your company’s name and logo!
Cheaper and more satisfying than a bag of Holiday cookies, the booklets are sold in lots of 50. They must be ordered by September 30th to be delivered for you distribution after Thanksgiving.
To order, contact WEDDLE’s at corporate@weddles.com or 203-964-1888.
WEDDLE’s New Guide Now at Amazon
The eleventh edition of WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet – the book the American Staffing Association called the “Zagat” of the online employment services field – is now available at Amazon.com.
This edition is completely updated, so if you have the 2011/12 Guide or an even earlier edition, you need this all-new classic right now!
The book features:
- The Top 100 – WEDDLE’s pick of the 100 best employment sites on the Web. Each site is described with a full-page description of its features, services and fees.
- The Best & the Rest – A directory of over 9,000 sites organized by career field, industry, geographic focus and other factors. It’s the most complete guide to the Web’s sourcing and recruiting resources, period.
Click here to get your copy of Weddle’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet today.