Ever wonder what it’s like to work at CareerBuilder? An interview with Matt Ferguson, the job board’s CEO, can give you an idea. On a taped segment with Selling Power’s Daily Report, Ferguson paints a picture of CareerBuilder’s core values, how he redefined their corporate culture after a merger, and the most difficult event that occurred in his business career.
The CEO began by discussing how CareerBuilder fosters their unique culture from a defined set of values.
“We have five values, and one of them is candor,” Ferguson said. “We like to speak and communicate succinctly, directly. A lot of companies have good communication and I’ve always said communication can be bad if it’s the wrong kind of communication. I’d rather have no communication between groups than bad communication or over-communication, but if groups communicate in a candid fashion, whether short, succinct, direct, and professional at the same time, then the organization will move much more quickly.”
Ferguson lists one more trait that makes his organization successful.
“You can’t remain a market leader unless you’re agile…you’ve got to be flexible enough to allow [for agility], depending on the size of your organization. If you’re all in one office and there’s ten of you, then I think you’re gonna have consistent implementation of those values. If you’re leading 1200 sales people then I don’t think you’re gonna have exactly the same view of candor across all those different geographies or countries. You’ve gotta allow some nuance for people’s creativity and local market variance within those values.”
The interviewer asks Ferguson how he acculturates new people so they become ‘cultural ambassadors’ within CareerBuilder.
“You’re never going to be perfect in hiring the exact match for your culture, but if you maintain an ambiguous culture where there’s a lot of different value systems out there, then there will be no value system that survives and people won’t find it energizing,” Ferguson responded. “One of the things that’s happened at our place is there is the defined culture, and if people get in and they’re not a good fit for it, they say, hey look this just isn’t for me, and they move on, and I think that’s good turnover to have.”
He adds, “I don’t like losing anybody, but I think I’d rather lose people quickly who make the decision that they’re not a match for the culture and than other people you retain for a very period of time.”
Ferguson also talked about how he dealt with blending different cultures after a merger of two companies took place at CareerBuilder.
“Unfortunately in business when there’s a merger you try to merge these cultures when they’re very different. If they’re operating two services you could probably do that, but if they’re operating the same service there’s just no way to merge it, so we tried to very quickly find people who were culturally consistent with us and maintain as many of those people as we could but be very quick and specific on, ‘this kind of value system was not gonna work.’ And that’s tough to do.”
He adds, “That was probably the most unpleasant part of my business career, but at the same time it had to be done because the overall organization was much better afterward.”
Click here for the entire interview.
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June 18th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
You know how on the 1st date people always try to seem all self righteous? I think this interview with Matt Ferguson was like a 1st date. But in after time goes by you start to see some of that persons dirty little secrets. Then after you really get to know that person and you learn they are bipolar and they cheated on their ex, then you think to yourself “you are the freakin devil”.
Matt Ferguson put his date face on.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I have worked Careerbuilder.
I would be interested to see how they define their “singular” culture. It is basically a men’s club, filled with young men in suits. You are given 30 days to ramp up or you are fired. This fosters a high engery do or die sales environment. The Account Executives behave like stock traders on Wall Street and think they are Gordon Gecko.
It was a fairly terrible place to work. They do not respect their clients, diversity, or any creative input into daily practices. It’s totally cuthroat and cold.
I hate when CB as the beacon of recruitment industry. I’ve been in this industry 10 plus year. They basically, just got very lucky, and used a ton of ad dollars to drive traffic. The product is in no way unique or revolutionary.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
I guess that’s what you say when you grow into a larger company and become removed from your people. There is no candor at this company anymore and you either obey or you are out.
And it could have been a great company……
June 19th, 2009 at 11:14 am
What a bunch of bull! They do preach candor but it is not appreciated. I think Fergie said it best when he called his employees “salespeople.” That is the bottom line sell as much product as possible or you are fired. CB doesn’t care about their clients or their business “relationships.”
If you work at a company that uses CB product you know it’s not a great place because you have probably had 5 reps over 4 years. CB is definitely not “promoting” or “realigning” your old rep. Reps are coached to say that so the client doesn’t become upset.
Bottom line is CB buys their traffic with expensive ad campaigns. There are so many other options to use that are better and less expensive than CB.
June 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
CB still is a great company. I don’t know why everyone chooses to hate on them.
June 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
The best decision Fergie ever made was demoting me.
June 19th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
CB still is a great company…for my benefits. I can work anywhere I want but I like CB’s United Healthcare PPO… I don’t care if I got demoted, I make more money in my real estate biz than all of the executives at cb combined.
June 19th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I find it a little dangerous that Matt would go out on a limb and talk about how the core values define the careerbuilder culture. Especially after having decimated these core values by promoting woefully incompetent people into senior leadership positions. The last two years have seen the best leaders of the company leave or become demoralized as John Smith and his frat buddies act like they’re running a business. I know of several successful reps that have left the company recently as a result of a) pay cuts, b) core value hypocrisy, c) Hunter’s pathetic and disingenuous attempts at “tough love”. It seems like the company’s mid and senior level managers just can’t get out of their own way while they continue to demoralize top performers and actually enable poor performers like Erik… who hasn’t sold anything to anyone.
I think Matt has many good qualities, but picking the right leadership team has not been one of his strengths.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:40 am
This guy has no business preaching to anyone on how lead a corporate culture. Candid? You mean in terms of how most current and former CB employees describe the degree to which their corporate culture sucks. If you’re a HR decision maker don’t take advice from these unprofessional idiots, they’re not in a position to be consultating anyone on HR issues.
June 29th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Matt Ferguson preaches candor but couldn’t find candor in the dictionary.
Unless, of course, “candor” is now being defined as “tell everyone we’re working as a team and a big family and we won’t be making any big changes, and then let’s lay 300+ people off without any notice because someone’s portfolio imploded.”
CB is fratboy culture masquerading as a growing, living, breathing business enterprise. I’m shocked that the lads in suits don’t just unzip, pull their junk out and compare it, because it seems most business decisions are the results of who wins or loses the pissing contests.
I count my blessings every day that I escaped the defcon-5 level toxicity of CB.