TheLadders Blog

Last week, TheLadders hosted The Ladders Connect, the first in a series of events featuring a dynamic panel of industry thought leaders. Hosted at Helen Mills, one of New York City’s most unique venues, nearly 150 guests gathered for a thought-provoking panel discussion about the challenges faced when hiring a multi-generational workforce.

Moderated by TheLadders Job Search Expert Amanda Augustine, the panel included:

• Tom McElroy, Global Head of Recruiting Operations & Systems, Bloomberg
• Anne Molignano, SVP of Human Resources, Sony Music Entertainment
• Sara Patterson, Head of Talent Management, Condé Nast
• Mitchell Schwartz, Director of Staffing, Hewlett-Packard

The special evening kicked off with an introduction and product announcements from Alex Douzet, COO & Co-Founder of TheLadders. He proudly alerted the audience that we are now a free resource for recruiters and employers, which was met, not surprisingly, with huge applause. In fact, we currently offer:

-          Unlimited Search

-          Unlimited Post

-          Unlimited Targeted Hiring Alerts

After the presentation and panel discussion, guests mingled with their industry colleagues over cocktails and conversation. Reflecting the event’s theme of meaningful connections, everyone received an all-device, solar-powered charger to stay connected with TheLadders’ more than 5 million, on-the-go members.

Save the date for our next event, taking place on January 10, 2013, at Grand Central Terminal. Details to follow!

Lisa Hagendorf is the Vice President of Public Relations for TheLadders where she is a huge ambassador of the brand in the office. At the gym. And on the street. She just can’t stop talking about TheLadders. Ever.

This week, I am in Las Vegas at the Onrec Global Recruiting Trends Conference 2012, speaking about “Building Meaningful Relationships between Job Seekers and Employers” and “The Value of Information: Strategy for Innovation.”

Additionally, we are seizing this unique opportunity to announce to the community that we are now a free resource for recruiters and employers. In fact, we are proud to announce that we offer:

-          Unlimited Search

-          Unlimited Post

-          Unlimited Targeted Hiring Alerts

In a nutshell, TheLadders now offers for free what LinkedIn, Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, Dice and the rest of the industry offer for a fee.

So, why are we giving away our unparalleled services for free when recruiters and employers are willing to pay for them? Here are five reasons:

• As of last year, we no longer focus only on $100K+ jobs; instead, we target all professional job seekers. Candidates on TheLadders can pay $25 per month to gain full access to our network. However, we also offer a freemium model for job seekers, which afford the ability to apply to targeted hiring alerts, as well as be searchable and contacted by recruiters and employers.

• The revenue we generate from job seekers enables us to continually optimize the job-matching experience, enabling us to fulfill our mission of matching “the right person for the right job.”

• As I mentioned in my recent blog post “Introducing the ‘Less than Free’ Business Model,” free enables us to improve product features for job seekers. Free is also exciting for recruiters, as they are just as essential to our success as job seekers.

• Free enables us to embrace and migrate our ecosystem to the next generation of job search — mobile — empowering us to re-envision our business with a “mobile-first” approach.

• Having recently reached a milestone of 25,000 recruiters and employers, free will enable us over the next three years to provide access to our network to more than 100,000 active recruiters and employers in the U.S., positioning us as the leading platform for professional jobs.

Mobile is disrupting the way job seekers interact with content, and we are contributing to this disruption.

Over the coming months, we will release several new innovations for both job seekers and recruiters. Our next milestone will be our job-seeker app launching in early 2013, followed by native iOS apps for iPhone and iPad. Stay tuned…the future of jobs is coming and TheLadders is pioneering the trail!

Download Alex’s OnRec Presentation — Building Meaningful Connections ›

Download Alex’s OnRec Presentation — The Value of Information ›

Alex Douzet is Co-Founder and COO of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

In growing tech companies, the time we spend out of office together can be as important as the time we spend in the office together.  Building good relationships and a shared sense of fun about our future make longer hours and the winding road to success feel like a victory in itself.

At TheLadders, we’ve always made time to get out of the office together.  And while we’ve never been into trust falls or rope bridges, we have enjoyed paintball and bowling and competitive triathalons — or even just picnicking in the park with each other — over the years.

But this fall, I decided to try something new.  We’ve all heard the expression “you eat what you kill”, but what if your team had to, you know, actually eat what they kill?

I took my team, by bus and boat, to find out on the swirling seas around Montauk.

Now at TheLadders, which I co-founded with my friends Andrew and Marc almost a decade ago, we’ve always been a nimble company.  Our mantra from the early days was “We’ll make it even if we never raise a dime!”

Being resilient has served us well.  We’ve only raised $8 mm in equity capital and we pioneered a new industry, signing up over 5 million job-seekers and 25,000 recruiters to our professional job-matching service.  After our first raise in 2004, we never raised another round. Success with that type of bootstrapping means always being resourceful.

Which leads me to last Tuesday and a bus carrying me and twenty of my top colleagues to Montauk.  We boarded the 85-foot Marlin VI Princess for a five-hour fishing trip. With a twist.

You see, “eat what you kill” is a common saying in our tech community, but tonight, it was also our bill of fare.  I told my team that that night, dinner was our responsibility:

“Tonight, we will be eating what we kill.

Fish is the only item on the menu, but not just any kind of fish.  It will be true, locally sourced, line-caught, fresh fish, right off of this boat.

Caught by you.

So, if you want to feast, let’s catch a lot of great fish.  If you want to go home hungry, let’s come back empty-handed.  The choice is yours.”

So we fished…

 and fished…

and fished…

and fished.

And took in the scenery.

We had a blast.

And we caught 22 fish: four large striped bass, several bluefish and few tuna.

And they were tasty.

And we learned a lesson, in the way that only “doing it yourself” can really teach you.

If you want to learn about bootstrapping your business, my saying is:

“Eat what you kill!”

Alex Douzet is Co-Founder and COO of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

Last Tuesday, I was a keynote speaker at the Digital East 2012 conference, where I presented “CEO or Ironman: Driving Success at the Bottom Line and Finish line.”

Here are my 7 Rules for Successful Entrepreneurship:

1. Fear: The odds are against you; most start-ups will fail. However, passion will prevail. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. If you are passionate about your endeavors, you are more likely to succeed.

2. Dream: Dreams become goals; goals become projects. If you don’t first have a vision, your plans are less likely to succeed.

3. Commit: Commit first plan second. Quit your day job now!

4. Resilience: Decide to finish what you start. Stick with it. Get up again…and again. Expect that things will go wrong, but persevere in the face of adversity.

5. Aim High: If you aim low, you’ll land low. Aiming high will not guarantee your success, but it increases its likelihood.

6. Hours: Expect to put in the time to succeed. If you want to work a 40-hour week, being an entrepreneur may not be for you.

7. Leadership: The vision — the idea — is yours. Only you can convince others to join your effort, and only your vision and leadership will attract top talent to your cause. Colin Powell said, “Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.”

Either/Or versus And: The Either/Or paradigm involves the mindset of “constraints” – time, funding, workforce, etc. How do you manage to find 20 additional hours per week to train for the Ironman when you are a husband, father, and business executive? Learn to say the most powerful word in the world: AND.

Ironman and Entrepreneurship reveal your DNA. After completing my first Ironman competition, I understood that I really can do anything. Going from “Either/Or” to “And” involves a mind-shift. As I said in the presentation, I am Alex Douzet. I am a husband, and a father, and a COO, and an entrepreneur…and an Ironman.

 Alex Douzet is Co-Founder and COO of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

Last Friday, as I read The Wall Street Journal article, “Apple Makes a Wrong Turn as Users Blast Map Switch,” I could not help asking myself: Is this really a major strategic error by the world’s most valuable company or is it simply an execution blunder in a highly visible case of a prisoner’s dilemma?

To answer the question, I went back and read a post from Bill Gurley, one of technology’s top dealmakers, to better understand why Apple introduced its own turn-by-turn navigation app. Then I read this paragraph:

“Here was the big punch line – because Google will give you ad splits on search if you use that version! That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the ‘less than free’ business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally ‘less than free’ price point, Symbian or Windows Mobile would need to subsidize.”

Double ouch!

The “less than free” business model that Gurley describes is a truly disruptive innovation.

I am big fan of game theory and its application. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s book, “The Predictioneer’s Game” defines game theory as a “fancy label for a pretty simple idea: that people do what they believe is in their best interest.”

So, here is the answer: it is in Apple’s best interest to introduce its own version of the turn-by-turn navigation app.

But why? Google Maps is a superior product, and it is free. Similar to a prisoner’s dilemma, Apple’s hand was forced by Google to introduce its own turn-by-turn mapping system. Otherwise, the company was at risk to be left out of the game or compromise on its own margin with the iPhone and iPad devices. How great would the iPhone5 be compared to the Android-based Galaxy S3 without a map application? What are the chances that Google would have pulled the plug on iPhone the way it disconnected NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas?

However, Apple overlooked the fact that the product execution needs to be good (in Apple’s case, great). Supporting my claim, Gurley states, “Naysayers of these assertions will likely have the same retort – quality is key. They will argue that Google’s turn-by-turn apps are inferior to their well-honed, market-leading products. With regard to Android, Google will lack the user interface or embedded software expertise necessary and will deliver a subpar product. Plus, because the Android OS will be so splintered, QA testing will be difficult and incompatibility issues will abound. In the short run, these issues will exist.”

Today, we are seeing that Apple had the right strategy, but failed in execution. However, it may not hurt the iPhone 5 sales because when a product is completely free, consumer expectations are low, and consumer patience is high.”

The good news for Apple is that their loyal customers will be patient and wait for superior subsequent versions of the mapping system app.

The key takeaway is that a free or “Less Than Free” business model can really be an industry game-changer. Let’s analyze how Facebook did it in the social media industry.

For Facebook, Zuckerberg’s brilliance was to bypass Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, all by using the free model. Gurley states, “We noted in our take on the free business model, if a disruptive competitor can offer a product or service similar to yours for free, and if they can make enough money to keep the lights on, then you likely have a problem.”

Borrowing the words from my co-founder Marc Cenedella, “The key point with Zuckerberg’s success is even more profound. Free allowed him to ‘outsell’ the competition. Free freed him from the wrong customer requirements. My claim is: free made the product features better by eliminating customer requirements and that’s because pricing put the focus on the wrong customer.”

Harvard had Facebook before Zuckerberg came along. In the late 90s, graduates of Harvard Business School tried to sell the university their own version of Facebook. For Facebook, the university was the wrong customer. Building university requirements into a product and having a long sales cycle would never have allowed Facebook to exist. Bypassing them entirely was an ingenious move.

So, a subsidiary claim would be: pricing forces you to choose a customer. Choose well, and you have a fantastic product. Choose wrong, and you get stuck.

Have you chosen your customer carefully? Can you leverage a free or “less than free” business model to change the game on your competition? One of the most successful ways for small private companies to gain the upper hand over large incumbents is to change the rules of the game.

Alex Douzet is Co-Founder and COO of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.

I am a father, husband, entrepreneur, triathlete, and COO of TheLadders, a company that I co-founded nine years ago with Marc Cenedella and Andrew Koch. Throughout my life, I always have been an athlete and have been inspired by people who achieve their dreams. However, I only became a triathlete at 34-years-old when my friends, Dave and Alain, convinced me to join them (along with 20 other triathletes from TheLadders) in the annual New York City Olympic Triathlon.

On August 11, 2012, I competed in the Ironman U.S. Championship in New York City. For the past 35 years, Ironman has been regarded as the pinnacle among all endurance sports, consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile marathon. A competitor who finishes in less than 17 hours is called an Ironman. What I find pretty cool is that there are more Ivy League MBAs in the world than Ironmen.

As I began my research about the tribulations of an Ironman, I realized there were multiple challenges with the race. In addition to the physical challenge, there is also a mental and time-management challenge: an Ironman race requires a six-month training program with an average of 12 hours per week. Where would I find the time? By my estimation, I would need to take a six-month sabbatical from work simply to train. As my former executive coach used to say to me: “Alex, you are a victim of the either/or syndrome. You think you can either be an entrepreneur or an Ironman, but not both. You must learn to say AND.” I wanted to be a chief executive and an Ironman.

Here are the lessons I learned from being an Ironman that also apply to launching a startup and building it into a successful enterprise:

Make your dreams become goals:

As children, we are all told to dream about the future and imagine what we want to be when we grow up. As we become adults, our dreams take the form of goals. We want to meet our goals to finish something we started, and live a life that is full and meaningful. This is why some of us are crazy enough to believe we can change the world.  I was crazy enough to believe I could change the job market and finish an Ironman.

Commit first and then figure out the plan:

I signed up for my first Ironman U.S. Championship in August 2011. It sold out in 11 minutes. By the time I received confirmation that I was accepted, I had about four months to figure out a plan before the grueling six-month training program started. Unlike most people, I opted not to hire a coach. Instead, I researched and designed my own training program and nutritional plan. That way, I could own both the success and the failure. When you start a company, you do not hire McKinsey or Bill Gates to write your business plan.

Aim high:

I think too many people are afraid to fail and, as a bi-product of their fears, don’t strive to achieve. The real issue is that these people miss out on a key life discovery. Failure is an essential part of the learning process and one of the best ways to learn. For Ironman, my goal wasn’t just to finish, I wanted to finish within 13 hours and be in the top 50^th percentile in the race. I aimed high and pushed myself hard. The same mantra applies to a startup: if your goals are to just survive and build a company with only five people because that is what you are comfortable with, then you never will build a $1billion company and have a successful IPO.

Put in the hours:

We all hate the concept of working long hours for the sake of face time. In 2002, I held a summer M&A job in Investment Banking in London, working 90 hours every week, and I learned how inefficient face time could be. That said, you cannot build a successful company if you and your team work from 9 to 5. If you do not work at least 60 hours a week, you are not going to make it to the top. Same with Ironman. Ironman requires 12 hours a week of training for 6 months. That is just the basics to finish. If you want to have a good finish time, you will have to put it more hours. There is no way around it.

The mind controls the body, so master controlling the mind:

It is said that your mind controls your body, but have you ever really experienced this relationship in a challenging situation? Ironman teaches you these survival skills. I completed Ironman NYC in 12:12:21 seconds. I ran the first half of the marathon in 2 hours and 14 minutes, at which point, I was on pace to break 12 hours. Then, approximately 10 hours into Ironman, my body gave up. I was paralyzed at mile 16 with 10 miles to go.

No one would have blamed or criticized me for giving up right there, but I told myself that quitting was not an option. As long as the clock did not read “17:00:00,” and I had one ounce of energy left in me, I was going to move my legs forward one way or another, regardless of pain. That is when my brain took over, and showed my body who was in charge. The same mentality applies to building a company. As long as you have one dollar in the bank, you can be successful, even though everyone around you may quit.