Amidst its recent conference, Forrester Research released its projections for the growth of online advertising. The company found that mobile and social networks will have the best areas of growth, although all online sectors are showing strong growth potential.
The company predicts the overall online advertising growth rate for the six-year period from 2008 to 2014 will be 17 percent. At the same time, mobile advertising is expected to grow 27 percent per year, while social network advertising should grow 34 percent per year.
The OfficeBook application, created by the three people at Leaders 2020 Inc. who were frustrated by the inability of job seekers to uncover company culture through traditional means of job searching, has begun a fan club of about 500 users on Facebook since its debut last month.
Users can anonymously express their feelings about a company or research what others have said in order to find the best cultural fit.
“With over 50 percent of Facebook’s users aged 30+ and seeking useful applications, we decided that OfficeBook should go live there,” co-founder and CEO Sundar Vanchinathan said. “We have been live for one month now and the response has been terrific. Over 960 views from all over the world, about 500 users, and over 6,500 page views.”
So why is measuring a company’s culture so important for the job seeker?
“[All three of us] have spent the last 15+ years working in Silicon Valley,” Vanchinathan said. “Over time, we realized that the most productive and successful companies are ones where every employee feels valued for who they are and what they believe in.”
The application can be found at http://apps.facebook.com/office-book.
The social networking site and job board are just two of many sites that are allowing their users to syncopate profile information via Atomkeep, a Web 2.0 -style service that is still in beta.
Access is free. Users can log on to Atomkeep, and with one click of a button, relevant information can be updated, including resumes and personal data.
Atomkeep also plans on adding Bebo, Dice, and Myspace to their support roster in the near future.
Under the agreement, social networkers can now generate income by leveraging who they know. Social networkers can search the job ads on Yellojobs.com and refer jobs with referral rewards to their friends. When a referred friend gets hired the referring party collects the cash reward.
The merger further stipulates that referral recruiting has finally entered the online world. Employers have long known that referrals are the best way to tap into the “Passive” candidate pool. However, effectively reaching that audience through the web has to this point eluded employers. Now, with Yellojobs.com employers can post job ads with referral rewards for free. Since Yellojobs.com is entirely success based employers can post unlimited job ads with no risk.
Companies can sift through a network of more than 140 alumni and professional groups, including 15 million degreed professionals. About 700,000 of those professionals are registered users who could be potential job targets.
InCircle Recruiting, in beta since September, is a subscription-based service that features targeted media campaigns aimed at reaching candidates who are already employed but are open to being approached by employers. Subscriptions, which begin at around $40,000, arm recruiters with customizable tools to target members by region, occupation, academic degree, industry, current and previous employer, job functions, and more.
Chuck Taylor, VP of Marketing, spoke about the main function that sets Affinity Circles apart from competitor LinkedIn. “We encourage a lot of communication within the platform. I can send a message to anyone even if I’m not connected to them, which is one of the key differences between Affinity Circles and LinkedIn. There’s no requirement to go build out your network with a whole bunch of people before you can start communicating. Because we have these closed networks, we give every member of the community access to every other member for communication purposes.”
New features to the recruiting platform include:
1) The ability to run targeted media campaigns that promote employer’s opportunities to users meeting pre-specified criteria. Campaigns now extend beyond the inCircle community platform, in the form of emails that highlight opportunities waiting for users in the community. The system remembers the campaign criteria as long as the campaign remains active, and automatically promotes the corresponding opportunities to new users who join the network after the campaign is created.
2) The inCircle Recruiting candidate management system that enables employers to create talent pipelines for each of their job roles and to communicate with qualified candidates who have expressed interest in being contacted by a recruiter about those opportunities.
“Another big difference between Affinity Circles and LinkedIn is that we allow recruiters to specify what types of characteristics they are looking for,” Taylor said. “We have eleven different targeted parameters like current job role, current function, academic degree, and current employer. Candidates that meet those qualifications get a response from the employer for specific job opportunities. So we are defining a relevant audience for the employer, and then we’re measuring the degree to which we connected with that audience.”
Employers utilizing AfterCollege can now choose from a much larger, more diverse network to advertise jobs, internships, and events to their target academic audience. They may purchase credits for occasional postings, or they can buy a package with unlimited privileges.
“AfterCollege’s goal is to provide a one-stop shop for employers wishing to reach their target college audiences. We’ve more than doubled our posting network’s reach, giving employers substantial value and time savings through a single easy-to-use posting interface,” said Roberto Angulo, CEO of AfterCollege. “We’ve also empowered employers to post their own events at specific departments and student groups to promote on-campus visits.”
AfterCollege, founded in 1999, has gone on to become the largest web-based career network for college students and alumni. Their network encompasses over 15,000 academic departments and student organizations at the nation’s top colleges and universities.
Prospective interviewees can still name their own price – often between $200 and $500 per interview – and now they have an even easier time linking their customized profiles to employers.
More than 1,000 users have registered since NotchUp was started in January, according to founders Jim Ambras and Rob Ellis. The Silicon Valley startup veterans were banking on the fact that the site would be successful after many recruiters and companies voiced frustration over talented candidates already crunched for time who would refuse interview prospects.
The job site not only connects companies with high-level candidates but also makes sitting down for an interview a much more painless process due to a nice chunk of cash that sweetens the deal.