After the session I received a call from a CEO in our industry, who runs a legit operation, thanking me for how we had the nerve to go after the bad apples in our ‘space.’  I appreciated the call.

Toby does a much better job of addressing some of these issues than me.  His post yesterday on Diggings explained the Money Mules concept running rampant on typical job boards.  All I can say is:  Pass It On.  Please.  Here is part of his post, but jump over and read the entire article if you have a moment.

Lest anyone accuse us of hyperbole, I thought I’d write a post about ‘Money Mules.’

Money mules are people that unwittingly use their bank accounts to help criminals launder money. Money mules are recruited through work-at home job postings on Monster and Careerbuilder with titles such as ‘Financial Manager’ and a job description that involves ‘moving money for an international company.’ These new recruits then provide their bank account information to their ‘employer’ and are told to withdraw cash that has been deposited into their account at a specific time and wire it abroad via Western Union or Moneygram.

Brian Krebs, a reporter at The Washington Post from 1994 to 2009 has written extensively on this issue and has exposed hundreds of these scams. I would strongly recommend that anyone looking for a job online as well as those offering advice for job seekers take some time to read his outstanding work highlighting this fraudulent activity. A few of his blog posts can be found here and here and here. I’ve also included portions of those posts below that relate to the scam listings on Monster and Careerbuilder:

“…Money mules are recruited through work-at-home job offers that arrive via e-mail, usually claiming that the prospective employer found the recipient’s resume’ on careerbuilder.com, monster.com, or some other job search site. Recruits are told they will be helping to move money for international companies, and are asked to provide their bank account and routing numbers so that they can receive incoming transfers.”

“…The Sanford mule — who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals by the hacked company and perhaps by the hackers themselves — said the Scope Group approached her via e-mail, saying it had found her resume on Careerbuilder.com, and would she be interested in a work-at-home job acting as a “financial manager”? Having worked as a payroll manager in a previous job, the mule said she thought it was a perfect fit. Besides, she said, she’d been out of work since March.”

“…This type of crime is impossible without the cooperation of so-called “money mules,” willing or unwitting individuals typically hired via Internet job search Web sites to act as “local agents” or “financial agents” responsible for moving money on behalf of a generic-sounding international corporation, legal experts say.The mules are then instructed to withdraw the cash and wire it via Western Union or Moneygram to fraud gangs overseas, typically in Eastern Europe. It is not uncommon for a single cyber robbery to depend on the help of dozens of money mules…”

Fraudulent job listings on traditional pay-to-post job sites are a serious risk, and the industry has to be more vocal about educating the public about using sites such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed, and Simplyhired.

The Department of Labor will release its jobs report for December tomorrow, and the data will undoubtedly show that the economy is a long way from healthy recovery mode. Economists are expecting that the U.S. economy actually added jobs during the month, marking the first monthly job gains since December of 2007. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index, which rose again in December, adds a faint glimmer of hope that this might be the case.

Not a chance.

If LinkUp’s data is any indication, the U.S. economy is still on life support and job growth remains a mirage. LinkUp, a job search engine that only indexes job listings that are found exclusively from over 20,000 corporate websites around the U.S., released its December jobs report today and the news is grim. Job listings on company websites in the LinkUp index dropped by 108,837 (24%) from November. Total job listings on company websites dropped by 142,641 (17%).

LinkUp is not simply a predictor of information. It is a quite valuable tool for job seekers who understand that one of the best ways to find a new job is to find the job on the company website. In fact, we have created all sorts of tools that will help the job seeker and the relevant company. From our IPhone app (now in the top 33 of all free business apps), to our Facebook app (Current Jobs at Our Company), we are constantly improving the job seeker experience…and the likelihood that he or she can find a job. (BTW, about 70% of the jobs on LinkUp are not advertised elsewhere.)

So the next time you search for a new opening on SimplyHired or Indeed, remember to check out LINKUP next. Simply Hired and Indeed aggregate jobs from job boards…a good idea in its day…but as they say, Garbage In, Garbage Out.

For media types, you can get the inside LINKUP information ahead of the Department of Labor by calling us.

by Toby Dayton

Marty Brack, in a recent ERE post, provides an excellent case study in rethinking traditional methods of recruitment advertising. In the test, he analyzed the cost per quality resume using both Careerbuilder and LinkedIn. Not surprisingly, given how horrendously Careerbuilder and Monster (the 2 most bloated, polluted, antiquated, pay-to-post behemoths) typically perform for employers, LinkedIn delivered far superior results. LinkedIn provided almost as many applicants as Careerbuilder, but a higher percentage of their candidates were qualified for the positions advertised. This resulted in a much lower cost per quality candidate and therefore a much higher ROI. In addition to just providing solid information, the article delivers 3 important lessons for recruiters, employers, and even job seekers.

1) While the hype can seem excessive, and in some cases it probably is, social media has become an essential, mandatory component of recruiting efforts and companies must be thinking both strategically and tactically about how they can best leverage it. (One simple example would include automatically publishing jobs from a company’s career portal on their corporate website onto their company’s Facebook Fan Page using the Facebook application Current Jobs At Our Company).

2) Just because someone has used Careerbuilder and Monster forever (and maybe, circa 1997, they even worked), it doesn’t automatically mean that the decision to continue using pay-to-post job boards is a good one or makes any sense in today’s environment. As people used to say about the daily newspaper, no one ever got fired for placing an employment classified in the daily newspaper. That is, until someone else eventually looked at the recruitment advertising budget, questioned why the company was spending $750 or more per week for a black and white liner ad that no one saw, and decided that it was time to bring in some fresh thinking regarding talent acquisition strategies. The same thing is happening now with the job boards.

Only 3% of jobs are filled by ‘mega’ job boards such as Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs. They are not only expensive and bloated, but they simply do not deliver quality candidates. Equally as detrimental for employers, the pay-to-post job boards are filled with old, outdated job listings, work-at-home scams, phishing jobs, scam jobs, identity theft postings, and other garbage listings which seriously erode the user experience and potentially a company’s employment branding. This means, as well, that aggregators such as Indeed and Simplyhired that do nothing more than mash all of those bloated, polluted databases into a giant pile of garbage are equally as counter-productive.

There are better, cheaper, more efficient, more effective, and more transparent ways to advertise for jobs. And job search engines such as LinkUp, which only indexes jobs from company websites, offer a performance-based, per-click model so employers only pay for those job seekers that are delivered straight to the company’s career portal on their company website.

3) In the same way that Google and search engine marketing have driven greater transparency and data into the world of advertising, the same is happening in recruitment advertising. Employers must not only critically analyze where quality candidates are coming from and determine which strategies and advertising channels are delivering those quality candidates, but then also allocate resources accordingly. Companies that neglect to do so will simply not be as competitive as those that are.

Every marketer wants to find the magic way to financial heaven, and the rage is all twittering now, so that must be it.  Toby Dayton in his DIGGINGS blog analyzes just one of the industries now fully engaging twitterers on Twitter.

His analysis should be read with an eye toward your own business and category.  Or are you blinding following the herd of lemmings off the cliff?

Here is the link to his post….and here is something on US NEWS today that also references it.

Richard Davis, a supporter, got to witness and participate in the eagle’s release off a Mississippi River bluff. As he held the eagle close to his chest, its inch-long talons digging into the protective vest, Richard was acutely aware of the bird’s energy, its natural urgings to fly. As he dropped the eagle out of his arms and off the cliff, the eagle fell (just like they said it would do), but it almost immediately started to fly. Its wings beat the air gracefully, its lessons learned well. They had told Richard that exactly two seconds into the flight, the eagle would cease beating his wings and begin to soar. At one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, the bird stopped flapping and wings spread wide, soared away; beautiful, inspiring, majestic.

When Richard asked how they knew that the bird would stop flapping at exactly the two-second point, was there some kind of bird-gene at work? No, they said. When they were teaching it to fly, that was the length of the tether rope. During training flights, when the eagle had reached the end of the rope, it was yanked back. It always took exactly two seconds. The yank-back was expected, and the eagle allowed for it. Absent the yank-back now and soaring over the Mississippi River, it didn’t take the bird long to realize he was free. He would never return to the safety of the Raptor Center.

We all have eagles in our companies, some soaring already, some in training. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could tell exactly when each one was ready, if there were a two-second rule for people and not just eagles, if the ropes were all the same length and management could be as predictable as training eagles to fly.

(hat tip: Toby)