To: Bill Conneely
Subject: Responding to your “smackdown.”
So, first off Bill, let’s talk about customer relations. I argued on this media blog that the market for matching journalists with journalistic outfits (and PR people with PR outlets) is still somewhat inefficient — an observation that others in similar positions to me (aka: your customers) have noted too. I also granted, respectfully, that the closest thing there is to a good buyer-seller exchange is Mediabistro. And for that I got a “smackdown” from Mediabistro’s director of strategy. Perhaps a better approach would’ve been to say “thanks for noting that we’re the place to go, we continuously work to improve the system, and appreciate the feedback,” or even “we beg to differ and here’s why… ” but “smackdown?” Really?
Now let’s dissect this dispute. So, according to you, if I’m reading this correctly, there are two reasons why employers like my peers and me struggle to find people (neither of which have anything to do with the efficacy of the recruiting sites, of course).
The first is that we are living in a time of “close to full employment,” for people with a college education. Even if that were true, and there’s a lot of college-educated people with no regular paycheck today who’d beg to differ, that’s kind of a broad statement. We’re talking here specifically about the media industry, an industry in which there’s been a dramatic drop-off in supply of jobs, even as there’s been an increase in J-school graduates. So, introducing this notion of full employment, seems specious at best.
Your second reason is that employers like me have the wrong jobs for the people who are applying. You state this case thusly:
“The most common reasons we hear are that potential candidates are not interested or compelled by the job description or career prospects of the job, or the company’s reputation as a great place to work is lacking. What this tells us is that the job market is working well from our point of view.”
That’s a strange statement. You seem to be saying that the market is working well when the employment available is unattractive to the employees available? I think you’re trying to make a Keynesian argument here along the lines that demand for journalists is strong, supply is weak, a situation that would lead to a shortage of job seekers and wage inflation. Is that really how you would characterize the market for journalists today? Because the media world is just overbrimming with happy, gainfully-employed journos enjoying salary increases?
Secondly, when you put the blame on potential customers like me for having the wrong jobs, or describing them wrongly, or underpaying, you seem to be overlooking the fact that response to our ads on sites like yours is usually overwhelming. The problem is that most of the respondents aren’t qualified for the jobs in question – or are clearly sending the same email they’ve sent to dozens of other employers in an enthusiastic but not very targeted bid to find work – which I’d say was evidence of inefficiency rather than of us having crappy jobs or copywriting skills.
Furthermore almost anytime I’ve done my own research and found a candidate I’ve liked, I’ve been able to interest them in the job in question, as have other people I know who’ve taken this approach, which would seem to suggest our jobs aren’t quite so horrible and that people are absolutely willing to consider switching (an idea borne out by the musical chairs in, say, the magazine business this year.)
Finally, my argument didn’t entirely rest on the quality of response to job ads. The media world is also lacking a quality database of potential candidates that I can browse when I want to — not only when I have a very specific job to fill. At Breaking Media, we’re proactively looking for areas into which we can expand and the best way to do that is to begin with the right talent. And the best way to find the right talent is to be able to search a database that listed journalists along with the qualifications, experience, and interests.
Bill, I would prefer to live in this place where journalists are sought-after and prosperous, but unfortunately for me and my kind, I’m not sure that’s America in 2010.
