Comments on: peter weddle dissing search

By: Bob Wilson

Bob Wilson — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 21:53:58 +0000

Great conversation guys! It seems rare these days to find blog posts where the comments add as much value as the original post. Hats off to each of you for sharing your perspective!

Bob :-)

By: Peter Weddle

Peter Weddle — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 18:11:52 +0000

Joel-

First, my thanks to you … on two counts.
1. Thanks for taking the time to read my column.
2. And thanks for offering a counterpoint that was both civil and rational. The U.S. Congress should take note.

Second, I’d like to offer a couple of points to clarify what I wrote.

Search engines have as much opportunity to create community and attract passive prospects as do traditional employment sites; the problem is that they haven’t. Nor, however, have many Web-sites. And there’s the rub; all are effectively ignoring a significant segment of the population–if you believe the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate that active job seekers comprise just 16% of the workforce at any point in time. I agree that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with helping employers connect with active job seekers; successful sourcing, however, requires that you reach more of the population.

As to the use of search engines by passive prospects, you can lead a horse to water, but …. I speak frequently to groups of active and passive job seekers; the former are motivated to do whatever they can to connect with employment opportunities. The latter are almost always too engaged in their current job and in the rest of their life to bother with what’s going on in the job market. Indeed, many feel as if they are being disloyal to do so. Until that dynamic changes (and it can with better on-site content, features and functionality), I think search engine penetration of the passive population will be minimal.

Peter Weddle
WEDDLE’s

By: Peter Gold

Peter Gold — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:30:48 +0000

I’d support Dave. Not everyone wants to be a superstar; just go to work, serve, take the cash, go play! And they are in the majority so lets help them do what they do, and if these makes them an active, transient job seeker, then so be it.

By: Dave McClure

Dave McClure — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 06:08:39 +0000

you know, we used to hear the same sort of stuff when i worked at PayPal — about how all the part-time sellers & work-at-home Moms who were using PayPal to accept credit cards were much less valuable than bigger, more reputable merchants… at least that was what the major card associations & analysts used to say.

but a few years later, Paypal was generating billions (with a ‘B’) of dollars in payment volume from all those “small-time” sellers, and turns out Visa and MasterCard (and Wells Fargo in particular) were more than happy to help PayPal handle the payment volume… assuming PayPal dealt with all the customer service issues and fraud risk.

now that old familiar refrain i hear Mr. Weddle saying is “the front end of the long tail is where all the value is… don’t waste time with the looooong end”.

however, the lesson the Internet (and Chris Anderson) keeps teaching everyone is quite to the contrary: if you’re willing to do the work, the value in the long end of the long tail is just as significant as the front end — and in some cases, a lot more so.

examples:
– Amazon (for out-of-print & small-run books)
– Netflix (ditto for videos)
– PayPal (for part-time sellers)
– Google (for small advertisers)

in any case, there’s nothing wrong with providing tools for “active job seekers”… they may not be your VP-level candidates, but neither are they trailer trash. and giving people simpler, better tools to see all the opportunities available to them can’t be a bad thing.

in summary i say: “give us your tired, your poor, your active job seekers yearning to search free… “. we’ll be happy to help them out with finding a new job :)

- dave mcclure
http://www.SimplyHired.com