I received a newsletter from Jobs.co.za this morning, and read an article linked from it called “Beware of Job scams“.

This seems to be a big problem all over the South African internet, and I know the Dealfish team use human moderators to delete thousands of scammy posts every day. I assume the same is true for Gumtree and all the others, and Careers24 is not immune from scammers either and we’re forced to keep an eye out for their appearance.

The bit that made me laugh was this line from the article:

Jobs.co.za explains that the most typical strategy used by scammers to trap Job Seekers is by posting job advertisements on websites or in the newspaper requesting CV’s to be sent.

Unfortunately, this strategy is also employed far too often by recruitment agencies, the legitimate customers of the job boards!
Some unscrupulous recruiters will load up fake jobs so they can harvest CVs for a particular industry and then contact the job seekers later with other real jobs that might not be as interesting as the fake one they have posted. Similarly, a some recruiters will load a fairly generic job ad and then repost it again and again, sometimes for years! Many of these ads link straight out to the recruiters own website for CV upload, meaning that the job board that carried the ad doesn’t get to build their user database either.

This practice is not unique to South African recruiters, nor is it limited to the recruitment industry, and it’s not uncommon for real estate agents to list houses that have already been sold so that they can do the same bait and switch – “oh, sorry, that one has just been sold, but I have another house that has just come onto the market that you should see”.

There is a growing backlash against this practice, and there are some job boards emerging to fill the gap that offer a “no recruitment agency” policy, insisting on direct employer ads only. This obviously hurts the industry as a whole, and it’s grossly unfair to the ethical recruiters and job boards who choose not to engage in this sort of policy.

One of the first pieces of advice I was given by someone previously in the industry when I joined Careers24 was to do exactly this – post my own fake job ads to grow the CV database.
I don’t think this is ethical behaviour, and I won’t be engaging in the same scam that the real criminals are trying on the job boards.
And over time I’d like to build the reputation of Careers24 for listing great jobs that really exist.

I encourage recruitment agencies to take a stand, stop taking advantage of people looking for work, and to serve the South African job-seeking market better:

• List real jobs! it’s that simple – if you want to build a great relationship with your candidates and place them again and again, don’t start out by lying to them
• Don’t create a spruced up version of a hard-to-fill job so you can do a bait-and-switch on suitable candidates
• Don’t keep refreshing generic job ads for developers or admin people so you can collect CVs from the job board and keep them in your own systems
• Do let the applicant know who you are recruiting for if at all possible – job seekers love responding to direct ads
• Don’t repost the same ad multiple times with different keywords and under different names – you’re wasting everyone’s time if the candidates write up multiple intro letters and tweak their CVs for the posts that are all for the same job

And if you do need to post an ad for a position or skills need that you think is coming up but doesn’t exist yet, please mark it as a “sourcing ad”, or “future hiring” so that candidates know exactly what they are responding to.

What do you think? Ever been stung by a fake ad or an unscrupulous job board?

Related posts:

1. Career move… to Careers24

MWEB’s Facebook group is called “Free the Web South Africa“,  but their clever little reference to “FTW” is apt – I think they’ve done something pretty amazing.

The uncapped ADSL products they launched were not revolutionary in the sense that they were the first to market or had features never seen before, but MWEB managed to nail the right combination of timing, features and price to create a killer product that fired the imagination of consumers.

I realised this a few weeks back when I heard my hairdresser’s kid asking her for money to go to the internet café and I asked whether she had a computer at home and was considering getting her own internet access. She said that she had heard that MWEB were the ones to go for, that they were doing something special.

That sort of spontaneous awareness is the stuff marketing people dream about – unprompted recall of just one brand when asked about an entire industry.

Enough has been said about the merits of the actual products, but I want to comment on the brilliant way MWEB has embraced their Facebook group to engage with their customers and critics after the launch of their uncapped products.

The “Free the Web” campaign started as a Facebook group without any reference to MWEB, and built up to over 12 000 group members shortly before the product launch announcement. The groups description claimed the following:

The purpose of this page is to highlight the effect of high bandwidth costs on ordinary South African small and medium business owners as well as the man on the street.

Something big is on the horizon… the time for change has come.

It’s time to Free the Web! Be part of this movement for change!

On March 18, MWEB launched their new ADSL products and revealed that they were behind the previously anonymous Free The Web SA Facebook group. Some online commentators had spotted the setup and worked out that it was likely to be an ISP announcement, while others were deeply disappointed to discover that a large company with a vested interest was behind the campaign and set up a short-lived protest group to vent their irritation.

Within days many competing local ISPs had announced competitive uncapped ADSL products, a fantastic outcome for South African consumers – better pricing than we’ve ever had and lots of choice.

Unfortunately the whinier elements of our collective South African persona were quick to appear and knock the new products, with the usual comments made about how much better and cheaper broadband is in the UK, completely ignoring the fact that we don’t yet have our local-loop unbundled (i.e Telkom still controls pricing for the piece of copper between your house and the exchange), and we have only very recently had access to competitive pricing for wholesale international bandwidth with the arrival of the Seacom cable.

MWEB may also have unwittingly set the tone for the group by originally pitching it as a consumer lobby group aimed at addressing an uncompetitive industry, as it attracted a vocal group of dissatisfied internet users and gave them a platform to vent their frustrations.

At this point many companies would have had a round of high-fives with their PR and online marketing companies and left the Facebook page to rot, but MWEB instead put a team of facilitators into the group posting under the handles  “MWEB Guy” and “MWEB Business Guy”.

Unfortunately the honeymoon was short-lived and it didn’t take long for network issues to appear. Customers who were getting poor speeds (and random non-customers happy to throw a few free punches) started to leave brutal and angry comments on the wall.

The response from MWEB was amazing – the long-suffering “MWEB Guy” just kept slogging it out and responding to critics, and in the latest act of engagement, Rudi Jansen, MWEB’s CEO has started posting directly into the group under his own name, much to the confusion of some who seem to think he is another MWEB tech support person.

This particular individual does unintentionally get right to the heart of the matter when he says “I want to speak to a person, not voice prompts, that’s why I’m here”.

Whether this guy knows it or not, he is interacting directly with the CEO of a large organisation and being given the opportunity to comment on using their products and the frustrations he is experiencing with their service and support. Facebook is being used here as a platform to cut through all the layers that usually exist between customers and suppliers and allow them to communicate directly and publicly. There are a couple of CEOs who make great use of social media (notably Gian Visser, CEO of a competing ISP), but it’s the first time I’ve seen the top guy in a South African organisation the size of MWEB take the time to get involved, face his critics head-on, take responsibility for the issues and engage with his customers in a very direct and immediate way.

Comments like these show the power of this engagement to build loyal customers in the face of temporary problems:

Can you imagine this level of engagement from your bank? Your insurer? Your telephone company? And not only getting in touch with them and communicating direct as you might do over the phone if you got past the voice-prompts and receptionists, but in a public forum for all to see.

I’m impressed.

UPDATE: See below – one of MWEB’s vocal critics has been swayed by Rudi’s out-of-office-hours efforts to communicate with the Facebook group. Gives me the warm’nfuzzies.

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I spotted a piece of news today from Mashable claiming that for the first time, Kindle e-Books outsold real books. This is interesting for a couple of reasons…

First off, unlike Apple which is in the hardware business and make high margin on iPod sales but little to no margin on music sold through the iTunes Music Store, I believe that Amazon sees the Kindle as a mechanism to sell content rather than a hardware business unto itself.

iSuppli, a company that takes apart consumer electronics and estimates their cost of manufacture, shows that although Amazon is making some margin on the Kindle, it’s nowhere close to the 100%+ markup that Apple routinely enjoys on their iPods.

The other interesting thing is that the Kindle app on the iPhone already let’s you read books you’ve bought from Amazon on a device that is not a Kindle.

The worst-kept Apple secret ever is that they are working on a Tablet device that should be released some time early in 2010.

If rumours are to be believed, it will probably sport a hybrid LCD/e-Ink multi-touch display that can play back video in full colour and also display crisp text without a backlight in full sunlight. The screen technology that seems to be the best candidate for the Tablet is from a company called Pixel Qi, a company making a hybrid screen in a convenient 10″ size, perfect for a tablet computer.

Now we add this little nugget from TechCrunch in which Steve Jobs talks about eBooks:

Q: Has your opinion of e-readers changed?

A: I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing. But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device. You notice Amazon never says how much they sell; usually if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.

We don’t see that it’s a really big market at this point. And in the future, the more general-purpose devices will tend to win the day.

I’m not sure that Amazon, as an example, really cares that much about being in the hardware business. If I were Amazon, I’d love selling stuff where I didn’t have to have a warehouse, didn’t need UPS.

It all stacks up to a possible future where Apple sells a fantastic multi-purpose device that can act as a very good eBook reader by running a Kindle app that allows purchases from Amazon.

It’s possible that Jobs has cut a deals with book publishers in the same way he cut deals with the major music labels before the launch of the iTunes Music Store, but I think it’s unlikely.

What do you think? Will Steve add books to the iTunes Store, or will the Apple Tablet run a Kindle app that allows purchases from Amazon?

Perhaps both options can co-exist?

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Spotted two interesting links today.

In the first, The Guardian says that Facebook now has 350m users – and there’s no point in advertising to them.

The premise is that in spite of having a massive userbase, one that is now larger than the population of the USA, Facebook is struggling to extract financial value from their audience.

The second link is a Silicon Valley Insider interview with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, in which he claims that LinkedIn is still profitable with ad revenues up 50%.

LinkedIn has 3 main revenue streams, with online advertising being only one of them.

Weiner doesn’t give any breakdown, but implies that a significant portion of LinkedIn revenues are generated by their premium subscription business and corporate recruitment solutions.

I blogged this week with a throw-away thought that LinkedIn could possibly be built today as a Facebook application, but now I’m not so sure… it’s clear that LinkedIn have managed to build a profitable business quite different to the type of business that could be created inside Facebook’s ecosystem.

What do you think? Will Facebook become super-profitable?

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2. Farmville vs. LinkedIn

Being a bit of a Twitter skeptic in spite of trying to use it daily for a while, I enjoyed seeing this post on Mashable showing that Farmville is bigger than Twitter.

I find it really funny that a fairly pointless farm simulation game has had much more rapid growth than the service that the founders thought would grow to 1 billion users and become the pulse of the planet.

They went as far as asking whether they were “building a new internet”.
I don’t think anyone playing Farmville thinks they are building a new agricultural industry.

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I feel a little like an ape in “2001: a Space Odyssey” staring up at the monolith when I look at Google Wave.

It’s shiny.
Undoubtedly clever.
Technologically advanced.
But what does it do? What is it’s purpose?

I kinda get it… it’s a bit like email, but collaborative.
A bit like a shared workspace/whiteboard.
It’s a persistant online collaboration area.
It’s got some IM features.
Does some of the stuff that Webex and Fuze Meeting do.
Maybe a bit of Huddle in there too.

But apparently this is a game-changer, and people are offering their organs and unborn children for invitations to the service.

I’ll say it out loud – I don’t ‘get’ it.

I can’t see myself using it productively.
I have loads of collaboration and communication tools, and I’m not sure where this one fits in.
When I send email of any importance, I give it a quick proof-read, check that my meaning is clear, delete the superfluous stuff, and then hit send.
I don’t really want people to see what I’m writing, letter by letter.
Even IM gives me the chance to construct my ideas 1 line at a time.

As an experiment in collaboration I have used Google docs to co-author an academic document for my studies.
We were a distributed team creating an 8000+ word marketing plan, and we thought we needed real-time collaborative tools to create the document.
It didn’t work.

For serious work, where complex ideas need to be constructed and detailed in a document, it just doesn’t work to have 7 people all working in the same doc at the same time.

I see I am not the only one who thinks that there may be a bit too much hype around Wave.
Much smarter guys than me don’t seem too impressed so far.
Gigaom weighs in, saying that “Google climbs to new heights of arrogance with Wave”, and Scoble writes that Wave will kill your productivity.

Have you used Wave productively, in your personal, professional, or academic life?
Can you see yourself using it beyond the “oh, cool!” stage?
First 8 comments get Wave invites.
Post comments using your Gmail account.

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“What we need is journalism”

I don’t usually simply link out to other blog posts, but in this case I feel compelled to link to Clay Shirky‘s extremely perceptive post entitled Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.

He manages to post very well thought out explorations of unresolved questions and issues presented by the impact of the internet on old industries and models. If you haven’t seen his writing on micro-payments, it’s worth Googling.

Go read it for more choice quotes like this – “The expense of printing created an environment where Wal-Mart was willing to subsidize the Baghdad bureau.”

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Big news on Wednesday and Thursday was that Amazon acquired specialist online retailer Zappos for about $850 million in an all-stock transaction.
In characteristically open style, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has posted a letter to all employees today on his blog.

Here are a couple of snippets from the letter:

A big part of the reason why Amazon is interested in us is because they recognize the value of our culture, our people, and our brand. Their desire is for us to continue to grow and develop our culture (and perhaps even a little bit of our culture may rub off on them).
……
Several months ago, they reached out to us and said they wanted to join forces with us so that we could accelerate the growth of our business, our brand, and our culture. When they said they wanted us to continue to build the Zappos brand (as opposed to folding us into Amazon), we decided it was worth exploring what a partnership would look like.
….
We learned that they truly wanted us to continue to build the Zappos brand and continue to build the Zappos culture in our own unique way. I think “unique” was their way of saying “fun and a little weird.”
Amazon realized that it really was the case that our culture is the platform that enables us to deliver the Zappos experience to our customers. Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) made it clear that he had a great deal of respect for our culture and that Amazon would look to protect it.

The amazingly great thing about this deal is to see how a technical giant like Amazon can recognise the incredible brand value and customer loyalty built up by Zappos and choose to support them in their unique approach to business.

Too often companies are valued based on their balance sheet, assets, turnover, and a crude “goodwill” value placed on brands and other intangible value. Rarely is a corporate culture given such high value and explicitly recognised as a valuable asset to be nurtured and retained after acquisition.
Too often the priority after acquisition is integration and “rationalisation”.

I hope we see more of these kinds of deals, where customer-obsessed companies are valued this highly.
Zappos believes that “Your relationships are your brand”

Take a look at this great post about Zappos on Mashable from a couple of months back going into some detail regarding their customer-focus and use of social media tools.

Updated: As usual Brendan McNulty was on this one, and blogged about Zappos back in May and again this week

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I don’t get it.. why is ChromeOS so exciting?
It sounds like a dumbed down version of Linux – why would taking the operating system that has failed to gain significant traction on the desktop (Linux) and then removing the apps suddenly make it more appealing?

I’m not drinking the Google Kool-aid on this one – I call bullsh!t.

How is ChromeOS different from/better than Android, that other stripped-down, portable Linux distro from Google that actually has some market traction?

How is it better or more interesting than the ubiquitous installs of Windows XP on Netbooks today that comfortably run Chrome or Firefox alongside full-featured apps? Or better than the upcoming Windows 7, currently being optimised to run on Netbooks and other low-end hardware?
Or a serious challenger to first-class Linux distros optimised for Netbooks like Ubuntu Netbook Remix?

Netbooks are still linked to Linux in the press and in public perception, but the truth is that those days are over – most Netbooks sold today are really light, cheap laptops running full OS installs, and with sizeable internal storage.
Linux is not even installed on most Netbooks today – Asus has stopped installing Linux on Netbooks in some territories.

More detail on the decline from IT Wire:

Yesterday, executives from Acer, Toshiba and Dell told iTWire that Windows XP had now established the same sort of dominance in the netbooks space as it has long held in the desktops and notebooks markets. Both Acer and Toshiba indicated that more than 90% of their netbooks shipped were Windows XP models.

ChromeOS makes good press, but I don’t think it makes a good product.

Even references to Cloud Computing are classic misdirection – running applications in the cloud simply means that server infrastructure becomes a utility that can be paid for based on usage. Web-apps that used to need a datacenter to run can now be run on Amazon or some other infrastructure. It doesn’t fundamentally change the behaviour of end users of the applications.

In my opinion, this is more of a pop-gun warning shot across the bows of Apple and Microsoft, not the heavy artillery. Device manufacturers will continue to use Linux as a stick to keep Microsoft pricing down, but they have no real interest in offering consumers an operating system they don’t want. Customers have already voted with their wallets and demonstrated that they are prepared to pay an extra $50 to have Windows on their Netbooks. Those are the facts, and I can’t see Google changing that picture no matter how much they hype ChromeOS.

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