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One third see China as opportunity

Dec.5 – One third of Europeans and Americans see China’s rapid economic growth to be an opportunity, while nearly 60 percent remain wary of China’s rising economic power, an opinion poll showed on Monday.

The survey, by the German Marshall Fund, a transatlantic think tank, comes as policymakers in Brussels and Washington are planning to update trade and investment ties with China, wary of its new economic might but keen for more of its huge market, the Reuters reported.

China skeptics worrying about China’s economy see its inexpensive goods export and their companies relocating to China as a threat, according to the poll which covered France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Britain and the United States.

Of the six European countries covered, 70 percent of people in France and only slightly fewer in Poland, Italy and Slovakia expressed jitters over China’s emerging economy, said the Reuter report.

Traditionally free-trading Britain had more people who saw China as an opportunity than a threat, the survey found.

With European manufacturing coming under pressure from Asia, the European Commission has imposed anti-dumping duties on a range of Chinese exports, including leather shoes.

EU and Chinese negotiators are due to begin talks next month on a broad new bilateral agreement, including economic issues. And, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is leading a high-level Washington delegation to China later this month.

In potentially good news for attempts to break a deadlock in world trade talks, the poll showed 52 percent of respondents favored globalization in general, up from 46 percent in 2005.

Possibly behind that was a fall in dissatisfaction about the local economy — 41 percent of Americans and 27 percent of Europeans were satisfied with their own economy, up from 30 and 20 percent respectively in 2005, the survey found.

But in a sign of how sensitive an issue free trade remains, two thirds of the French and over half the American respondents in the poll favored keeping trade barriers when local companies are at risk, even if it means slower economic growth at home.

The poll heard the views of about 1,000 people in each of the seven countries between September 5 and 25.

How Do We Quantify the Impact of Faulty Hiring?

We¡¯re trying to polish our recruiting efforts after some bad hires. How can we measure the impact, both in dollars and other costs, of poor hiring decisions?

¡ªPenny-pinching Recruiter, government, Dee Why, New South Wales, Australia

Dear Penny-pinching:

Employee turnover is an important tool to use in measuring a company¡¯s success. But let¡¯s be honest: There are different costs associated with “good turnover,” in which underachievers are separated, and “bad turnover,” in which quality performers leave for other opportunities. Therefore the data alone does not tell a whole story. Radical as it may seem, some turnover can be good–even desirable, in some instances.

But let¡¯s start with the basics. There are certain quantifiable costs involved in filling a vacancy, whether it¡¯s caused by good or bad turnover. These costs are composed of employment advertising fees (print or online), recruiter fees (contingency or executive search,) assessment tools and background checks, travel and relocation costs, HR staff time, and new employee orientation and training. Additionally, turnover will have a qualitative impact on productivity, with work being reassigned and new hires needing time to learn their new jobs.

Now let¡¯s take the analysis one step further and distinguish the differences between good and bad turnover. When a valued employee leaves, not only do you incur obvious costs, but the company also loses that employee¡¯s internal corporate knowledge and experience, external client contacts and sources¨Cand it faces the possibility that the employee will use his or her skills to work for a competitor. Alternatively, when a marginal employee leaves, a company has the opportunity either to incur a savings by not filling the job or to recruit an employee that adds more value than the one who has left.

The obvious question from human resources¡¯ perspective is how to avoid bad turnover, rather than how to avoid turnover in general. In order to fight bad turnover, every manager in your company should be trained in employee relations, conflict resolution and the implementation of equitable corporate policies and procedures. An employee-retention program that is geared toward maintaining a positive corporate culture and employee well-being always attracts job applicants. However, discouraging bad turnover requires properly trained managers working with human resource strategists to recognize telltale signs of frustration among employees, especially in areas within their direct control. In the end, it is frontline supervisors who are accountable for employee satisfaction within individual departments. Success means giving those managers the proper tools.

Company Profile: Recruiters Get LinkedIn in Search of Job Candidates

Electronic recruiting leader LinkedIn is actively courting the headhunting set with new services. But new potential competitors are emerging and it remains to be seen whether business-focused networking sites will become central to most recruiters.
By Ed Frauenheim
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Recruiter Tim Farrelly starts his day at his computer getting linked in.

That is, his Internet home page is the business networking site LinkedIn, where Farrelly, a San Francisco-based executive recruiter, does such things as seek out and contact job candidates. About 15 times a month, he uses the site¡¯s new “InMail” feature that lets him send a message directly to one of LinkedIn¡¯s more than 7 million members. And 90 percent of the time, he gets a response.

There¡¯s “probably no better place out there to find a passive candidate,” Farrelly says, referring to the job candidates not actively seeking new employment. “It¡¯s really effective.”

Among social and business networking sites, LinkedIn is standing out these days as a tool for recruiters. According to Palo Alto, California-based LinkedIn, the number of recruiters who are registered users of the site has more than doubled in the past year, to more than 100,000. And LinkedIn is actively courting the headhunting set with new services, including the InMail product and job ads targeted to specific types of professionals. Meanwhile, other business networking sites such as ZeroDegrees and Spoke Software have faded or changed course.

Konstantin Guericke, a LinkedIn co-founder and the company¡¯s vice president of marketing, says LinkedIn is leading the way when it comes to a critical part of recruiters¡¯ work.

“I think we are becoming the main site where people are looking for passive candidates,” he says.

But LinkedIn¡¯s quest to be a hub for recruiters may still prove difficult. New potential competitors in the social networking arena are emerging. And it remains to be seen whether LinkedIn or other business-focused networking sites will become central to most recruiters.

Kevin Wheeler, a recruiting industry analyst and president of consulting firm Global Learning Resources, says LinkedIn has managed to attract a significant share of recruiters to its site, and he believes that social networking will become ever-more important to recruiters over time. But, he says, that doesn¡¯t mean LinkedIn is going to command recruiters¡¯ attention–or their dollars.

“We¡¯re all signed up” to the site, he says. “But the real question is not how many recruiters have signed up, but what percentage of recruiters is actually using it for recruiting?”

Recruiting recruiters
Statistics from LinkedIn suggest that a fair amount of recruiting is going on at the site. A LinkedIn survey of its users found that a third had been contacted at some point regarding a job opportunity. And most of the “power users” paying LinkedIn $200 a month for premium services such as InMails are recruiters, Guericke says.

At this point, most recruiters on LinkedIn are using the site for free, Guericke says. He expects that about 10 percent of those recruiters will upgrade to a paid account or post a job on LinkedIn during the next 12 months.

As Guericke sees it, many of the recruiters new to the site are likely to snap up its hiring-related services. As opposed to “networking people” who love the socializing dimension of recruiting, many of the newer members have come to LinkedIn for utilitarian reasons. These business-oriented people appreciate the value of LinkedIn as a database with detailed information and the high response rate the site offers, Guericke says.

“They weren¡¯t the early adopters,” he says.

It¡¯s hard to gauge exactly what percentage of recruiters have profiles on LinkedIn, given imprecise numbers for the profession. A few years ago, industry publication Recruiter Magazine Online estimated there were 200,000 internal, contract and human resources recruiting professionals working full time for corporations throughout North America, as well as more than 100,000 retained and contingency-based recruiters working at some 25,000 firms.

LinkedIn¡¯s attractiveness to this population has a lot to do with not touting its recruiting role to most users. Guericke and four colleagues started LinkedIn three years ago with a vision of making money from professionals such as recruiters, attorneys and management consultants, who could benefit from a network of high-powered people by pitching their services or snaring job candidates.

The average LinkedIn member, however, would come to the site and use it for free to keep track of colleagues, arrange deals and otherwise make business connections. So far, the plan seems to be working.

LinkedIn¡¯s membership doubled in the past year, and revenue at the site is growing at twice the rate of membership growth, Guericke says. The privately held company, which employs about 70 people, became profitable earlier this year.

In the past year or so, LinkedIn has made several improvements designed to help recruiters land passive candidates. Passive candidates typically are preferred over active job seekers, in part for their lower likelihood of job hopping. LinkedIn¡¯s InMail service is designed to speed up recruiters¡¯ pursuit of passive job seekers. After searching the LinkedIn network for people with particular job titles or experience, recruiters used to have to wait for various intermediaries to approve the forwarding of a message about a job opportunity.

Although contacting someone directly amounts to a kind of cold-call, Guericke says recruiters using InMails tend to have a much higher response rate than the 2 percent to 5 percent typical in the sales world.

“Over 60 percent of people you contact respond to you,” he says.

LinkedIn¡¯s 7.5 million members have the ability to block InMails or other sorts of contacts. But just a small fraction of members wall themselves off, Guericke says.

LinkedIn also has a job-posting service that will provide the person posting the ad with a list of 10 people in the network who closely match the ad. In addition, LinkedIn members¡¯ homepages now display job ads designed to fit their skills and experience.

LinkedIn has various levels of premium accounts allowing for InMails and additional introduction requests. The highest level, a “pro” account, costs $200 per month and lets individuals send 50 InMails a month.

Guericke and crew would like nothing better than for more recruiters to follow in Tim Farrelly¡¯s footsteps. Farrelly, president of Coit Staffing, requires all 12 recruiters in his company to use the site. He estimates he spends $7,200 a year on LinkedIn services. But the payback from LinkedIn has been far greater.

“We¡¯ve probably made at least $100,000 because of it,” says Farrelly, who offers both contingency and retained search services and focuses on industries including technology, biotechnology and health care.

Guericke is confident the recruiting business at LinkedIn will expand, though not as fast as revenue overall. He expects LinkedIn¡¯s total revenue to triple or quadruple next year, while revenue from recruiters should about double. Although the recruiting business is important to LinkedIn, recruiters buying premium services account for less than 50 percent of LinkedIn¡¯s overall revenue.

Competitive environment
To a large degree, LinkedIn has outlasted its rivals.

Business networking site ZeroDegrees shut down its service September 30. At one point, the site had more than 1 million members, says Jas Dhillon, who founded the company and sold it to media company IAC/InterActiveCorp in late 2003. Dhillon left IAC/InterActiveCorp about a year ago and has taken a position at Microsoft. LinkedIn has done well, Dhillon says.

“I think they¡¯re in a pretty solid position now,” he says.

IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns prominent online businesses including Match.com and Evite, did not respond to requests for comment.

Other sites, including Ryze, have lost momentum, says John Zappe, a recruiting analyst with consulting firm Classified Intelligence.

“They¡¯re still around, but they¡¯re a shadow of their former self,” he says.

That¡¯s not to say LinkedIn is a shoe-in for lots of recruiters¡¯ dollars.

Serious questions about the wisdom of spending on business networks were raised in a survey of about 350 recruiters this year by Classified Intelligence and ERE Media, which maintains an online portal devoted to recruiting. The study found that 40 percent of respondents rated business networks as “ineffective” or “very ineffective” in producing hires. Just 24 percent rated them “effective” or “very effective.” National/general job boards and niche professional sites scored higher in terms of their effectiveness than networking/referral sites, according to the survey, which went out to recruiters within organizations as opposed to third-party recruiters.

Networking/referral sites did score higher in effectiveness than executive job boards, diversity sites and regional/general job boards.

The survey made a distinction between business networking sites like LinkedIn and predominantly social networking sites, such as MySpace.com and Facebook. And it found room for growth in that latter category. Nearly 60 percent of respondents had yet to try using social networks, the study concluded.

The report also found that a large majority of respondents spent less than $25,000 last year on social networking sites. But 44 percent of respondents expected to spend more on social network sites this year, while just 6 percent expected to spend less.

Conceivably, some of that new spending could bleed into business networking sites such as LinkedIn. But it¡¯s not clear that employers will invest heavily in LinkedIn or another business-focused networking site, Zappe argues. That has something to do with the fact that compared with traditional recruiting tactics such as print ads, career fairs and even general Internet job boards, business networking sites are new.

“People are somewhat reluctant to say, ¡®Hey, they¡¯re great¡¯ or ¡®They¡¯re awful,¡¯ ” he says.

Consultant Wheeler is convinced networking tools in some form will grow increasingly important, replacing newspaper ads, cold-calling and job boards. “More and more, it¡¯s going to be who you know that gets you the job,” he says.

In any event, LinkedIn faces new or revamped competitors.

Spoke Software, for example, has shifted its business model from social networking alone to a combination of social networking and data about people and companies. That information comes from sources including Web research and the signatures from e-mails sent to Spoke members who in effect “validate” data about people¡¯s job titles and companies, Spoke CEO Frank Vaculin says. Spoke now says it has data on 32 million people, which should aid recruiters seeking passive candidates.

“These are people below C-level,” Vaculin says. “These are the kinds of people you can¡¯t get off the Web.”

Vaculin, who took the reins of the company a year and a half ago, says Spoke¡¯s e-mail validation system offers recruiters more current data on people than LinkedIn does, and he argues that LinkedIn members aren¡¯t exactly passive.

“People publish information about themselves, and in fact become an active candidate,” he says.

As a gauge of LinkedIn members¡¯ “passivity,” Guericke says less than 10 percent visit the site¡¯s job listings. He also says LinkedIn members have uploaded more than 300 million contacts. But he says that because of privacy concerns, LinkedIn doesn¡¯t make that data visible until the contacts themselves have opted in to LinkedIn and created a profile.

It¡¯s also possible social networking players could elbow into the business networking scene. The wildly popular MySpace site says that one of its target audiences is “Business people and co-workers interested in networking.” The U.S. Marines Corps has a MySpace site, with a prominent “Contact a Recruiter” button.

Facebook, the social networking site that until recently was largely geared to college students, also allows people to connect to company networks. Launched in early 2004, Facebook currently has more than 10 million registered users.

Guericke, though, doubts the latest social networking sites will move in on his turf. A key, he says, is the low-key, formal nature of LinkedIn versus the fun-first feel of Facebook and MySpace. Guericke says LinkedIn has consciously avoided photos on the site in part to prevent attractive members from receiving inquiries that have less to do with business than hoped-for pleasure.

“When you mix personal and business networking, business goes right down the tubes,” he says.

Then there¡¯s online recruiting service Jobster. The site, which combines elements of social networking with job posting capability, said in July that it snagged another $18 million in funding from investors. That brings the company¡¯s total capital raised to $48 million since 2004. Jobster said its second-quarter sales doubled from the first quarter, and that it now counts 15 of the Fortune 100 companies as customers.

Dave Lefkow, Jobster¡¯s vice president of professional services, says Jobster helps companies tap into networks of talent through a mix of social networking, permission marketing and customer relationship management tools. Among the products Jobster offers, he says, is software that makes it easy for a firm to ask its employees for the names of the top colleagues they¡¯ve worked with in the past, as well as technology for asking those referrals if they¡¯d like to learn more about the company. Jobster software also is designed to help companies distribute job ads via e-mail–messages that can be forwarded easily to others and tracked by the employer in what Jobster refers to as a “targeted job announcement.”

Lefkow says Jobster and LinkedIn don¡¯t compete directly. But a new focus on consumer use of the Jobster Web site could amount to a challenge to LinkedIn. So far, Jobster hasn¡¯t invested heavily to lure job seekers to its site, Lefkow says. But the firm is on the verge of going after consumers more aggressively. It hopes to persuade more people to create profiles on Jobster.com in part by offering new tools such as “superstar tags” designed to capture a person¡¯s unique qualities better than a r¨¦sum¨¦ can.

“This is going to be a big push for us in the next few quarters,” Lefkow says.

Wheeler portrays Jobster as a major threat to LinkedIn¡¯s recruiting business. Recruiters can use Jobster¡¯s site to post jobs to major job boards, see if candidates have applied to open jobs and conduct searches.

“They want to become the portal for recruiters,” Wheeler says.

Jobster has a better shot of succeeding than LinkedIn does, in part because the site and its services can help employers go after a wider range of employees than the white-collar professionals typically found on LinkedIn. Jobster is “much more versatile,” Wheeler says.

Guericke responds that LinkedIn isn¡¯t concerned with Jobster as a competitor. Its push with job seekers still misses the Holy Grail for recruiters, he says.

“You¡¯re not really attracting the passive candidates, which is what recruiters want, ” Guericke says.

Maybe not. But it could be that neither LinkedIn nor Jobster, nor any other networking site, will emerge as the dominant place for recruiters. As Wheeler sees it, recruiters aren¡¯t likely to put all their eggs in one networking basket. Smart recruiters will use a combination of tools and tactics, such as niche job boards, their own career site, Jobster and LinkedIn.

“All of these networks will have a minor role in the sourcing process,” he says. “There¡¯s no magic bullet.”

Workforce Management Online, November 2006 — Register Now!

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Ed Frauenheim is a Workforce Management staff writer based in San Francisco. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.

Differentiating between HR management and industrial relations

DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN HR MANAGEMENT AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

Human Resource Management:

¡¤There are only two important parties namely employee and employer.

¡¤Formulation of objectives, policies, procedure and programs of human resources and implement them.

¡¤Individual employee contacts with the immediate superior.

Grievance and disciplinary procedures are resorted to, to solve the employee-employer conflicts.

¡¤Reformulates the objectives, policies etc ,based on industrial conflicts which are the outcome of unsound industrial relations.

Human Resource Management (HRM) is the overall management of all resources including workers, staff, executives, Top management and even suppliers and customers.

Industrial Relations:

Industrial Relations (IR) in practice are the relations between actual work force and management of the organization.

Given below are some of the salient features of IR:

¡¤The implementation of HRM policies results in IR.

¡¤There are four important parties namely employees, employer, trade unions and government

¡¤The sound IR contributes to the organizational goals. The unsound IR result in industrial conflicts demanding for change and reformulation of HRM objectives and goals

¡¤Employees contact even the top management as a group.

¡¤Collective bargaining and forms of industrial conflicts are resorted to solve the problems

¡¤Industrial relations are governed by the system of rules and regulations concerning work, workplace and working community.

¡¤The main purpose is to maintain harmonious relations between employees and employer by solving their problems through grievance procedure and collective bargaining.

¡¤Trade Unions is another important institution in the Industrial relations. Trade unions influence and shape the industrial relations through collective bargaining.

¡¤Industrial relations are the relations mainly between employees and employers.

¡¤These relations emphasis on accommodating other parties interest, values and needs. Parties develop skills of adjusting to and cooperating with each other.

Fastest Growing Technology Companies by Hiring

For those who are looking for a new position in information technology, here are the 10 employers who hired the most high tech people in 2006:

1. Merge Healthcare
2. Clinical Data
3. CalAmp
4. Adobe Systems
5. Secure Computing
6. ValueClick
7. Cognizant Technology Solutions
8. eBay
9. J2 Global Communications
10. OmniVision

Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/b2fastestgrowing/

TYPES OF INTERVIEW

The types of interviews are:

1.Informal Interview.

2.Formal Interview.

3.Planned Interview.

4.Patterned Interview.

5.Non-directive Interview.

6.Depth Interview.

7.Stress Interview

China plans to open wider in science, technology

Dec.4 – China on Sunday issued a five-year program (2006-2010) on international cooperation of science and technology, promising to open wider to foreign partners.

The program said except those concerning national security or with special requests, China’s key national scientific and technological projects and funds will be open to overseas partners.

Scientific institutions, universities and key national laboratories are required to expand cooperation and exchanges with foreign counterparts, according to the program.

China will also encourage and help enterprises and research institutions to set up overseas research and development agencies for further development by “using international scientific and technology resources”, the program says.

Meanwhile, China will “actively” participate in key international scientific projects, join international scientific organizations and encourage Chinese scientists to work in international organizations, the program says.

It says the moves are aimed at increasing China’s possession of or its reasonable share of intellectual property rights internationally and improving its status on the world science arena.

China also hopes to bolster its high-tech industry and boost export of its high-tech products through such cooperation.

The program listed a number of areas as priorities for cooperation, including clean energy development, environmental protection, HIV/AIDS treatment, responses to newly occurred infectious diseases and chronic diseases, nanoscience and aeronautic and astronautic technology.

Small and medium enterprises have contributed to 70% of China’s import/export

Chinanews, Beijing, Dec. 2 – China Small and Medium Enterprise Index of Economic Development 2005(SMEI) was released on November 28, 2006, which indicates that small and medium enterprises have taken up 99.6% of China’s enterprises in quantity (including small private businesses), and they have contributed to 70% of the country’s export and import.

Small and medium enterprises have become important boosters to China’s economic growth, and they have contributed to about 59% of China’s GDP, and taken up about 60% of the domestic market, as well as 48.2% of the total tax revenue, not to mention that they have also provided 75% of job opportunities in towns and cities in China.

The Twelve Steps of Direct Sourcing

Edge believes it is time to confess to your sins and embrace these Twelve Steps that will lead you to the land of milk, honey, and better candidates…

We admitted we were powerless over our fear of the phone – that newspaper ads, job boards and Internet sourcing had become limited.

Came to believe that Ma Bell – a power greater than ourselves – could provide a steady stream of potential candidates that will invigorate our careers.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the use of the telephone as we embrace the telephone as a friend.

Made a searching and fearless metric-based inventory of sourcing channels and found these to be full of hot airs.

[You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. In what world could you possibly beat me? ~Chaucer]

Admitted to ourselves, to our bosses and to each other the exact nature of why we couldn’t get past the use of newspaper ads, job boards, Internet sourcing¡­and Gatekeepers.

We humbly ask to have our fear of the phone eviscerated.

Humbly asked our bosses to pay someone to come in and help us learn the one true path to candidate sourcing.

[She can be reached at 513 899 9628. ASK for Maureen]

Made a list of all the jobs we short-shifted and resolved to use the names we found calling directly into companies to make amends to our past hiring managers or customers.

Made direct amends to hiring managers wherever possible, except when to do so would cause them to berate us for not telephone sourcing in the first place.

Continued to take a career inventory, becoming aware when our past sourcing habits tempted to lead us astray and back into the vaporous confines of newspaper ads, job boards and Internet sourcing – and guarding vigilantly against those temptations.

Sought through telephone and some internet research and reading Sourcers Unleashed (and ASK Maureen on ERE and the Edge) daily, to improve our physical contact with potential candidates and our spiritual contact with telephone sourcing Gurus, invoking our powers to continuously improve and continuing to seek out knowledge on the subject.

Having had this career-changing awakening as the result of all these steps, we try to carry this message to other print and web-bound sourcers who only use newspaper ads, job boards and Internet sourcing, and to practice these principles in all our recruiting decisions.

Will Recruiters Become Extinct?

1. job postings should be free. the value is not and never will be in the posting. the value is in connecting with the right person to hire.

Don¡¯t agree.
a) Advertising costs. Should a TV commercial be free? Last time I checked, Super Bowl ads cost well over $1MM per minute, and they don¡¯t guarantee results either. Job boards are advertising with the added benefit of being direct response.
b) Connecting with the right person to hire can happen in many ways – direct application, research, sourcing, third party recruiters, referrals, etc. In today¡¯s competitive world, companies must use many sources to find great candidates.

2. employers are struggling with the quality vs. quantity gap in online recruiting. job boards provide quantity while hiring managers desire quality.

Depends on what online tools they are using and how they use them. People are still getting quality resumes and applicants from the big job boards, if they focus their efforts on quality. There are also many other online resources which can augment candidate flow with quality prospects.

3. the value of job boards (as we know them today) is beginning to erode for employers with well known brands as most active jobseekers are more than able to go directly to the career websites at companies like starbucks, microsoft, google, etc.

Don¡¯t really agree. The value of large job boards (for employers) comes from large candidate pools. The value of large job boards (for candidates) comes from the ability to find multiple jobs in their field from many employers. Something they can¡¯t do by visiting Microsoft¡¯s career center. This is what is driving the vertical job boards. Employers will always go where the candidates are and candidates will go where the jobs are. My personal feeling is that niche job boards are where the future lies. IT boards for IT companies and professionals, HealthCare boards for Healthcare companies and professionals, and yes, even Restaurant Job boards for restaurant professionals.

4. referrals have been and always will be a great source of quality hires. not the only source, but an important source.

Totally agree. I think this is why almost every big company has some sort of incentive program to reward employees for bringing in referrals who are hired and stay for a specified period of time. Companies (and employees) that use inventive ways of leveraging networking technologies will see increased effectiveness in referral hiring.

5. as has occurred in other markets like travel, and as is increasingly transpiring in real estate, over time we will see new marketplaces evolve which eliminate the need for the specialist (recruiter) and enable the purchaser (hiring manager) to transact efficiently with the seller (candidate).

Totally disagree. In order for Jason¡¯s prediciton to come true, one would have to assume that the only value of a recruiter in recruiting candidates would be the initial introductions or that all the other value propositions offered by recruiting specialists could be replaced through online technologies. I don¡¯t know if Jason has ever actually done any recruiting, but to assume that the value proposition of recruiters can be replaced by Jobster or some other Internet thingamajig is naive. There are still plenty of Realtors, and there are still plenty of travel agents. The industries may have been shaken up by how people use the internet, but they are still thriving industries¡­ as is recruiting 10 years after Monster.com and as recruiting will continue to be far into the future. Just as there are some percentage of home sales that are done in the FSBO style there is still great value in specialization and many customers who are willing to pay for specialized help so the largest percentage of sales in the housing market are done by professional realtors.

In conclusion, let me just say that my prediction is that recruiters won¡¯t become extinct and neither will Internet based job boards. Now, I may be a little biased because I am after all a recruiter and have a very small job board myself – it¡¯s just that I don¡¯t plan on being extinct any time soon.