How this blog got me in Fortune Magazine

Well, around a month or two ago, I started writing more regular posts on this blog. There really isn't much of a purpose to having this blog other than it helps me learn about publishing, advertising, SEO, and content.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a Fortune magazine writer that was researching how small businesses use the iPhone. Apparently if you google "iphone small business", this blog comes up second. The reporter found the blog, contacted me and we set up a time to talk. When the article came out, it had this quote from me.

"I use my iPhone to react to information, but not for active tasks," says Rohin Dhar, owner of Personforce, a creator of online job boards. "Typing on it is really hard."

You can checkout the full article here. I have no idea whether the article came out in print.

So is blogging worth it? Well, the publicity generated from a quote in Fortune was . . . absolutely zero. No bump in traffic, no friend encountering it and emailing me, no inbound link, nothing really. I guess this bodes poorly for traditionally media...

A TechCrunch for the recruiting industry?

It's sort of a bummer there is no TechCrunch for the recruiting industry. TechCrunch covers the latest news about web startups and established tech companies. It's a great blog to follow to find out what companies are being started, funded, acquired, as well as information about larger tech firms. I personally like the fact that TechCrunch takes an opinion on the news because I think it's generally an informed opinion.

Unfortunately, there is no TechCrunch for the recruiting industry. There is no site that intelligently covers hot startups in the jobs and recruitment space and that's a shame. Of course there are a few blogs out their about recruiting, but no publication of record (that i know of; if you know of one, let me know).

So why is there no TechCrunch for recruiting? Is it:

1. People don't care about recruiting startups?
2. It's too small a niche?
3. The recruiting industry is bereft of talented startups and sharp writers?

So, anyone out there know of any good blogs that cover and analyze recruiting startups? Heck, if recruiting startups out there contact me, I'll even review your company here. Let's hope that in the next year a sharp blog comes out that provides objective analysis about recruiting startups.

Scarcity Brings Clarity - a good startup quote

A great quote from Sergey Brin about conducting business in an economic downturn in Google's 2008 Founders Letter:

"Nonetheless, I am optimistic about the future, because I believe scarcity breeds clarity: it focuses minds, forcing people to think creatively and rise to the challenge."

It's the same reason why Toyota tries to carry zero inventory - when you're operating without a safety net, you better operate correctly.

Official Google Blog: The 2008 Founders' Letter

A job search tool for finding MBA jobs

At Personforce we recently enhanced our jobs page to allow people to browse jobs by tags. Basically, now when an employer posts a job, they have to tag it with keywords. By doing so, it makes it easier for job seekers to find and browse related jobs. Each tag page also serves as a "mini job board" that job seekers can bookmark and return to to find relevant jobs.

So now that we have these tag pages on Personforce, I thought I'd highlight some of the mini job boards that can point you towards finding MBA jobs.

MBA Job Board - a collection of jobs where MBAs are a requirement
Analyst Job Board - a variety of junior and senior financial positions
Accounting Job Board - jobs requiring accounting degrees
Advertising Job Board - a broad range of jobs in the advertising industry
Business Development Job Board - the sweet spot for MBAs - business development jobs!
Business Statistics Job Board - less of a sweet spot for MBAs - business statistics jobs!
Intern Job Board - junior and senior intern positions
Internship Job Board - ditto
CEO Job Board - "CEO" jobs (though most real CEO jobs are posted on job boards)
Cleantech Job Board - the industry of the hour for business school students, cleantech
Marketing Job Board - marketing jobs for business school students and anyone really
Finance Job Board - a broad selection of finance jobs
Sales Job Board - a broad selection of sales jobs
Sales Vice President Job Board - vp of sales jobs
and more job boards by tag

Hopefully this can help in your MBA job search!

Wharton interview questions & tips

From my old business school admissions files.

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Wharton interview tips (Do's and Don'ts)

Do's

Be self-confident and be yourself:
The best answer for how to prepare or do an interview comes from the adcom member of a b-school. She answered the question, “ Just recognize how great you are. Be self-confident, be yourself, and show him/her who you are.”

Answer in real, professional terms:
When you are asked about the hypothetical situation in terms of teamwork or leadership, try to speak in real, professional terms.

how an interviewer how well-informed you are of the school:
If you are interested in international perspective of the Wharton, tell him/her which programs or classes can help develop your career in detail. Do not forget How & Why

Imprint your strength into an interviewer:
If your strength is “passionate” (it is mine.  my nick name is “Walking Energizer!”), then show him/her your passion. What you are passionate for, What you have done for it, Why you are passionate for it, How it has changed your life, and How your passion is related to the decision to go to Wharton.

Big Smile & Positive thinking:
Never bother yourself with what you have already said during the interview. Even if you made a stupid mistake in your eye, the interviewer might think you are cool just because of it. Think positively.

Don’ts

Never pass the fine line between self-confidence and arrogance:
As you already know well, Wharton is looking for down-to-earth types of people. While you need to remember how great you are, you also need to keep in mind how great other peers are. It might not be anything wrong even if you are so confident of your accomplishment. However, do not overact to impress the interviewer.

Do not bring up GMAT unless asked:
Unless asked, you may not want to bring up GMAT. It wouldn’t matter whether your score is 800 or 600. 30 minutes are too short time even to articulate your passion and goal. You may not want waste your time talking about vague numbers. And then it may have a negative result.

Be ready but do not rehearse:
Unintentionally you might need to make up a story because of a lack of readiness. Study your resume enough. Think about your life-past and future. Be fully ready to answer any question. Sometimes we hear applicants were too nervous to remember the name of an author whose book they had read recently when asked. Check every stuff, which will be asked. However, Don’t rehearse the answer over and over. The interviewer can tell when people do this



Sample Wharton interview questions:

WORK EXPERIENCE/CAREER GOALS

Walk me through your post-undergraduate work experience and describe transitions you’ve made.

Tell me about the person with whom you have least enjoyed working. How did this relationship function?

What are some of the frustrations/rewards you've experienced as a manager?

What are your plans if you’re not accepted into an MBA program of your choice?

Of what accomplishment at work are you most proud?

Describe your ideal work environment.

How do you vent work-related stress?

How does your current job relate to your career goals, where does an MBA fit in?

Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years?

WHY MBA/WHY MBA NOW/WHY Wharton

Tell me about the decision to get here – to apply for an MBA.
Why now?

Why do you feel you are a good fit for the school and vice versa?
What kind of value do you can add to the Wharton?

PERSONAL QUALITIES

Describe a difficult team environment in which you have been involved and how you responded to it.

What role do you usually play in-group situations and give some examples?

What happens when you feel strongly about an idea that a majority of your group is against?

Tell me about a conflict you had with a co-worker. How was it resolved?

Tell me about specific situations in which you’ve had a leadership role.

How would others describe your leadership style? Would you agree with this assessment?

If you suddenly had an afternoon off, what would you do with it?

In what non-job related activities do you participate? Describe your involvement.

OTHERS

Is there anything else you would like the Admissions Committee to know about you?

Is there anything you would have liked me to ask you that I didn't?

What would you say is the greatest weakness in your application?

AOL acquires resume-builiding site Emurse

I somehow missed this, but AOL acquired resume building site Emurse last month. Emurse allows you to build, store, and share your resume online. The design of the site looks excellent and it looks like an easy to use tool for job seekers.

Great to see some acquisitions going on in the recruiting space. As far as I can tell, the founders of the company were former AOL employees who struck out on their own before being acquired by their former bosses. No word on the purchase price, but I imagine it was enough to make the founders quite happy. Congrats!

Stack Overflow will become a recruiting site

And Dice will be screwed. So will technical recruiters. That's my guess anyway.

I just watched part of a presentation by Joel Spolsky at Google about his startup StackOverflow.com. Stack Overflow is sort of a Yahoo Answers for programming questions. During the presentation, Joel hints that in the future the site could help connect programmers with jobs.

Since Stack Overflow members answer specific programming questions, the site knows exactly what technical skills its members possess. This will make it a far more valuable data resource than Dice's resume database. Instead of companies buying access to an unwieldy database, they can probably pay to connect with programmers who actually demonstrate prowess on the site. Through the job board on his blog, he probably has direct relationships with thousands of employers already.

Moreover, I have a feeling that Joel probably doesn't like the fact that technical recruiters are so important in recruiting engineering talent and charge such high fees. My guess is he'll try to leverage the data created by Stack Overflow to disintermediate Dice and technical recruiters as well. We'll see how it plays out.

Should you apply to business school?

The other day, I was thinking about why I decided to go to the business school. Perhaps, I'll touch on that in another post, but I thought it would be interesting to list some of the important questions to consider before applying to business school.

If you are thinking about applying to MBA programs this fall, I'd encourage you to think through these questions:

1. What is the exact mechanism by which an MBA will improve your quality of life or career?
2. Do you envision your current job becoming your long-term career?
3. Are there gaping holes in your business knowledge that can be filled by book learning?
4. Can you afford business school right now?
5. What is the exact ROI you are forecasting from getting an MBA?
6. Does applying to school this year fit with your personal life right now?
7. Is this the year you can put together your best application?
8. What non-monetary benefits do you think spending time in business school will provide?
9. What are your alternatives to going to business school?
10. If you didn't get in to your top choice business schools, would you still get an MBA?
11. If you want to take a break from work, what other options can you pursue other than business school?

Selling eBooks on your blog

Recently, I encountered two articles that made a combined impression on me. They were both related to internet marketing and the process of customer acquisition, conversion, and product fulfillment.

The first was a fascinating article about selling eBooks to monetize traffic on your blog or website. It describes a website called "Parrot Secrets", that provides information about caring for parrots and makes about $400,000 a year selling eBooks about parrots. For all I know the story could be completely made up, but I found it instructive.

Now most people that have a blog or website about Parrots probably would think it would be next to impossible to profit from the traffic. Selling an eBook about how to take care of your parrot was an interesting angle I never would have considered. It seems to provide value to the consumer while compensating the site owner.

Most interesting to me about the eBook is you are selling a product. Because you are a selling a product with fixed prices and fixed margins (95%!), you can model traffic acquisition costs and conversion rates to know exactly how much you would pay for a visitor. Once you know exactly how much a visitor is worth to you, you can buy traffic that costs less than that amount. The extent to which this is a large market and traffic is relatively inexpensive, you can grow the business. In otherwords, eBooks scale.

The other article I recently encountered was an interview with the ShoeMoney guy. I just found it interesting how he was able to build consumer marketing businesses. He originally built a site around mobile phone wallpaper and ringtones, and then tried about a million different ways to monetize it. Nothing earth shattering, but it was interesting to hear the process of how he built the business.

Anyhow, both the articles made me think it would be an amazing learning experience to write an eBook and learn the customer acquisition economics inside and out. It would probably be a cheap education!

Are US social networks communist and Chinese ones capitalist?

It occurred to me the other day that on Facebook, it doesn't matter how much money you have. The service is free and taking advantage of all of its features is free too. In fact, it's quite difficult to tell who on Facebook is rich and who is poor; we are all equal citizens in the Facebook commune.

In the real world, it obviously does matter how much money you have. Moreover, it is easy to tell who is rich and who is poor. People send signals about their affluence from their clothes, cars, housing, and almost all the physical goods they consume. Facebook, on the other hand offers almost no clues into your financial status because there is almost nothing to consume.

While US social networks appear to have achieved a near Utopian existence, Chinese social networks are capitalist hotbeds. The Chinese social network Qzone earns nearly a billion dollars a year from the sale of virtual goods. On this social network, it matters how much money you have; the affluent can purchase more scarce virtual goods to decorate their profiles and the poor cannot. If you are poor in real world China, you are poor in social network China. How is that for communism?

Our experience on Facebook today may be the garden before the fall. As virtual goods offer perhaps the best way to monetize social networks, I imagine it will be tempting for Facebook to taste the (virtual) apple. If that happens, I think we'll look back on these early days of social networking fondly.

Did Google just kill LinkedIn's biggest feature?

Interesting new feature from Google - people search! Now you can create your own public profile on Google. When you google your name (or someone else's name) you will see specific profile search results that include your Google profile.

When you Google most peoples' names, usually their LinkedIn profile comes up. Going forward, I guess this will be replaced by your Google profile. This is probably a net-negative for LinkedIn and other vertical search engines that specialize in "people search". Will sites like ZoomInfo, Spokeo, Pipl go by the wayside?


Official Google Blog: Search for "me" on Google

Google + Freebase = Structured Data Goodness

Pretty neat to see that Google is using Freebase to add structured data to the news. It looks like Google is using the semantic webs service to understand when a particular news story is about a book, movie or TV show.

For example, if you search for Philip Roth you can see a timeline of his books from Freebase. You can click through and find related topics and even buy the book from Amazon.

I wonder if we are starting to see the emergence of sites that actually "aware" of the type of content they are producing and how it relates to other items on the web.

Google News Blog: Introducing Google News Timeline

This struck a chord

I actually think I saw Eric talk my last semester at the GSB when we did the IMVU case in Andy Rachleff's class on aligning startups and markets. The case (and Steve Blank's book) were really instrumental in shaping my thinking as we designed Personforce. Get a product in the market fast and iterate based on customer feedback was the overall gist of the IMVU case.

Eric has a great post about renewable/predictable revenue that demonstrates compelling customer-level economics versus revenue that is a result of inspired salesmanship.

It made me think very hard about where our revenue comes from and figure out what camp we're in. The short answer is we started off in the salesmanship camp, now we're a bit of a hybrid, and hopefully we're moving into the predictable revenue camp. Eric's post below definitely struck a chord with me.

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Omid Kordestani (business founder at Google) steps down

An interesting note in today's Google earnings announcement was that its business founder, Omid Kordestani is stepping down. Omid was a Stanford GSB alum and he spoke at the school one time when I was there.

When Kordestani got to Google, they had no revenue and no business model. He experimented with a lot of different revenue models at Google before they figured out that text link advertisement was a winner. If they hadn't figured that out, it's unlikely Google would be anywhere today.

The Google founders had a great technology insight - links can be used as a voting mechanism to rank search results. Kordestani had a breakthrough business insight- when someone is looking for something, it's a heck of a time to serve them an advertisement. Other companies (like Overture) tried similar things, but Kordestani really proved that monetizing search intent was a "homerun".

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Recent Developments – After ten years of building and managing our global sales and partnership operations, Omid Kordestani has decided to hand over the reins to Nikesh Arora, currently President of International Operations, and take on a new role as Senior Advisor, Office of the CEO and Founders. Continued growth is essential to our future success and no one is better placed to advise on new revenue opportunities than Omid, the business founder of Google. In his new role as President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development, Nikesh Arora will have responsibility for all Google's revenue and customer operations, as well as marketing and partnerships. He has a proven track record at Google, having spent the last four and a half years building our European operations into a substantial business.

Social Networks and Finding a Job

I spoke to my friend Christian today about a paper he was writing for a class at HBS about how social networks were affecting job search and recruiting sites.

Some random points I jotted down about my thoughts on how social networking will affect finding a job:

1. Social networks offer reach and targeting. That makes them equally useful to a company's marketing department as recruiting department. In that way, social networking isn't differentially impacting recruiting more so than other functions.

2. Social networks don't attract users that have "search intent for jobs."

3. Search sites (vertical search, Google) are probably more disruptive to the industry in my opinion.

4. LinkedIn is monumentally useful for job search, but isn't really a social network in my opinion. LinkedIn is a big database of contacts so it's useful for finding people.

5. Candidates find jobs through people with which they have strong ties (friends and family), loose ties (friends of friends), or no ties (strangers). Job boards specialize in finding the jobs in the "no ties" department so are less affected by social networking. Social networking can increase the number of people in the "loose ties" group though.

6. New information such recommendations and people's social networking "fingerprints" may become part of the job application.

Endless entertainment at Google

A very neat post on the Google blog. I think a lens like this would provide endless amounts of entertainment:

Official Google Blog: Will it lens?: "We've got more details and more pictures of our results on Alan's personal blog. If you have ideas of other things we should try lensing, we'd love to hear suggestions."

Kumo.com showing up in my google analytics

Rumor has it that Microsoft will be launching a new search engine called Kumo.com. This morning when I was checking the Google Analytics of this blog, I noticed that Kumo.com was referring traffic to the this site.

See source #6 in the chart below. Not sure if this means anything (or if it's always been there), but it stood out to me. Does this mean Kumo.com is about to launch? Your guess is probably better than mine.

Are paid job postings sites dead?

Running Personforce has caused me to think about whether employers will continue to pay money to post jobs in the future. There are a lot of reasons to think they won't. That has significant implications for the recruiting industry and means that sites like CareerBuilder and Monster might not be around in a few years.

1. All job postings are available through Google for free. If a company can post a job to its own site and people can find it through Google, it is less likely to pay money to post a job to a big site.

2. All job postings are available through vertical search engines like SimplyHired or Indeed also. Companies can post jobs to their own websites and they'll show up in vertical search engines as well as a google. Another reason not to pay to post jobs.

3. Any job site can offer an index of all the jobs on the web through Indeed, SimplyHired, or Google's API. On Personforce you can find all the jobs on our network + about 2 million more posted on the web. This means almost any site can offer more job postings than Monster.com or CareerBuilder.

4. Big job sites don't offer the ability to target specific population. Sites like Facebook or TechCrunch give you a much better ability to target exactly the kind of jobseeker you want. Big sites might offer applicant flow, but don't really offer any way to target desirable audiences.

5. Craigslist is free or mostly free.

That's not to say that paid job postings are definitely going away. However, I can't really think of any countervailing forces that will prevent these trends from further growing.

Twitter Report: Most of my followers are spambots

Well, a couple of weeks ago we started twittering at Personforce. Well, we haven't started twittering exactly. We mostly just publish some job listings on it and a few random tidbits. We haven't really started engaging in "conversations" per say.

Without really doing anything on twitter, we seem to be picking up a few followers every day. I'd say these followers fall into two categories: spambots and kind of spammy marketers. The spambot types don't appear to post anything, they just follow people. The marketers mostly twitter about twittering. They tend of have names like Tweet4Traffic and GreatAbs. Some people appear to just post links to ther sites and i'm not sure if they are humans (or dancer).

Well, that's the two week twitter report. We haven't quite connected with any real people yet, but let's wait and see!

You can follow Personforce here.

SEO caused Get Satisfaction to do bad things

This week, the company 37 Signals railed against the website Get Satisfaction for misleading users into thinking that Get Satisfaction was handling the the customer support function for 37 Signals. Get Satisfaction helps companies set up their own customer support and feedback function. A company can pay Get Satisfaction to get an nice customer feedback page on GetStatisfaction.com where the company can provide customer support.

However, Get Satisfaction set up customer feedback pages for companies that didn't want one (or pay for one). In this case, Get Satisfaction set up a page for 37 Signals (without its permission) that implied that customer support issues about 37 Signals products could be addressed from this page.

Users would Google the term "37 Signals customer support" and the Get Satisfaction page for 37 Signals would come up. Users would leave customer support requests thinking this was official channel to reach 37 Signals. Of course it wasn't, so these requests when unanswered by the company. When 37 Signals found out their customers were being misled in this fashion, they were furious.

So why would Get Satisfaction set up fake customer support pages for companies that didn't want them? I think this is a classic case of companies doing bad things for the sake of search engine optimization (SEO). The company realized that they tend to show up on the Google Results for "customer support" so they set up a bunch of pages that people might google: Customer support of Comcast", "Customer Support for 37 Signals", etc.

I'd hard to believe that Get Satisfaction would have created these fake pages for any other reason than to get increased traffic from Google. It definitely makes me think more carefully about the implications of trying to create content to get more search engine traffic.