TheLadders Blog

Ask a customer service representative if s/he likes his/her job. Chances are that the answer will be some form of “no” (and may contain expletives). Here at TheLadders, that’s not the case. Our Job Search Support Center is staffed with highly qualified, extremely helpful, pleasant people. We’ve known our team to be top-tier for years, but as of yesterday we can now call TheLadders customer service team “award-winning!”

The Stevie Awards have named TheLadders Job Search Support Center as the recipient of their prestigious Contact Center of the Year award*. Helping support and engage our customers during a time when they need it most is gratifying work and we’re thrilled to be recognized by industry peers for our hard work and devotion.

Our Job Search Advisors are unmatched in their energy, intelligence, and dedication and I’m grateful to have such a talented team to lead every day. Having started at TheLadders as a customer service agent (we were called Community Associates way back then), I can speak firsthand to how much we’ve learned and grown over the past several years. Much of what we’ve become is a result of our forward-thinking leadership – industry trailblazer Anita Samojednik (VP, Customer Operations) has brought us to new levels of innovation and we are delighted to bring this award home to her. Anita and the entire management team work tirelessly to make sure that we are listening to our customers and improving our services for them.

Here’s to all the new and exciting things we have in the works for our customers in 2012!

*(Up to 100 Seats)

Niccos Andrade is Manager, Operations and has been with TheLadders since 2007, in the Job Search Support Center. When he’s not working on ways to the best customer experience for our members, he’s working on his backhand on the tennis court.

This past Saturday, the first Agile User Experience (AgileUX) conference, sponsored by TheLadders, was held at the SVA Theater in Manhattan. The conference brought together leading voices from within the New York City design and technology community to discuss strategy and tactics for delivering world class software products.

The conference was organized by Jeff Gothelf, formerly the Director of User Experience at TheLadders, and myself, current head of UX at TheLadders. Todd Hoza, who is the Creative Director for TheLadders, provided creative leadership for the conference.

The speakers we chose came from a cross-section of disciplines including product, venture capital, customer research, and consulting. Speakers representing TheLadders included Eric Burd, VP of Product, who discussed organization change to align the entire business — from sales, marketing, finance and customer support — to an agile mindset.

Eric Burd - VP Product at TheLadders

Also representing TheLadders was Jennifer Gergen, Associate Creative Director, who discussed strategies for better integrating design into an Agile process. I spoke about the importance of continuous, rapid-cadence customer research and usability testing and delved into the details of how to conduct that research and feed it back into product delivery. Finally, Jeff Gothelf argued for demystifying design and the importance of transparency for greater team collaboration.

Will Evans, Manager, User Experience Design at TheLadders

The event drew close to 400 attendees, some from as far away as Japan, who gathered to learn and share ideas for designing greater product experiences faster. The general consensus was that it was a great learning experience exploring the most recent thinking in product design, and many people left energized and excited to bring those ideas back to their organizations. TheLadders was proud to sponsor such an event and continues to be an active member of the New York City Technology and Design community.

Will Evans is Manager, Experience Design for TheLadders in New York City with 15 years industry experience in interaction design, information architecture, and user experience strategy.

Wow! We have come a long way. This week, TheLadders surpassed five million members. That’s five million people that we are helping with their job search. We work to help these members find their next calling in life however we can, whether it’s through our job matching expertise, our personalized products and services or our world class career advice.

We’ve been working for nine years to learn the science of the job search and share that insight with our members. More importantly, we’re happy that we can deliver results for our customers. In 2010 alone, a Harris Interactive study* showed that over 500,000 $100K+ professionals credited TheLadders with helping them find a new job. Most recently, we launched our Signature program, which offers members personalized help navigating their job search and a guaranteed job offer within six months or their money back. That’s how strongly we believe in the program.

We certainly have come a long way as a company and have a lot to be proud of. When I started at TheLadders in 2004, we had just reached 9,000 members. Since then, not only have we grown our member base to 5 million, we’ve expanded to all professional level jobs and have grown our jobs onsite by 3x just in the last 6 months alone. We’ve attracted over 17,000 new recruiters to our site to connect with job seekers and launched countless products and features for users to take advantage of during their job search.

I’m proud to be part of a company committed to finding the right person for the right job – and helping so many members move their careers forward. Great job, team!

Leslie Semegran is Vice President of Marketing and Engagement and has been with TheLadders since 2004, in various capacities across Marketing and Sales. When she’s not endlessly searching for ways to engage and help members, she’s at home running around after her nine-month-old daughter.

When we think about Valentine’s Day, romantic images of chocolates, flowers, and candlelit dinners may come to mind. However, being happy in the workplace may just be our greatest gift. In fact, only 12% of Americans have found the right corporate chemistry and are “really happy with this job,” according to a new study we’ve conducted. Of the 255,000 job seekers surveyed, an astonishing 88% confirmed varying degrees of dissatisfaction with their workplace.

In the poll — which is illustrated by our awesome new infographic — 61.3% of job seekers who were asked to describe the way they feel about their current job admitted they are ‘actively looking for a next job.’ Another 19.0% claimed their ‘job isn’t awful, but not great,’ and 3.9% ‘don’t know how much more of this gig can be tolerated.’ The most unhappy? Unfortunately, 4.1% ‘want out of this job now.’ Talk about a bad romance.

Whether in your love life or in your work life, finding the right match is all about chemistry, and feeling motivated and appreciated in the workplace is paramount for being successful in your career and life. That’s why we suggest workplace satisfaction be determined by the following factors: corporate culture, opportunity for growth, sense of challenge, work-life balance, and compensation package.

That’s why we come to work every day: to help professionals find the right job matches, so their story can have a happy ending.

Read the press release.

Lisa Hagendorf is the Director 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.

Today, TheLadders was proud to play host to “World to NYC,” an event organized by the New York City Economic Development Corporation to introduce more than 40 international entrepreneurs and business executives to the vibrant New York startup community.

Members of the delegation were welcomed by TheLadders Vice President of Sales and Services, Ware Sykes. Ware introduced the audience to our Soho offices and provided a brief overview of our company history, including why it’s co-founders chose to base the company in New York. He told the story of how TheLadders has grown and thrived over the past eight years in an environment of constant change.

Nick Rockwell, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, continued the presentation. Nick focused on the challenges and opportunities of locating, growing, and staffing a technology startup. After all, competition is fierce – New York is now the second-hottest market for venture capital funding in the world.

Next, the guests were divided into breakout sessions with members of our product, design, and development teams. Selena Hadzibabic, Kat Yanolatos, Kai Brinker and Will Evans gave tours of the office while discussing TheLadders’ culture, Agile product development methodology, data-driven design and our usability process. The tour guides fielded plenty of questions from the very engaged and thoughtful NYCEDC group.

The morning ended with a group Q&A session with company leaders. Then, everyone went to lunch at local hotspot (and our next door neighbor), City Winery.

Will Evans is Manager, Experience Design for TheLadders in New York City with 15 years industry experience in interaction design, information architecture, and user experience strategy.