Entries Tagged 'Industry News' ↓

Boomers are an interesting lot - and there’s a hell of a lot of them. A good combination for employers, marketers, politicians, and web 2.0 startup companies looking to build vast piles of money from them, win their favor, or harness their expertise in the work place. There’s a post from yesterday on the New York Times titled “New Social Sites Cater to People of a Certain Age” and it’s a good read for anyone wanting to get a 50,000 foot view of newer social sites like eons, and multiply.

“…there are 78 million boomers — roughly three times the number of teenagers — and most of them are Internet users who learned computer skills in the workplace. Indeed, the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a market research firm.” - sourced NYT

So what’s going on with online social networking tools in this crown jewel of market segments? In a word - lots.

“The older demographic has a bunch of interesting characteristics,” Mr. Kedrosky added, “not the least of which is that they hang around.” - Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and author of the blog Infectious Greed

Said another way, online Boomers don’t suffer from shiny object syndrome (ohhhh, that’s pretty, let’s try that!) like younger generations are famous for. Even as an entrenched Gen X’er at 38 I no longer look at a BMW without having the accompanying thought that you give up a lot of hard earned cash (see: freedom) to drive around in a pretty car. I sure as hell didn’t do that when I was in my 20’s.  Web companies, employers, investors and venture capitalists are all seeing the direct benefits of catering to Boomers and for good reason.

There’s anecdotal evidence now with early web companies in the space that their instincts on Boomer’s stickiness is well founded.

“Peter Pezaris, president and chief executive of Multiply.com Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla., said he believed that older customers were stickier than younger ones, but said the evidence so far was anecdotal. He said 96 percent of the company’s active users returned each month, a statistic that he said impressed the venture capitalists who considered investing in the site.” - Peter Pezaris CEO Multiply

In the job search engine space we have the boomer focused RetirementJobs.com, a niche Boomer version of CareerBuilder or Monster.  RetirementJobs.com published some interesting research last year that corroborates some of the news featured in the New York Times piece.

“RetirementJobs.com research shows that on top of experience, workers over 50 stay in jobs longer, waste less time at work, and relate better to companies’ older customer base. Employers are increasingly luring 50+ workers given that half the U.S. workforce of 130 million people is scheduled to retire, or take a retirement job, in the next 15 years.”

RetirementJobs.com polled their users and pulled out some interesting charactertistics.

Right at the top is flexibility and lifestyle integration. Freedom.  From looking at these numbers you’d have to conclude that Boomers no longer agree with their youthful battlecry so perfectly echoed in Kris Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee - “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Like any other generation Boomers have their own unique needs and desires and they need their own kind of pad to hang out in online. I believe that the only thing holding them back from being just as addicted to social networking sites as our younger generations is a relevant hang out. Get relevant and people will get connected.

Technorati Tags: Boomers, Baby Boomers

CollegeGrad.com just announced their ranking of top employers looking for help with entry level positions from the fresh faces leaving school this year with a college diploma in hand. The forecast is a rosy one.

“Great news for Class of 2007–entry level employers are increasing their hiring by 7.3% in 2007! The Top Entry Level Employers list represents more than 170,000 jobs for the class of 2007″

Here are some highlights from the study

• 60% are planning to hire more college grads in 2007 than in 2006
• 20% will hire the same number and 20% will be hiring fewer college grads than in 2006
• Enterprise Rent-A-Car ranked as the #1 Entry Level Employer for the fifth year in a row
• Significant growth is being projected by companies of all sizes and in all industries throughout the list.
• Among the largest companies, PNC Financial Services Group is projecting a 31% increase in entry level hiring for 2007
• CIGNA is projecting an impressive 227% growth in hiring–going from 127 entry level hires in 2006 to 415 in 2007
• The results of the CollegeGrad.com Top Entry Level Employers survey predict one of the best entry level job markets of the new millennium.

“It�s a great time to be graduating from college,” said Brian Krueger, president of CollegeGrad.com. “The skills and energy of the class of 2007 are in high demand among employers. Graduates who put in their best job search effort may find themselves generating multiple offers.”

Now if we could just get all the companies on this list to make sure their college page was as welcoming as Lockheed Martin’s…

Technorati Tags: CollegeGrad.com, College Grads, College Graduates, The Class of 2007, Job Prospects for College Students

From Thursday January 18, 2007

mtv’s online platform for targeting college job seekers continues to grow in leaps and bounds with today’s announcement that mtvU has acquired RateMyProfessors.com. RateMyProfessors.com, is an online community where 10 million college students have posted over 6.6 million ratings on 900,000 professors. Now that’s what I call transparency. According to Stephen Friedman, general manager of mtvU:

“Every time we asked our audience about tools they use online, RateMyProfessor always came up,” he said. “Now we’re talking with them about how we build on this idea–best dorms, best places to eat around campus.”

Continuing their buying spree of college focused social networking and community sites, it appears mtvU is attempting to increase their relevance to students who are increasingly watching mtv less, and interacting on the web more. Yesterday, the rumor was that mtv’s long running hit show TRL (Total Request Live) may be canceled. Holy shit Batman! This news follows recent Nielsen data showing TRL viewership down from it’s height of 600,000 viewers in 2001, to 393,000 today, a 35% drop.

Last year, mtvU acquired Y2M (Youth Media and Marketing Networks) that owns College Publisher who provides the publishing platform and ad network for some 500 college newspapers such as Duke’s The Chronicle and Notre Dame’s Observer. However, a look at some of the job sections on these college newspapers reveals a rather humble jobs selection, more likely catered to part time jobs for active students rather then the cool jobs that graduates will want to land once their diploma is in hand. In contrast to this, mtvU relies on MonsterTRAK to power their college focused job board and has a pretty strong selection of job seeker content to offer students. We’re left to ponder how long will it be before the jobs section for the college news sites part of College Publisher’s network begin to use the aggregated job board and content found on mtvU. Ideally, mtvU should offer a solution that will cater to both in-school part time jobs, internships, as well as positions for upcoming graduates. With the wealth of college internship programs and corporate sponsorships in the market it seems like additional student focused content and functionality could be added to mtvU to increase its relevance and value.

You can start to put mtvU’s strategy together when you watch their acquisitions. Not that they’re hiding it in any way.

“The move ties into mtvU’s larger strategy to connect with college students “on-air, online and on campus,” Friedman added.”

In addition, there is new speculation published by paidcontent.org, citing multiple sources, suggesting that MTV’s parent Viacom has invested in TagWorld. According to the article on Online Media Daily from MediaPost

“Friedman, whose mtvU unit would certainly be affected by the deal, said he had no knowledge of the agreement. A spokesman for MTV said the company was not commenting on the report.”

What mtv and mtvU have to tackle quickly is a real answer to communities like Facebook. If they can leverage enough of their music and reality T.V. content, along with things like the college newspaper network and other acquisitions like RateMyProfressors and TagWorld, maybe they have a shot. What are your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: mtvU, mtv, TRL, Total Request Live, RateMyProfessors, RateMyProfessors.com, College Publisher, y2m, TagWorld, Youth Media and Marketing Networks

40 minutes after I finished posting about the speed at which information flies around the web saying:

In the Web 2.0 world, we have CEO�s blogging; employees blogging; reporters blogging; all with trackbacks and permalinks. The speed at which a story can spread for all to see in the blogosphere is dizzying. Social media and its uncoordinated actions of individuals - many voices, tones, and resulting comments - introduce a level of unpredictability into the equation that has to be managed.

… these official internal Jobster communications were forwarded to me by a reliable source requesting anonymity.� The information was not meant as Organizational Terrorism - the intent was to share the real internal communications and take the place of the blogo-speculation that has come about in the absence of hard facts.
The first e-mail was sent out last week. The second was sent out last night. What would your reaction be if your company sent this to you? What type of employee experience does this provide?

Technorati Tags: Jobster, Jobster Layoffs

Today I built our Google Custom Search Engine - popula8ion. Popula8ion is a vertical search engine that you can use to search all recruiting matters.

We will launch the search engine at www.popula8ion.com shortly. For now, it lives on EXCELER8ion. Check it out.

I have added many of the majority of the active recruiting blogs and relevant recruiting and HR industry sites, but I have 96 invitations left for anyone that would like to be a contributor to help me with adding valuable recruiting sites and pages to popula8ion. Let me know if you’re interested and I will sign you up.

Technorati Tags: Google, Custom Search Engine, CSE, Google CSE, Recruiting, Recruitment, Employer brand, recruiting resources, recruiting research, recruitment articles, recruitment research