Brazen careerist
Where ambitious young professionals connect and grow
Email
Print
Let’s face it; the job board industry is broken. 95% of jobs are filled through referrals, yet companies continue to pump billions of dollars into outdated job postings.
At Brazen Careerist, we’ve known this for years. In fact, this was one of the major reasons we created the site to begin with. Fixing a broken system is never as easy as it sounds, and being a single start-up company, we know we can’t do it on our own. However, today we’re taking our biggest and boldest step forward with the release of two new features; Employer Brand Pages and Brazen Jobs.
Employer brand pages give you a glimpse into the heart and soul of an organization, and let members chat directly with employees. Content from around the web is aggregated and displayed on the page for members to comment on, and employees are highlighted so anyone can connect with them to find out what really goes on behind the closed doors of an organization.
Job postings are boring and outdated, but they still do a good job of letting you know what positions are available at a given company; so we’re linking out to jobs that are relevant to our community of high achievers and self-starters.
Our hope is not to give you a big black hole where you can apply for a job. Rather, we want to give you a place where you can find a job you’re interested in, learn everything possible about the company culture, meet a few employees, and do what needs to be done to get a referral. Because, like I mentioned above, referrals are how you’ll really get a job.
Since day one at Brazen Careerist our dream has been to figure out how we can connect a high achieving community of young professionals directly with the company’s they should be working for. No one is doing this yet. Facebook pages do a great job of promoting a company product and overall brand, but they aren’t designed to show you the culture of an organization and Twitter’s 140 character limit is not designed for in-depth professional conversations.
If used right, Brazen Careerist Employer Brand Pages will do exactly what we set out to do. They’ll give you a glimpse into the heart and soul of an organization. They’ll show you what makes a company tick. They’ll let you know what employees really think of a company. And they’ll introduce you to the people who can actually help you get a job.
It’s a lofty goal, and to make it a reality, we need your help. If there’s no conversation from you – our community, companies won’t be interested, and they won’t bother to participate. But if you leave comments, ask questions, challenge the companies to truly show us what goes on inside, and reach out to current employees to get them involved, we can fundamentally change how people find work. And we can all find a career that we love in the process.
For more timely, relevant, and engaging articles,
subscribe to Brazen Careerist.
- How To Find a Writing Partner Who Can Help You Achieve Your Goals and Make More Money
- Why You Might Be Better Off Without a Job After College
- A New Kind of Business Mover and Shaker
- The Anti-Stalker’s Guide for Converting Online Contact into Real World Collaboration
- Continuing Education: Extending Learning Beyond Your Campus Years
Comments
01.14.10
Thanks for the explanation of the new features, Ryan. I think it definitely helps users understand tools much better with this type of insight! I look forward to utilizing them :)
01.14.10
95% of jobs are NOT hired through referrals. That statistic seems to be popping up everywhere and it is an abomination. The 95% figure is actually the percentage of employee referrals that make up the total number of referral hires.
The total percentage of referral hires? 25%. Company job boards are at about 20%, big job boards (monster, etc...) are at 10%.
http://www.zoominfo.com/about/resources/newsletter_article.aspx?articleI...
So it is a couple of years old but it hasn't changed that much. Are referrals important? Absolutely. But it should be part of a broader search strategy that includes *gulp* searching company job boards and those big job boards as well.
01.14.10
Thanks for the comments!
@Beth - glad the explanation could help a bit. If you have any questions going forward don't hesitate to ask.
@Lance - Thanks for the link. While from an HR perspective I can see how 25% of jobs are filled through referral hires, this can't possibly take into account the fact that unless you simply find a job at a career fair or through searching Monster, someone has to refer you to a job posting, or refer you to someone who you can than send an application to etc. While these aren't necessarily classified as "referrals" to HR they still involve the action of people talking with people to find a job. I know this 95% stat comes from an old WSJ article that I can't find at the moment, but I'll keep looking!
Regardless of the actual stat, the main point is that the best way to get a job you really want is to get it through someone you know. Like Seth Godin just wrote, by the time a job reaches a job board or career fair, it's definitely an "average" job and its probably a job you don't want.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/career-fairs.html
01.14.10
These sound like two amazing new features. Thanks for sending out the email and alerting me to them! Being on the job hunt myself I'm always a bit worried about the culture of some companies that I find myself interacting with. Hopefully the Brazen Careerist community will make use of these new tools and make the process less of a crap shoot!
01.14.10
Looks like Brazen is on it's way to being Linkedin's competitor ;-) Great new features Ryan! I can certainly benefit from these additions. Look forward to more developments at Brazen Careerist!
01.14.10
Brilliant brilliant brilliant idea guys! Am happy someone's finally doing something about those idiotic job boards. Like the creativity :)
01.14.10
How does a company embrace this and make their own company page? Are you limiting it to the first 50 only? You could facilitate discussions between Gen Y and many employers if you opened it up this way.
01.14.10
@Justin hopefully these pages can show you more about the company cultures before you send in applications. Once we get some employees on here, you'll truly be able to look inside the organizations.
@Sabera I wouldn't go so far as to say a "competitor." More like, a great compliment!
@Marian Thanks! Glad you like the idea so much, we think it has a lot of potential as we continue to build them out.
@Cory It's definitely not limited to the Top 50, that was just a starting point. The goal is to facilitate this conversation on a mass scale. Companies can contact us and we can get it all set up.
01.14.10
Good luck finding that article. Not only is it impossible that the 95% figure is correct across all employers, the WSJ is notoriously difficult to search.
This isn't about my perspective from HR either. Even the most liberal use of the word "referral" still would not account for 95% of hires. Not even close. Strangers with no connection to a company get jobs all of the time. Not 5%, not 10%. People can't seem to get over that fact.
Yes, as I stated, referrals are important. Knowing someone is important. But to think that's the only strategy (or anywhere close to 95% of the strategy) is misleading. It should be part of a larger strategy. One that includes using job boards and other advertisements. Sheesh.
I know it is not cool or elite to say that you either hired or got a job through a big job board. I don't know too many people that like those things. And while they are certainly regressing, advertisements of one sort or another will continue to be important.
01.14.10
@Lance good point, WSJ is impossible to search!
Referrals definitely are not the only way to get a job, but they certainly give you a much better chance of landing one than a random application. That's really what we're trying to do here, give people tools that let you be proactive about your job search and don't require you to just "apply and pray."
01.14.10
The bar across the bottom with the company pages is good but why do you mix in the non-company networks? The "We're Hiring" network makes sense but if someone is looking for companies with job postings why would they want to click on the Personal branding network or Washington DC network?
It's like advertising links to football teams and including basketball and baseball teams. If it's company scroll, include companies. If it's a job services scroll, include only job services stuff. It's a random promotion scroll, than stick in random stuff.
01.16.10
Good point Dead Hedge. I'll have to think about how to handle that, but I can see how it could be a bit confusing.
Ryan
01.18.10
Ryan, good luck on the venture. PS - By the time Seth Godin writes about something, it's average.
01.18.10
Thanks, Laurie! Very funny :)
Got Something To Say?
Got Something To Say?
Not a Member? Brazen Careerist is a career management tool for next-generation professionals. Set up a free account today to comment on this post and start sharing your ideas. Learn more.
Login to view your networks!
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
