The joblish Manifesto - Part 1

Several folks we've talked with recently have suggested that we serialize the joblish Manifesto on the blog. So - we'll do it! Here's the first of five parts.

The joblish Manifesto - Part 1

The World As It Was

Just ten years ago, the employment world was different.

• The Internet was brand new. No one really knew what to do with it.
• Candidate tracking systems were code based, if you had one at all.
• The telephone book was a primary recruiting tool.
• Primary information storage was a file cabinet
• The fax machine was indispensible.
• Google hadn’t been invented yet.
• The Monster Board was still more than a year into the future.
• Linked In wouldn’t be founded for four more years.
• The “dot.com” boom was just getting started. It would go bust three years later.

Employers & recruiters found talent was by placing ads in the newspaper, making lots of phone calls, and building your database of contacts. You filled your file cabinets with resumes. You knew they would come in handy someday. You built your list of contacts one at a time. HR, hiring managers, and recruiters had a limited number of tools - newspaper ads, a “Now Hiring” sign on the building, the telephone and referrals.

Resumes & personal information were a secret. You didn’t want your boss to find out that you might be interviewing. Recruiters – company & agency – had a limited number of candidates to consider and a limited number of sources to get them from. Candidates looked for jobs in the newspaper or the Wall Street Journal. Life was simpler.

The World As It Is Today

Consider how things have changed.

• Many, if not most, fax machines are collecting dust. E-mail has taken over.
• The Monster Board has 95 million resumes and over 1 million jobs online at any moment.
• Indeed.com finds 11,900 marketing jobs within 50 miles of Chicago, 13,200 Engineer jobs within 50 miles of New York, and 27,600 IT jobs within 50 miles of San Francisco. These figures are from October 2008 – when we’re in the midst of an economic crisis. You can’t deal with numbers this big.
• 30 million people have posted some portion of their personal profile info on Linked In. Personal information isn’t a secret anymore.
• There are, by some estimates, over 100,000 websites that have job postings. No one really knows.

Tomorrow - The joblish Vision