On the beach: what happened at IAEWS and ERE 2011

One problem with the internet in general and social media in particular is that you have fewer reasons to leave the office. After all, if I’m swapping Tweets with @Animal or @HRMargo all day, do I really want to spend ‘real’ time with them?

Well, actually, yes. It’s fun to meet the living, breathing version of these virtual friends. And what’s even more fun is to learn new stuff and hear interesting news and gossip.

That’s where the IAEWS / ERE conferences come in. Last week I was fortunate enough to spend the better part of a week in Hollywood, Florida. I even saw the ocean from the conference balcony a few times!

But along the way I picked up some interesting tidbits. So now, in no particular order, are some things I learned and/or observed:

• An Indeed rep I talked with claimed they had more than 1 million resumes in the hopper – but also claimed to have no idea what would be done with them. Hmm…
• ERE and its sponsors put out some of the more appetizing conference food I’ve had – a welcome respite from ‘rubber chicken’.
• Comscore said that 35% of all internet activity is related to careers. Bodes well for the continued survival of job boards…
• Some job boards said they were getting 3 times the traffic from Indeed as compared to SimplyHired
• JobTarget’s Cindy Songe had kind words for some job board Facebook pages, including Jobing, VetJobs, College Recruiter, and ChicagoJobs.
• Dice’s Mike Durney talked about acquisitions, both big and small; “Dice is always looking” (hint, hint)
• The presence of Juju, Indeed, TopUSAJobs, and SimplyHired made the ERE Expo floor feel more like Aggregator Central
• Wise words from Parallon Workforce’s Tony Pentangelo, who liked niche sites for their focus and cost-effectiveness, and who used social media for branding – not recruiting.
• Lots of discussion about the role ATSs play in employer satisfaction – or dissatisfaction. Some boards saw 60% of their traffic driven to ATSs.
• Verizon claimed it was getting 3.5% of its hires from Facebook; my question: where are the other 96.5% coming from?
• U.S. job boards are still addicted to aggregator traffic; most are getting 23% of their total inbound traffic from them.

Overall, if you’re a job board operator, it’s worth your while to attend at least one IAEWS/ERE conference. You’ll walk away knowing more than you did before, and you’ll be able to learn what some of the top recruiters out there are thinking.

And, as I mentioned, the food is pretty good.

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