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2008 Daily Newspaper Death Toll: 3 2008-02-08 15:55:30 The Capital Times, Madison Wisconsin’s afternoon daily, announced today that it would cease printing a printed version of its daily paper, effective April 26th, and move to an online format. The paper will print two editions each week and insert them into Madison’s morning daily, the State Journal. The Capital Times began printing a daily in 1917, and since 1948 has been jointly published by Capital Newspapers through a joint agreement that combined advertising, circulation and production but kept the newsrooms of both papers separate. The Capital Times Co. and Lee Enterprises (which owns the State Journal) each own half of Capital Newspapers and evenly split the profits. The move will trigger the loss of about 40 jobs within Capital Newspapers. The article on the State Journal’s web site includes a quote by James L. Baughman, director of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. In commenting about the decision by the Capital Times, Baughman states, ...

Microsoft Office 2008 - DON’T UPGRADE! 2008-02-08 11:23:25 I am somewhat of a freak about having the latest versions of software, including all the updates and patches that are  released between major upgrades and version releases. VersionTracker Pro is one of my favorite applications/services of all time. So when Microsoft released  its long-awaited upgrade to Office 2004 for the Mac, I naturally bought the upgrade and installed it. What a disaster!!!!! This is one of the worst applications I have ever seen in my entire life. I use Excel a ton, and am pretty fluent in much of the application. While there are some things I’d love to change about Excel, I am pretty happy with it and was hoping to only see some modest improvements and some much-needed tweaks to certain areas. Instead, they completely overhauled the application for apparently the only purpose of making large but unnecessary and superfluous changes in the user-interface and navigational areas of the application. There is a little bit of added functionality and some needed ... Microsoft

PSA Announcement: Don’t Use Network Solutions! 2008-02-07 15:45:07 Here’s a story from our Web Master… Someone was interested in buying LiquidRecruit.com. He went to NetworkSolutions.com to see if the name was available, which it was. He then emailed his boss to see if he should buy it. In the meantime, however, NetworkSolutions saw that someone had looked up an available name, but didn’t purchase it. So they bought it. When the guy came back to the site to purchase the domain, it was no longer available, snatched up by the very company he was going to purchase it through. Never use NetworkSolutions. Tags: NetworkSolutions, Buying Domain Names, Use GoDaddy, Companies That Do Annoying Things Share This ...

Looks Like Jobing.com Will Buy Anything… 2008-02-07 12:07:41 Phoenix-based Jobing.com has acquired WorkMetro, a job board that operates 22 local job boards, mostly in the East Coast. WorkMetro was funded by Bessemer Venture Partners and Jafco Ventures who had invested an undisclosed amount of capital in a first round investment in 2006. Terms of the sale to Jobing were not disclosed, but it was revealed that WorkMetro generated annual revenue of about $4.5M. In preparation for the acquisition, WorkMetro laid off about 20 people in late December or early January, roughly half its workforce. Those disgruntled employees left a series of comments on a discussion thread on a blog post by Cheezhead earlier this year which paints a pretty ugly picture of the condition of WorkMetro. It’s an extremely entertaining read, and if even half of the comments are anywhere near the truth, I’d say that Jobing has an absolute disaster on its hands with this acquisition. Clearly, I have no idea how many WorkMetro employees Jobing will keep around, how many of W ...

SnagAJob Raises $5M Series B 2008-02-06 11:24:09 SnagAJob.com, a Glen Allen, Va.-based online job site for part-time and full-time hourly recruitment, has raised $5 million in Series B funding, according to a regulatory filing. Return backers include Adams Street Partners, Baird Venture Partners and C&B Capital. The company raised a $9 million Series A round in 2006. Tags: SnagAJob, Adams Street Partners, Baird Venture Partners, C&B Capital, Online Job Boards, Jobs Sites, Private Equity Financings, Recruitment Advertising Space, Deals In Recruitment Advertising Space, Recruitment Advertising Industry, Job Board Financings Share This ...

Star Tribune Hires Restructuring Firm. Is This The Beginning Of The End? 2008-02-06 10:18:22 With revenue having declined by $75 million in the past 2 years, and operating cash flows down 50%, the Star Tribune has retained Restructuring Associates (RAI), a Washington D.C. turnaround firm that specializes in union negotiations. (The Star Tribune’s labor contract expires this summer and negotiations will undoubtedly be ugly). Prior to the new year, I predicted that a major metro market in the U.S. would lose its daily paper altogether, and I’d say Minneapolis has to be the odds-on favorite at this point in the year. The following is Publisher and Chairman Chris Harte’s internal memo outlining recent developments at the paper (Thanks to MinnPost): Taking Charge of Our Future By Chris Harte, Publisher and Chairman Last fall I told you I would write about our overall situation toward the end of the year. I waited before writing because November ad revenue was slightly better than recent months, and I hoped it was the start of a modestly better trend. But December ...

Imagine What Careerbuilder Could Do With Some Decent Marketing 2008-02-05 09:23:28 Over the past year or so, Careerbuilder has cemented its position as the dominant leader in the recruitment advertising space. With an effective combination of print and online media, Careerbuilder surpassed Monster over a year ago and has consistently outperformed all of its rivals across a variety of key metrics. In one area, however, Careerbuilder has failed miserably - its national advertising. Despite the fact that the jungle survival ads were quite entertaining and effective, the company fired its agency, Cramer-Krasselt, after last year’s Superbowl because the jungle theme didn’t play well in a USA Today poll. This year, Wieden & Kennedy of Nike fame, fared much worse with their awful ads for Careerbuilder. They were, without a doubt, the worst commercials of the entire Superbowl. Imagine what Careerbuilder could do if they could develop even some modestly successful campaigns. Tags: Superbowl Ads, Superbowl Commercials, Careerbuilder Ran The Worst Ads In The S ... Marketing

Super Tuesday…It’ll Be Fun To Watch 2008-02-05 08:34:23 Tags: Super Tuesday, Caucus, Primary, Elections, Democracy, Political Candidates, Politics, McCain Wins Handily & Extends His Lead, No Clear Democrat Victor, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Mitt Romney Share This ...

The Biggest Frustration of Recruiters… 2008-02-04 16:55:55 Another question we asked on our recently completed employer survey related to their biggest frustration in the area of recruiting. While the results are not that shocking, what was surprising was the overwhelming majority of respondents that indicated that quality of candidates was their single biggest frustration (64%). Time management, tracking sources of candidate flow, too many resumes, and other rounded out the responses.  Interestingly, there was absolutely no correlation between the size of the company and the biggest frustration for recruiting professionals. Of those recruiters frustrated with candidate quality, 83% used more than one online job board, and 57% used 3 or more. The categories that we listed on the survey for online job boards included Monster, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs, and other. (See this post for the graph of which boards recruiters are using). While the results are by no means scientific, I’d say that the major job boards on the web today should be qui ...

E*Trade Wins Awards For Best Superbowl Ad 2008-02-04 08:22:04 Like every other blog on the web, I’ll weigh in with my picks for the best ads from yesterday’s Superbowl. (By the way, the Giants had no business winning that game and New York sports fans are the worst in the world. Having gone to school in New York, I can sympathize with my sister-in-law (from Boston) who watched the game in NYC with a bunch of recently converted Jets fans who, in the last month, shockingly, swore allegiance to the Giants and vehemently claim they’ve always been Giants fans - there’s nothing worse than New York sports fans who switch teams like underwear in the post-season). Anyway, the best 3 ads yesterday were… 5. Cars.com (the Circle of Death one) 4. Tide’s talking stain commercial 3. Coca-Coal - Thanksgiving Parade balloons fighting for a coke 2. Bud Light - Will Ferrell 1. E*Trade baby ads (both) Tags: Superbowl Ads, Giants Suck, Patriots Should Have Won, New Sports Fans Suck, People Who Hate New York Sports Fans, Coca- ...

CareerBuilder Launches Bimonthly Jobs Magazine In Las Vegas 2008-02-01 15:27:26 Thanks to Recruiting Nevada for the information about CareerBuilder’s newest print publication - a bimonthly jobs magazine in Las Vegas. They join a crowded field that includes the Employment Guide, Las Vegas Job Finder, and Jobs Today. I am not sure how worried those 3 print publications should be however - a bimonthly publication that sits on a shelf for 2 months gets stale pretty quickly and employers that are advertising for job openings usually have a higher degree of urgency than that. As Recruiting Nevada points out, as well, CareerBuilder may just be trying to lure Las Vegas candidates into California. Tags: CareerBuilder, Recruiting in Vegas, What Goes On In Vegas Stays In Vegas, Las Vegas Job Finder, The Employment Guide, Las Vegas Employment Guide, Jobs Today, Weekly Jobs Papers, Weekly Jobs Magazines, Jobs Magazines, Jobs Publications, Niche Publications, Recruitment Advertising Share This ...

Survey Examines Job Board Usage 2008-01-31 10:06:58 Continuing from yesterday’s post, another portion of our recent employer survey examined how companies are using job boards in their recruitment advertising. We asked employers (see yesterday’s post for the data on the mix of employer sizes in the survey) which, if any, of the major job boards they used regularly. If they checked the ‘other’ box, we asked them to list the site(s) they used other than the major 3 job boards. The results were somewhat interesting, though not completely surprising. The survey indicated that almost half of the companies we surveyed, regardless of their size, used either all 3 major job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs) on a regular basis (28%), or all 3 and other sites as well (21%). While we didn’t ask for the reasons behind their selections, I think it’s safe to assume that companies use all 3+ job boards for one or more of the following reasons: 1 . They get adequate results from all the boards they use 2. The ...

Most Corporate Web Sites Don’t Help Companies Fill Open Positions 2008-01-30 15:12:06 We just finished a pretty extensive employer survey on a variety of topics. The response was very high, such that I think the findings are a fairly legitimate representation of not only what employers are doing in their recruiting activities, but also the results they are generating from their various strategies and tactics. I’ll be writing about our findings over the next few days, starting today with how companies are leveraging their own company web sites in their recruiting activities. The employers that we surveyed ranged in size as follows: One of the questions on the survey was whether or not they posted jobs on a career section on their own company web site. Most did list jobs on their site (88%) and of those that did not, only 1 company had more than 50 employees. The next question then asked what percentage of their jobs were filled through their own company web site. The answers are as follows: An astounding 29% of respondents had no idea how many jobs were filled fr ...

You Know Your Customer Service Is Bad When… 2008-01-30 13:34:17 …You have to hire and post a cop full-time in your customer service locations. This photo (sorry it’s a little blurry but the photographer didn’t want to cause any unnecessary agitation) was taken in a Comcast customer service facility in Minneapolis. There is a full-time police officer posted there during the hours the location is open. There are also signs all over the place notifying Comcast’s perpetually disgruntled, unruly customers that they are being videotaped. Tags: Comcast, People Who Hate Comcast, Dangerous Jobs, Unruly Customers, Disgruntled Customers, Customer Service Horror Stories, Jobs That Require Serious Protection Share This ...

Standout Jobs Raises $2M; Launches Site Today 2008-01-29 09:34:02 Montreal-based Standout Jobs announced that it has raised $2M from INovia Capital and is launching its site today. Standout Jobs helps clients build corporate recruiting sections for their company web site. The service costs $149 per month. The functionality included in the templates (that I assume companies can customize) includes job postings, blogs, photos, employee profiles, a bulletin board, RSS feeds for various streams of content, and corporate videos. The layout looks a lot like NetVibes  with various sections of the corporate career site contained in isolated boxes that I assume companies can move around the page and place wherever they want. It will be interesting to see how Standout Jobs does. They offer an interesting solution to help companies improve their recruiting efforts and the price and apparent structure of their offering certainly create the impression that the business is scalable. The one flaw I found in a very early and cursory look at the site was the fact th ...