Here is a new business for you - I’ve even given you the tagline. Please, someone start this. With the pool of talented programmers running dry these days in San Francisco, I’ve resorted to working with recruiters to help find qualified and skilled candidates. The fees are hefty - 20-30% of the employee’s first year base salary plus many of them even want stock in the startup - sometimes as much as the employee they place gets! Recruiters are very easy to find these days. In fact, they seem to find you even when you’re explicitly not looking for one. For instance, Craigslist has a box you can check that says “please, no recruiters”, yet the majority of responses I get from the ad are from recruiters. I’ve decided to allow about some of these recruiters to send me resumes. After all, they all work on contingency so I only pay if they place someone.

Some recruiters will want to come out to your office and soak up hours of time chatting about your “culture” and what you are looking for in a developer (as if “LAMP” skills needed more explanation).   Although the face-to-face does add some value to the process, I think this is mostly a networking play on their part to forge a relationship and make sure their future unsolicited email to you will at least be opened. Many of the recruiters we’ve had come by the office wrote vigorously on their notepads as we described the very basic skills we were looking for (I got the distinct feeling they hadn’t heard of PHP or MySQL before). Others (mainly the ones from Craigslist) will just start showering you with resumes once you’ve given them permission.

Both groups send plenty of unqualified candidates - obviously more from the ones that don’t stop by in person. I have some great and rather embarrassing stories about many of these recruiters already just after a few weeks of working with them. I have yet to see any “hireable” candidates through this channel.

I wish there were some sort of a directory I could reference each time a recruiter contacted me to see what the community thinks of his or her performance. I’d like to know:

• What kind of luck other employers have had with the recruiter.
  • What is the ratio of good resumes to bad ones?
  • Do they do ridiculous things like send candidates who aren’t willing to commute to your office after you’d been clear about the fact that you need someone in-office?
  • How many actual hires have come from the recruiter?
• What the candidates think of the recruiter.
  • Does the recruiter thoroughly test and get to know the candidate to ensure more efficient placement?
  • Is the recruiter responsive to calls and emails?
  • Does the recruiter provide feedback when an opportunity is not right so the candidate may learn and improve their skill set?

It’d be nice to have all of this information in a publicly viewable, yelp-style site. If the site got enough audience it could probably get into the job listings business itself! But remember (see previous post about job boards) - keep the listings free!

RecruiterWatch.com (taken w/ no site)
RecruiterWatch.net (available)

My startup here in San Francisco is looking for both junior and senior full-time web developers. Our application is on the LAMP stack. Here are the links to the job listings:

Fulltime Web Developer & Fulltime Senior PHP Web Developer

Sedo.com, one of the many tools in the belt of today’s common-man-class domain hoarder, offers a service where, for $69, they will act as a broker on your behalf in a domain acquisition negotiation.  They, of course, make no promises that they’ll be able to get the domain, but they say they’ll try.  You pay $69 either way plus an additional commission if you end up getting the domain.  If they get you the domain, you must of course use Sedo for the escrow (and pay those fees as well).

I paid the fee and commissioned them a couple of months ago to acquire a domain name for me.  It took them 2 weeks to even start the process after I’d paid the fee with my credit card.  After that the communications between myself and my Sedo representative had a minimum several-day (often up to several week) delay.   The particular squatter that owned the domain I wanted lived in France.  Before I paid the $69 I asked a Sedo representative if they’d be able to negotiate in French for me in the event the squatter did not speak English.  I was assured this wouldn’t be a problem.  Finally, a few weeks later, I got a response from my “broker”.  They, naturally, couldn’t get a hold of the squatter.

Trying to get my money’s worth from Sedo, I inquired about another domain I wanted.  Without even contacting the owner, my “broker” replied with “The company that owns that domain doesn’t entertain offers under $500,000 USD.”  To this I replied, “Would you mind going ahead and sending over my offer for $50,000.00 jus to see what they say?”  That was about two weeks ago - still no response from Sedo.

I get the feeling they are sending an email to whoever is on the WHOIS record of the domain and forgetting about it - not something one needs to pay $69 for.  I won’t be dealing with Sedo in the future.

I’m in the process of starting a new Internet business. We’re about to close a Series A round with several venture capital firms here in the Bay Area and are actively recruiting developers, database and product people. The labor market is tight in the Bay Area right now and the job boards are certainly cashing in.

Finding good and experienced talent is currently as challenging as ever. Here are the different ways I’ve found one can go about finding talented employees:

1. Post your job listing on a high-traffic board.
2. Pay a site like Dice.com to search their repository of technical resumes.
3. Troll the free resume repository on Craigslist
4. Cruise social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook and attempt to connect with and poach already employed people at other companies
5. Pay a head-hunter to bring you candidates. If you hire one you will pay them between 25-30% of the employee’s annual base salary and usually an additional fee on top of that. This really adds up for developers who make in excess of $100k.
6. Spam all of your friends and let them know you’re hiring. Cheap yet typically ineffective and typically detrimental to friendships.

Craigslist:
I’ve had a lot of luck with Craigslist so I posted there first. They charge $75 per listing - mainly in order to keep spammers from destroying the board. Unfortunately, because it is free to respond, the spammers just destroy it that way instead. One listing for a full-time, in-office technical position with our SF-based startup will typically get 50-75 responses. 80% or so of those are from people or firms outside of the United States (even though the listing clearly says ‘no contractors’ and ‘no telecommuting). Another 15% or so percent are from local contractors not looking for full-time work or local headhunters wanting to charge you astronomical fees to deliver typically less than perfect candidates (just my experience). To date, I’ve posted each of my listings on CL twice and have received between 0 and 3 qualified candidates for each position.

Trolling the CL resume repository is a different story. I’ve found that talented and often employed people will post their resumes here just to keep a net in the water in case anything interesting happens to swim by. I’ve snared several very qualified (and typically employed) candidates from here that have turned out to be excellent prospects. It has also been my experience that if a candidate looks especially appealing but says they prefer contract work, email them anyway - your startup might just be compelling enough to pull them back into the full-time world. Expect to have the old “we’re subsidizing your salary with equity” conversation because consultants are used to making big dollars (sometimes I wonder why I left that world).

Trolling is of course free but takes time. The nice thing is that you can create a search that will find what you’re looking for and then turn it into an RSS feed very easily so you can keep an eye on new resumes.

Free Job Boards:

I don’t know of any other job boards where it is free to list and someone will actually see your posting. I’ve posted to StartUpers.com which has a very cool look and is easy to use but has only yielded several responses - all spam. I also managed to get an invite to Doostang.com, an “invite-only career community started at Harvard, Stanford and MIT.” The rather pompous site has yielded zero leads, legitimate or otherwise - but the listing was free.

It’s really too bad that SimplyHired.com won’t let you post a job to their system. They’ve got one of the best search engines for open positions but they seem to only take feeds from other boards. There are probably competitive issues in play - IE their data sources don’t want them competing with them while monetizing their data.

Not-Free Job Boards:

There is no shortage of these. I’ll give a quick and non-comprehensive list of the ones I considered and ultimately did not post to - mainly because we’re a startup and we can’t afford it (although I’d probably pay if I thought it was worth the fee).

Keep in mind - these are technical positions so I did not consider generic boards like Monster or CareerBuilder. I need to go where my candidates go.

1. TechCrunch’s CrunchBoard : I know this network gets a lot of traffic from the Silicon Valley community. I’m not convinced developers spend a lot of time reading it (seems like more of a business / product crowd). They charge $200/listing.
2. LinkedIn is an excellent site that I’m a big fan of. I’m not sure how many developers use it to look for jobs outside of their network (or at all). Their listing fee is $145/listing but gets cheaper if you buy in bulk. I’ve actually had much more success trolling my network for developers here. Most of my connections were happy to pass along messages to developers to the effect of, “Hi, I know you have a job but you look like a stud and I’d like to talk to you about my new startup.” If you happen to find people that you’d rather contact directly (a good idea if you think you’re linked to this person via their existing boss who won’t be inclined to pass along your solicitation) you can upgrade your LinkedIn account to send InMail - IE contact people you don’t know directly. $20/month gets you 4 InMails. The prices climb quickly from there. We’ve had some success with finding people this way.
   11/15/07 UPDATE: I bit the bullet and spent the money to post the listing on LinkedIn. I’ve only had 3 hits - two from people in Eastern Europe (even though I specified no telecommuting) but one was local and is a very strong candidate which made the listing worth-while.
3. Dice.com. When I was hiring for my last startup between 2004 and 2006 Dice was a great resource. They are certainly capitalizing on the tech labor market these days. They have a large (possibly the largest) resume database and almost 100,000 tech job listings, making it an excellent resource for both job seekers and employers. That is, employers who have the cash. They charge $459/listing to get your jobs on their board for 30 days. Accessing the resume database is so expensive for an employer that they won’t even publish their rates. I had an aggressive sales person from there call me after I filled out the “more info” form. He quoted me about $1,000/month for access to the resume database (I’d be doing my own searches) or I could buy their “special” and get 1 year of access plus 10 slots to post my openings in for something like $10,000/year. This might work for Google and Yahoo! but not for the startup.
4. 11/15/07 UPDATE: GoBigNetwork.com: I listed the job here after reading about these guys in TechCrunch. The job posting process makes no mention of a listing fee until you are finished creating the listing - pretty sneaky. After spending the time creating an account and the listing, they expect a fee to make the listing go live. I can’t remember what the fee was (well over $100) and there is no way to find out what that fee is from their site without going down the road of creating another listing. I abandoned the listing and was contacted the next day by a GoBig employee. He said he’d give me the listing for free for 30 days. So far I’ve received 3 spam messages via the posting - no candidates. Even at $0 I don’t think it is worth posting there.

I know there are many more sites that will take my money to post the job but after Dice I discontinued my research.

Disruption:

Clearly there is an opportunity here for a superior offering to disrupt the current pricing model. The spam issue is a very real one but I’m sure there are some creative ways to usurp this, even if it involves charging a nominal (even less the CL’s $75) fee.

I don’t see an open community platform for job seekers right now. One that allows employed people, unemployed people and companies come together and keep an eye on each other for opportunities. Plenty of employed people would leave their current position for better pay, a better position, better equity, better work environment, etc. That doesn’t mean they’re going to spend any time looking at openings or applying for them. And plenty of great positions aren’t getting in front of the qualified candidates. I’m a little biased here, but I feel like job seekers using Dice are probably not being exposed to young and innovative startups that need their services but aren’t interested in paying exorbitant fees.

A site that combined listings from sites around the net, LinkedIn-style employee profiles, a vibrant community and company reputation/feedback system that did not charge all the fees we see today would certainly be effective at stealing market share on both the seeker and employer side.

Any time I get frustrated with how something works in my day-to-day life I start thinking about how some day, years from now, I won’t be afflicted by this incessant inconvenience. Television and online video watching is high on the list of things that can (and will) be done drastically better some day.

There is a lot of noise in this very interesting space right now but only a few devices and services that I think have a real chance of changing how the average American television viewer consumes content.

The Devices

• TiVo makes the best DVR on the market but has priced itself out of orbit with its near-$1,000 hi-def unit. Their box is Internet-connected (sans-PC) and already has limited access to a handful of video podcasts. If they don’t dramatically drop the price, they’ll continue to lose market share. I own a standard-definition box of theirs and its currently unplugged and sitting in the closet. I didn’t pay $2,000 for a hi-definition plasma so I could watch a standard-def, analog cable signal. Another TiVo handicap is that one cannot access VOD services like Comcast’s OnDemand, which let you watch TV shows or movies (hi-def) whenever you like. I am an avid OnDemand user and would not use a device that couldn’t access that service.
• Motorola and Scientific America make severely crippled DVR’s with no Internet connectivity and a soul-crushing user experience. These little boxes of terror are distributed for a nominal monthly “lease” fee (typically $5-$10) via the major US cable operators like Comcast and Time Warner. To add injury to injury they even run ads in the program guide. I pay the $10 monthly fee for one of these boxes from Comcast, though, because it’s the only way I can have my hi-def content record to a DVR (without giving TiVo $800 + $16.95/month) AND access OnDemand VOD.
• Apple TV is a slick little device that syncs music, photos, podcasts, movies and TV shows from a computer (PC or Mac) running iTunes for playback on your hi-definition set. All for $300 (40gb). It can stream or store locally almost any of the content you have in iTunes. I’ve been using the Apple TV (connected to my receiver via HDMI) as my stereo and primary conduit for watching video podcasts. If you buy an episode of a TV show from iTunes, you may also watch it on this device. So, this is (for now) primarily an everything-but-TV device (since you’ll be able to rent movies soon through the Apple TV I’ll assume it will be a decent movie player in the near future, like OnDemand). As long as I’m paying for a hi-def DVR, I will most certainly not be buying episodes of TV shows (or anything else) from iTunes.
• Other/Generic media PC’s. HP, Dell and others make media PC’s that are intended to work with your television. They’re just regular PC’s running Windows XP Media Center Edition (or whatever equivalent Vista now has) with TV tuner cards and fancy remotes. Don’t bother with this if you have a hi-def set - and if you don’t, then just buy a standard-def Series 2 TiVo for $300! These machines won’t do digital signals, won’t do hi-def, won’t do OnDemand VOD - all they do is time-shift (skip commercials). Yes, you can buy hi-def video cards, etc, but at that point you may as well buy the TiVo Series 3 (hi-def).

The Content Services

Content is further behind on its evolutionary path compared to the hardware, which is scary because the hardware is still so archaic. Most of us are still paying through the nose for digital cable from one of the large US operators. Here are the alternatives so far:

• A newly launched start-up, from the makers of Kazaa and Skype, called Joost is the most promising and most likely player to carry content that people actually want to watch over a network that isn’t a major cable operator. They’ve struck deals with many of the large studios and networks in the US to legally play great prime-time TV shows through their player. They boast a lot more interactivity and additional content but that stuff doesn’t really matter in this context - it’s still people watching stuff on their computer screen which we all know Americans aren’t going to adapt to when it comes time to relax after a long day of work and watch your favorite shows.
• YouTube and the countless other video sharing sites command millions of hours of video and many more millions of viewers. Great for when you’re bored at work or want to watch the latest viral short film of an alcoholic toddler threatening Will Ferrel. Not only will people not sit through 30 minute prime-time shows on here, it would be illegal for most of the shows to even exist on YouTube. An interesting twist here is that Apple recently announced that the next update for the Apple TV will allow viewing of YouTube video clips. I imagine this will still be a cumbersome “iTunes-first” process, but an exciting step in the right direction nonetheless.

How We’ll Likely Be Watching TV … Soon

The Register is reporting some interesting news that Joost is in talks with DVR manufacturers to get its software embedded on their Internet-connect set-top boxes. Joost, armed with their network and studio distribution deals, would be the first to provide widely-desired television programming to set-top boxes strictly via the Internet. Apple and TiVo are in position to compete here as well and I hope, for the sake of us consumers, they do. Apple seems to be good at striking deals with content owners and TiVo has the leading hardware platform and decent in-home market share already.

In the hopefully not-so-distant future, The Ultimate Box will let the viewer watch hi-def, prime-time TV shows, rent movies in hi-def, time-shift programs (DVR functionality), watch any video clip on the Internet that has a discernible URL, view photos, videos and music from the user’s own collection, and share this content with friends via the Internet from the set-top box itself.

Economics, from the Networks’ and Advertisers’ Perspective

All of these delicious features are going to have to mix well with the economics of the television industry in order to get the content owners to play ball. NYT has a good numbers article this week that also highlights how the networks are evolving their pricing models. The highlights:

• Networks now including online exposure in their upfront pricing because advertisers are reluctant to try it on their own.
• DVR playback data now taken into account as well as audience size for the ads as opposed to the program.
  • The networks want credit for when shows are played more times after the original airing, thus amplifying the number of times the advertisers’ commercials may have been viewed.
  • The advertisers wanted their audience numbers based on how many viewers are watching theor commercials not the program.
  • DVR’s can and do now provide that data to Nielson.
• Some networks have fully sold their online inventory and some advertisers have unspent broadcast ad dollars for 2007-08 season.
• Total upfront ad sales (about 75% of all prime-time commercial spots for the season) for all 5 major broadcasters (ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, NBC) was estimated in 2006-07 to be $9.1 billion.
• The cable networks combine to command about $6.4 billion in advertising spend, making the entire television advertising market about $18.5 billion with the new medium elements worked into the pricing.

It’s smart for the content owners to work the ads into the online versions and then charge advertisers for that exposure and I’m pleased that the commercial-skipping DVR users haven’t soured the advertising business for the networks so much that they’re suing hardware manufacturers to get the feature disabled. It could happen - but it looks like it won’t have to.