TheLadders Blog

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.

Download a PDF version of TheLadders Go Green Info-graphic ›

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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.

How do recruiters and hiring managers actually make decisions about candidates?

One thing we know they use is your resume. But how? What is it about one resume that gives a recruiter the information they need to make the right call?

In order to find out, we needed to see how recruiters reviewed resumes. To do this, we conducted a comprehensive eye-tracking study of recruiters while they reviewed resumes.

If you’re not familiar with eye tracking, it’s a line of research that uses technology to record and analyze where and how long someone focuses when digesting a piece of information or completing a task.

We brought in recruiters and recorded them as they viewed online profiles, different types of resumes, and other forms of candidate information.

Here’s some of what we discovered:

How much time does a recruiter spend reviewing a resume?

Unfortunately, not much. Most job seekers think recruiters spend 4 to 5 minutes reviewing a resume. The truth: recruiters spend about 6 seconds before they make the initial “fit/no fit” decision. That means prioritizing information is essential.

Does a professionally written resume make a difference in what a recruiter learns about the candidate?

The results of the study revealed that the recruiters were able to easily find and focus on the important information they were looking for in a professional resume much faster than regular resumes or an online profile.

Are online profiles effective?

No. Online profiles have pictures, and unfortunately, recruiters tended to focus on them for the simple reason that pictures naturally draw the eye. We found they kept recruiters from locating the most relevant information, like skills and experience.

There are many more interesting results in the complete study, including the charts. Download the full research study.

Learn more about TheLadders resume re-writing services.

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.

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.