If you haven’t noticed, Arbita, the Minneapolis based Internet Recruitment Advertising agency, is undergoing a market changing transformation. Once the mouse that roared ( a Peter Sellers comedy about a small nation that declares war on the US and wins, improbably), Arbita has been polishing its credentials quietly over the past couple of years. The little engine that could has become a major force in the industry. Relentless travel and deal making by the firm’s charismatic CEO are at the heart of the game.

Today’s announcement that Arbita has merged with Job Machine underscores the radical thinking that is at the core of this juggernaut. Besides finding a long lost brother, the pairing provides a game changing level of synergy. All of a sudden, one neutral and objective firm is providing a full spectrum of sourcing services. From Training for desktop sourcing to tightly orchestrated Recruitment Branding campigns, the newly minted service does it all.

Instead of an Advertising agency trying to navigate emerging tools and services, Arbita is primarily a software company that happens to be good at meeting client needs online. Shally Steckerl’s JobMachine, another entity founded on sheer optimism and the moral high road, offers industry changing tactics for workforce development, candidate pipeline acquisition, raw sourcing technique and polished social networking tactics.

Together, the two offer breadth in strategy, ease of implementation (from core software), and full choice in tactics (the complete range of sourcing alternatives).

Look closely at this transaction, it heralds a new day.

• Arbita And Job Machine Merge Redefining the sourcing process, Arbita and JobMAchine align to form the first 21st Century Advertising Agency. (Press Release)
• Smart and funny use of Google Adwords I love the male enhancement ads that occasionally appear on Cheezhead and other HR related blogs. Here are some examples of ads that were either intentionally or accidentally funny.
• In the long term, it’s in everyone’s best interests for data to be as portable as possible. For users, data portability means that we can invest time and resources into new platforms on the web without the fear that the work we create will be locked in to that network or otherwise lost to us. It also offers the possibility that we can take our compiled work in one place and let another service process that data to create new kinds of value for our benefit. from Toward a Value Added User Economy
• Digging Into Recruitingblogs.com v1.6 This edition features a look the the Recruitingblogs.com Forum
• Don Ramer, Shally Steckerl and Jason Davis. Today on Blog Talk Radio at 1230 EST Talkin about a revolution

There are seven essential, interrelated components of an Applicant Tracking System. (You might take a look at this great little piece …Animals are Tracked, People have relationships.) The actual functionality is very simple and can all be generated from a single database.

The basic components are:

1. Candidate Database (Resume and Relationship Information) This may need to be two separate databases to meet regulatory requirements
2. Jobs Database
3. Publication Services (for Managing the Talent Pools)
4. Workflow Management (Routing and Scheduling)
5. Searching and Matching Technology
6. Embedded Wisdom (Help, Templates for Letters and Newsletters)
7. Workspace Integration Services

Rather than cover a lot of old ground, please take a look at this series:

• ATS Market Basics
• ATS Market Basics II
• ATS Market Basics III
• ATS Market Basics IV
• ATS Market Basics V
• ATS Marke Basics VI
• ATS Market Basics VII
• ATS Marke Basics VIII
• ATS Market Basics IX
• ATS Market Basics X
• ATS Market Basics XI
• ATS Market Basics XII
• ATS Market Basics XIII

• Hit the Road, Jacque Ami sharpens the “Bringing Physical Community to Online Networks” point
• Are Pro Bloggers Going Extinct Soon? Bloggers are going have to work harder on making their blogs more of a destination.
• Despite My Best Intentions, I Just Can’t Stop… Compulsive news-media basher Toby Dayton can’t get over just how lost the newspapers are.
• Marketing To Millennials “we’re going to facilitate an ongoing conversation that will engage you far longer and more intimately than a 30-second television commercial”. Sounds like they understand the value of the Recruiting Roadshow.
• ATS Systems Don’t Add Value “Recruiting is all about relationships and most ATS (Animal Tracking System to me - animals are tracked, you have relationships with people), as they are designed and come out of the box, are inherently flawed when it comes to actually adding value to great recruiting.”

The response to the first couple of articles in this series is interesting. Significantly, a number of credible market leaders think that the game is locked. Companies (vendors) who enter the Recruiting Software market will end up having to deliver ATS functionality if they want to stay in the game. Companies (customers) know how to buy job ads, ATS products and screening and assessment tools. So, that’s what they buy.

The hundred or so ATS vendors are stuck within the limits of customer purchasing policies and protocols..

The rush to Talent Management Systems, aggressively championed by the analyst community, doesn’t seem to have caught fire just yet. Lots of buzz but few sales.

Another group suggests that buyers segregate along three lines: Value, Early Adopter and Functional. The Early Adopters and Functional buyers focus on performance while the Value buyer concentrates on cost savings. HR buyers are prototypically Value Buyers. Innovation and the political risk associated with embarrassment are not for them. For this group, innovation seems to enter the marketplace through its most entrepreneurial windows (the staffing industry)

Meanwhile, the candidates are changing their game. In the Western world, anyone looking for a job uses the internet as a part of their search. Companies get Googled and "background checked" as a matter of course. Word of mouth is more important in employment branding than any other factor. Branding, referral programs, social networks, avatar based VR, new sourcing and optimized utilization of the 50,000 job boards are simply not a part of the standard ATS configuration.

There are, therefore, two ways to think about the role of the Applicant Tracking System.

• It is the platform for all Human Capital Management systems because it is the first place that data about an employee hits the organization,
  or
• It is a buffer between the organization and the outside world where legal defensibility is established.

It is either a platform or a buffer.

The greatest paradox of the Internet era is the way that global communications tighten regional dynamics. Simultaneously, the world is flatter  and more intensely local. Somehow, greater access to planetary insight makes the neighborhood really important.

You’d think that globalized communications would homogenize culture. Alongside McDonalds, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Holiday Inn and the other giants of broadcast economy, the internet appears to regiment. Reduced friction implies limited choice, doesn’t it?

Concerns over cultural standardization are at the heart of anti-corporate sentiment in Europe and South America. Generic storefronts and choice limitations appear to be a dynamic that should spread beyond the enterprises built on them. From one perspective, American culture looks like these missionary outposts.

At the same time, regional differences between American cities are as significant as the things that make countries different elsewhere. Industry, history, geography, growth, living standard, ethnic mix, religion, manners and educational infrastructure make a distinct stew in each of the locales. Local culture appears to trump standardized infrastructure.

Today, it’s Ohio. The Cleveland Recruiting Roadshow is tomorrow morning. Cleveland is as different from Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco or Seattle as those cities are from each other.

Tomorrow….Core Characteristics of the city.

You gotta understand. SEO/SEM is a set of techniques that raise your ranking on a search engine. Whether that nets you more traffic and whether that traffic produces the results you want are separate questions. Whether or not the traffic that you may or may not get is the most cost effective way to reach the goal remains to be seen.

In many segments beyond our little recruitosphere, SEO/SEM techniques are losing favor. Strong search engine results do not inherently correlate with strong market performance. There are simply too many variables involved. (more…)