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!
Alex Douzetis Co-Founder and COO of TheLadders. In this role, Alex is responsible for the company strategy, global business operations, and product development.
When I was approached to write about the results of our latest survey on military professionals, I was a bit reluctant. After being reassured that I wasn’t expected to produce Pulitzer Prize-winning material, I said, “Why not?” As a former Marine who’s had to go job hunting since leaving the military, I’ve experienced firsthand some of the things we surveyed.
When I saw the results, I had mixed reactions. For example, I wasn’t surprised that one of the most important things to veterans looking for a job in the civilian world was workplace camaraderie. Most people in corporate America won’t easily understand the bond military personnel share with each other. Our relationship with the people we work with is what makes what would otherwise be an unbearable situation, like being deployed to a highly volatile area, tolerable.
I was surprised to find that 50% of the people surveyed found it more difficult to find a job in the private sector. My experience was the opposite. I found it easier, perhaps due to some of the assumptions we analyzed. In my case, employers assumed I would have discipline, a strong work ethic and possess leadership skills.
While veterans are like everyone else in a many ways, there are certain unique perspectives we hold. The fact that TheLadders is honoring veterans and active military by taking an interest in what THEY are looking for in prospective employers speaks volumes. I feel extremely grateful to be a part of such an exceptional company.
Yolmi Rivera is the Executive Assistant to Alex Douzet, COO and Co-founder of TheLadders. When she’s not busy managing his day, she’s at home running around after her two kids, two dogs and one husband. As long as there are mangos available, she’s happy.
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of participating in Mediabistro’s first-ever Career Breakfast, a Google + hangout where a small panel of HR professionals and career experts gave their insight into various aspects of the job search process. This week’s topic was “What Really Happens After You Submit Your Resume.”
There’s a lot of advice floating around about standing out from the crowd during the application process. I’ve always believed, and my fellow panelists agree, that the best ways are the simplest. First, be qualified. The fanciest song and dance routine won’t get you anywhere if you can’t do the job. Second, have an easy-to-read resume that quickly conveys your experience and skills. A study done at TheLadders revealed that your resume has about six seconds to make a good first impression.
Whether you submit your resume through an advanced applicant tracking system or directly to a human being, the goal is the same. You want to submit a resume that lays out why you’re right for the job. It should be clear and clean: as free of bells and whistles as possible. A great resume won’t guarantee you a job, but a solid, well-timed, customized resume will likely get you an interview, and that’s the first step.
According to the responses I received, our audience got real value from the conversation. I love the opportunity to give insight from the recruiter/hiring manager side. I look forward to participating in many more of these events and helping more job seekers navigate the often frightening and confusing realm of the job search.
David Gaspin is the Manager, Talent Acquisition at TheLadders. When he’s not busy hiring amazing people for TheLadders, he keeps busy by trying to sound important – whether to his team, job seekers, or (for a real challenge) his 5-year old son.
Right from the start, it was clear to me that these guys were experts.
On AMC’s new show, The Pitch, two ad agencies go head-to-head for a piece of new business. The ability to win new business can make or break an agency. Pitching a client is a fast-paced, exciting, and often highly stressful experience that only the best pros excel at.
One of the agencies in this weekend’s episode of The Pitch is DIGO, an integrated full service brand and business growth agency. I had the opportunity to head over to their offices in Manhattan and talk with DIGO’s Founder and CEO, Mark DiMassimo, and President Lee Goldstein.
We talked about the pitch process. The job search. And the importance of finding the right fit. Right off the bat, it was clear these guys knew what they were talking about.
As a job seeker, you only have to pitch yourself when you’re in a job search. These guys? They pitch for a living.
Watch the video to hear what they had to say. You’ll be as impressed as I was. And there’s plenty that you can take away for your own job search.
Of course, don’t forget to catch The Pitch on Sunday, June 3rd, at 11 PM ET. If you want to see how the pros do it, that’s your chance to catch Mark and Lee in action!
William Beard is the Associate Creative Director of Copy for TheLadders. He loves to travel, always has ESPN.com open, and always takes the cheese option when it’s offered.
Last week I attended Mobile Health 2012, with a focus on “Baby Steps for Big Results.” The idea being there’s power in “baby steps” done quickly, for long term behavior change. Hosted by Stanford U’s Persuasive Technology Lab, this year’s keynote speaker was Weight Watchers CEO and ManMeetScale blogger David Kirchhoff.
David took the opportunity to speak of his personal struggles with weight loss and the dreaded word “maintenance.” He shared one of his own baby steps for keeping the weight off when confronted with temptation…he tweets. For example, @dkirchhoff “On a flight back from St. Louis. Just turned down another warm cookie. It’s the little victories…” There’s something about publicly declaring your weakness and celebrating your win.
So what’s this got to do with TheLadders? And why did we attend a mobile health conference? It’s a good question. What I told attendees is that there’s synergy between the trials and tribulations of health and wellness behavior changes and job search behavior changes. What do I mean by this? In my role as a product leader at TheLadders, I witness countless job-seekers struggling with adopting best practices for a faster, more meaningful and more prosperous job search simply because the tasks at hand appear daunting, or they are overloaded with irrelevant jobs and action-less info.
At the heart of the conference…Baby Steps! (Actually, I find this term a little off putting so I’m going to call it “Starter Steps” to steal from Tim Chang of Mayfield Fund, a conference panelist. Starter Steps translate into BJ Fogg’s new program “3 Tiny Habits” as a way to create new behaviors – in health, or in our case, the job search. Fogg states only three things will change behavior in the long term:
Option A. Have an epiphany Option B. Change your context (what surrounds you) Option C. Take baby steps
Unless you’ve ever spotted a unicorn, forget about the epiphany – it’s too difficult. Instead, focus on changing your context and taking starter steps. These two options are practical and can lead to lasting change if you’re following the right program. Fogg warns that few winning programs exist – luckily TheLadders, like Weight Watchers, is one of them, in my opinion.
You should join a future session of Fogg’s Three Tiny Habits to try starter steps for yourself, and while you’re at it, check out Stanford’s Top 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change.
For more from the audience and participants of Mobile Health 2012, check out the #mh2012 Twitter stream.
Chantal Botanais Director of Consumer Product Development at TheLadders. She’s a pragmatic leader whose mantra is “Insight, creativity & innovation are what make good products great.” She’s #lean and #agile, and a Real Madridista.
Frank O’Brien is the founder of Conversation, a “new traditional” ad agency based in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Frank is used to big moments. He’s started his own agency, has made clutch pitches and won big-time clients. He even recently opened his own bar on New York’s Upper West Side. No stranger to pressure, is Frank.
But Monday is a big moment for Frank. Conversation, his agency, will be on national TV as a part of AMC’s“The Pitch,” which is a documentary/reality TV show about two rival agencies competing for a new piece of business. In this case, the client is Popchips. As a former agency guy myself, I’m curious to see what Frank comes up with for Popchips. They already have a strong brand, and are looking to get stronger, so that means the agency that wins will really have to pull out all the stops to impress them.
TheLadders had the opportunity to stop by Conversation’s offices and speak with Frank about his agency, his pitch experience, and what life is like at Conversation. We didn’t ask him about the outcome of The Pitch (no spoilers!) but this is a great insider’s look into the life of an agency founder and executive.
Be sure to catch Frank and his team on The Pitch on AMC, Monday
at 10 pm. There’s also still time to enter TheLadders #mypitch contest on Twitter. Tweet your personal elevator pitch and you can win a 3-month Premium subscription to TheLadders.
Writer’s Note: Over the weekend, Frank’s episode was moved by AMC to Sunday night and aired at 11 PM. You can see additional coverage and a recap on AMC’s site. I won’t offer spoliers here, but you can find out the outcome on the site if you want to…
William Beard is the Associate Creative Director of Copy for TheLadders. He loves to travel, always has ESPN.com open, and always takes the cheese option when it’s offered.
TheLadders Enterprise team was on the move this week. We headed down to National Harbor, Maryland, for the SHRM Talent Management Expo. This wonderful Expo gives us the opportunity to meet with today’s most influential HR professionals—not to mention, get some very cool swag! We were able to showcase our various product offerings, including “Recruitable,” our new mobile app that connects recruiters on TheLadders to fresh candidates instantly.
There was also a buzz around TheLadders Passport, where we treat recruiters to a free posting and offer them limited search access. Since we always try to go above and beyond here at TheLadders, anyone who signed up for Passport at the Expo was also entered into a drawing to win $500. As recruiters came to our booth, they’d ask, “How do you get me closer to the finish line?” For those of you who weren’t at the booth, they weren’t talking about a track meet. They were reading our signage.
“TheLadders starts recruiters closer to the finish.” In other words, TheLadders delivers accurate, qualified, interested candidates with almost no effort on the part of the recruiter. We put you in a position to discover the best candidates right at the beginning of your search. If you missed this expo, make sure to visit us at the SHRM 2012 Annual Conference & Exposition, where we will be providing more solutions to get you closer to the finish line!
Eliverta Nika is an Enterprise Marketing Associate at TheLadders, and she absolutely loves getting out and meeting our recruiter customers at events like SHRM.
Money isn’t the only “green” candidates care about when considering a job offer. Professionals are more concerned with the eco-friendly practices in the workplace (or lack thereof) than hiring companies may think. In a recent survey we found that 72% of respondents would choose the more eco-conscious company if they had two equal job offers. When asked how important it is that their company is green, the majority of professionals said it was very or even extremely important to them.
Being green isn’t just important for attracting new talent. Your current employees might be unhappy with you lack of your eco-conscious practices, as well. Some 35% of respondents would not consider their most recent company to be green. An additional 17% were not sure whether their company can be considered green, which leaves only less than half of respondents considering their company “green enough” for their standards.
It’s not all bad news, though. Given a small incentive, we also found that a whopping 75% of respondents would change their daily routine to contribute to a greener company environment. We also found that it actually doesn’t take that much to make your workplace just a little bit greener. While many companies already reduce their paper usage and recycle and reduce trash, there is an opportunity to buy greener supplies, encourage employees to turn off their computers and lights and turn down that AC when not needed.
Benjamin Grohé is the Product Manager for new consumer products at TheLadders. When he is not coming up with innovative ideas to delight our customers, he is celebrating his European heritage by cruising the streets of New York City on his new Vespa or playing football (the REAL football).
If you are looking for innovative ideas for driving revenue for your organization, a regional user group is the perfect format. You get an opportunity to get answers to the top questions on your mind and network with other experts in the field to find out about their methods.
This week TheLadders is hosting the first Marketo Regional User Group in New York. More than 20 marketing professionals from several companies are joining for a discussion about their experience with the solution. The topics include lead scoring and qualification process, nurturing programs and using Sales Insight tools to maximize the impact on the top line.
TheLadders just recently launched the solution while rolling out marketing campaign functionality, lead scoring and nurturing programs. Our biggest challenge was to tie all the data environments together to make Marketo tools effective so we reached out to the CRM team to create the infrastructure. Everything needs to work in synchronicity with each other. Currently our focus is partnering with Sales Leadership to refine our scoring logic, build process and drive adoption. With Marketo, it’s easy to set up reporting and the marketing team can execute campaigns with less manual effort enabling us to be more strategic, and focus on driving higher marketing and sales ROI.
Marketo Highlights
Allows the marketing team to pass highly qualified, prioritized leads to the sales force at the right time
Enables marketing to measure effectiveness of its campaigns in real time
Gives sales team better visibility into marketing programs and to get tips and talking points on customer behavior
Launched the solution in five weeks, immediately pushed several key campaigns to help achieve corporate KPIs and set records on site visits and all-time site engagement
We’re confident the Marketo Regional User Group will be a success, and we’re excited to share with the attendees—and learn from them—so we can all reach our customers more effectively.
Inga Romanoff is Director, Enterprise Marketing for TheLadders and the Marketo Regional User Group Leader in New York City with over ten years of marketing experience in the U.S., Russia, Europe and Asia PAC. Inga is responsible for strategic initiatives in developing the B2B platform at TheLadders.
At TheLadders, we like to give employees every opportunity to grow.
Recently, my fellow Associate Creative Director, Jennifer Gergen, had an amazing opportunity come her way: She was accepted to participate in the Startup Bus.
The Startup bus is a really unique event. Designers and Developers in different cities board buses and travel to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) in Austin. They’re formed into small teams and tasked with launching a new startup by the time they arrive.
This meant that Jen would have to take off work for a week, on very short notice. But when she asked our boss (Creative Director Todd Hoza) if she could go, he didn’t hesitate. He realized what a fantastic opportunity this would be for Jen personally and professionally.
Think of the skills she’d be honing: design, development, coordination, teamwork, project management… the list is nearly endless. Todd also realized that there was potential for Jen’s to win—and maybe not come back to work if her startup was funded!—but he was willing to take that chance because he knew what it meant to her.
It’s that kind of freedom that you get at TheLadders that you really can’t get anywhere else. The freedom to grow and to take advantage of unique opportunities.
For what it’s worth, Jen’s team did a fantastic job, making the final group with their startup, Happstr. Happstr is a social sharing site whose goal is to spread global happiness, an idea I think we can all get behind in these cynical times.
We wanted to congratulate her and her team on a great run! We’re sorry she didn’t win, but I have to admit: I’ll be posting on Happstr and sharing how happy I am when I see Jen walk in the door later this week. We can’t wait to have her back!
(You’ll be hearing from Jen about her experience when she gets back, don’t worry.)
Bill Beard is the Associate Creative Director of Copy for TheLadders. He loves to travel, always has ESPN.com open, and always takes the cheese option when it’s offered. You can follow him on twitter: @wrbeard
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.
