The Online Recruiting Revolution

How employment e-newsletters are shaking up the scene

Steven Morgan, President and CEO of SalesRecruits.com

speaks with Tamara Halbritter of InternetVIZ

During the steam-filled days of the Industrial Revolution, mill recruiters faced much difficulty in adding new members to their factory teams. They shouted in the streets about new opportunities and watched buildings burn and power looms be destroyed at the hands of workers threatened by the new machinery.

In the early 1900s business boom, as commerce became perceived as “here to stay,” unions organized and used their collective powers to recruit new members and employees.

Today, employees are recruited by agency headhunters, classified ads, online job boards and now through the latest recruiting invention, the employment e-newsletter.

Steven Morgan, President and CEO of SalesRecruits.com explains, “Over time, the recruitment business has been refined by major vendors. Even though this kind of recruitment is still in its early stages of development, they are just beginning to see the amazing results and business growth due to this modern way of reaching a niche market, the employment newsletter.”

In the following interview, Morgan sheds light on the burgeoning business of online recruiting, and explains the importance of partnering to grow your audience and business.

Q. What is an employment e-newsletter?

A. To put things in perspective: when employment recruiting first became available on the Internet, it was in the form of job boards such as www.monster.com and www.hotjobs.com. These boards were considered an alternative to newspaper employment classified ads and are still being widely developed today. Over time, the recruitment business has been refined by major vendors, and currently employment e-newsletters are being published and delivered to a target audience. This type of recruiting is more akin to the classified sections in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or any other major newspaper, than to the job boards.

Q. Who is your target audience, and how do you continue to develop new readers?

A. Our e-newsletter, Software & IT Sales Employment Review, targets sales professionals in the software and technology industry. Frankly, we’re one of the handfuls of companies publishing this type of e-newsletter.

There are four main ways we build our mailing list:

1. We attend 70-75 software and IT tradeshows and industry conferences each year. When we’re there, we make our newsletter available to attendees interested in subscribing;

2. We make our employment e-newsletter available through our Web site: www.salesrecruits.com, one of the most heavily trafficked online job boards in the industry;

3. We also get a lot of pass-along distribution, people telling friends or colleagues about the e-newsletter; and

4. We have relationships with a lot of industry associations. The Chicago Software Association (CSA) makes our e-newsletters available to their members, as do many other associations throughout the U.S.

Q. How do partnerships affect your online recruiting efforts?

A. Partnerships are critical to us. We’re trying to reach a very narrow demographic, not just people in the software and tech industry. We want to reach sales professionals. To get in touch with more members of this specific niche, we have developed relationships with other organizations and associations that are already talking to our target audience.

Software Business, for instance, is a print publication distributed to thousands of software and tech sales professionals, six times a year. We have a partnership with the publisher for syndicating our articles. One or two of our top articles regularly appear in their print version publication.

Another example of partnering includes some of the most popular sales training firms, or marketing and advertising firms well-entrenched in the software industry. We offer a directory of service providers for those working in the software industry. In exchange for a listing, those partners offer a free subscription to our e-newsletter on their Web site.

To use the newspaper classified ad analogy again, we only want to be on the newsstands that have software and tech sales professionals walking by them. Rather than the New York Times, which reaches many types of professionals in many industries, we have to think through how to reach our specific audience. Thanks to partnerships and relationships, since our first issue in June of 2002, we have grown from 20,000 subscribers to over 80,000 subscribers.

Q.    What value does your employment e-newsletter provide?

A. Because our readers are hiring candidates and potential candidates for sales positions in the software industry, we’re giving our readers the inside track on what’s going on in this industry. By reading our e-newsletter, they find out who’s hiring: who the major software companies are, as well as news about some of the smaller and emerging companies. In addition, they get unique information about software companies with respect to their sales organizations. Other stories are based on exclusive interviews with CEOs and the top people in the types of companies they’re seeking. Why would people want to work with these companies? These exclusive interviews provide invaluable answers and details.

For example, Lawson software is a very large software company. If you look at any of the major periodicals, you’ll read about new product releases, major customer wins and product reviews; but chances are, you won’t read about job openings. You won’t find out what Lawson is looking for, or get information about the culture of the organization. Instead of relying on company speculation, our e-newsletter provides first-hand factual information.

Q. How do you earn your readers’ trust?

A. It’s the editorial content. At the end of the day, they either want to continue receiving the e-newsletter or they don’t. We work hard to develop loyal readers through our valuable editorial content and our job opening information. We track our readers to see what they want to read. Since our first issue, we’ve only had 0.05% opt out of their subscription to our e-newsletter. This very low rate is due to reaching the right audience and providing what they want to read.

Q. How does the e-newsletter affect people’s perception of your company?

A. It has had a very positive impact on our company. When we first published this e-newsletter, the purpose was not to get candidates, but that’s what it does for us now. I think it’s because we are seen as a stable information source. The funny thing is: many hiring managers, our competitors, have subscribed due to pass-along referrals, so they can track other companies. They respect our consistent coverage (our e-newsletter is distributed once a month), and are interested in getting new leads through the e-newsletter. For us, more than half of our business comes from people whom read our e-newsletter.

Q. How has using this sales tool affected your business?

A. Not only have the leads increased, but our revenue has grown. In the second half of 2002, our revenue increased approximately 40%. The e-newsletter is not the only reason our business expanded, but it definitely has made an impact. Prior to the e-newsletter, we were dependent on e-mail programs and sales calls, but none of these marketing programs were as effective as our e-newsletters. No other media would allow us to reach so many people in such a niche audience.

Q. Do you consider yourself one of the leaders in this trend to deliver employment e-newsletters?

A. I definitely consider us a leader. I should have felt that way when we started sending the e-newsletter, but I didn’t know the immediate impact it would have, not only on our business, but the industry. Now the largest software companies in the industry are coming to us looking for editorial coverage and signing up to receive our e-newsletter. This makes me certain. Now I have conviction we are leading the way for online recruitment.

Incidentally, in our November 2002 issue, at customer request, we started making display advertising available. Customers said we were reaching the audience they want to reach, and wanted to make use of our vehicle. Until our e-newsletter, these customers and potential clients hadn’t found any other publication reaching such a large niche audience. We’re now at a point where the display advertising is sold out in the first or second week of the month before the next issue comes out.

Q. What does the future of online business recruiting look like?

A. I think you’ll continue to see online job boards doing very well. We operate one of those. There is still a monumental shift going on from print advertising to online job boards. Customers know about leveraging the Internet for recruiting. This provides a substantially lower cost way to find talent and is more targeted compared to other methods of recruiting including print advertising and the most expensive way, traditional agencies with headhunters. No company wants to do that unless they have to.

Over the next five years, analysts predict that Internet business will grow by a factor of several billion dollars. I believe job boards will be refined, and many companies will follow us into online newsletter development and distribution. If you are a recruiter, you really can’t find a better marketing tool than the e-newsletter. Besides being a huge return on investment, it’s one of the most targeted tools available for recruiting today.

Steven Morgan is President and CEO of SalesRecruits.com, the leading online recruiting service focused exclusively on software and technology sales professionals. Tamara Halbritter is a writer for InternetVIZ, and is available for freelance assignments. InternetVIZ is a custom publisher for companies wishing to find, acquire, and retain customers through Internet newsletters.