Recently in Opinion Category
Today I was shared a blog post via Mixx from xrrg.com concerning the new service NotchUp.com. Their service is confusingly simple. You provide your resume to a pool that employers can search through. Instead of paying a recruiter, the employer can pay you for interviewing with them if they feel you are a good match for their position and the price is right. Interview costs are set per individual, ranging from $75 to $5000.I recieved a beta invite to the service this weekend from a friend I haven't had any contact with in quite some time. At first I was happy that this person thought of me to send the invite, maybe he knew I was in the job market. Then puzzlement took over when I investigated the site and read who their targeted audience was. Their homepage states: "NotchUp is for you if: - you're happy at your job; - you're good at what you do; and - you're not looking for a new job." Well that doesn't fit me so why did my friend invite me?
AHHH I SEE. As you register you come to a part where you can import your LinkedIn profile. This was a great addition as you don't have to refill out the monotonous forms that every job board requires. After that part of the registration it asks if you want to import your LinkedIn contacts so they can send invites to the service...AND OH BY THE WAY...you get 10% of any commissions earned by your referrals. BINGO! Thats how I received my invite. There was nothing personal in sending it, just the easy reward of a possible commission by allowing a service to take a portion of my social graph and spamming it.
I would highly advise anyone, both prospects and employees, to stay away from this or similar services using this model.
For the employee you are taking an immediate risk right from the start. The service targets people that are happy with their current jobs and not looking to move. Will you really pay $500 or more to interview someone that doesn't want to change jobs?
For the normal user, is that how you want your social network to be utilized? Networks built on LinkedIn and others social sites are built with trust. Services like NotchUp misuse that trust and should not be rewarded for their effort. I hate to use the term pyramid scheme here but if the shoe fits...
What do you think?
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Cyber Monday unofficially marks the start of the online holiday season
where consumers hit the online markets, normally from the comfort of
their offices, to purchase what they were unable to obtain on Black
Friday. The accuracy of Cyber Monday's boast are under contention but
there is no doubt it marks a major day for online retailers with this
years numbers reaching a record $733 million.During this year's Cyber Monday, Yahoo Small Business experienced an approximately 12 hour outage. To be fair their services were down for 7 hours with another 5 hours of degraded functionality. Here's a timeline of the issues from Yahoo's status page:
- On Monday at 6:00AM PT, the systems that power our merchant stores experienced outages, and shoppers of those stores were met with either error messages or they were unable to complete the checkout process.
- These issues lasted until about 1:00PM PT when, despite slow performance, transactions began going through at a much higher rate.
- By 6:00 PM PT things were back to normal and the performance of our systems was at 100%.
On the following Wednesday, Rich Riley (SVP, Online Channel Division) posted a mea culpa.
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We have apologized to our merchant partners for the impact that this service interruption had on their business and their customers at this busy time of year. As a token of our commitment to them, we have communicated with them our intent to waive all sales transaction fees for the month of November.
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The success of our merchants’ business is extremely important to us, and we are committed to work as hard as we can, over and above the efforts already underway, to avoid such issues in the future.
I waited to post this for a week to see if this was going to be the extent of Yahoo's response. It was. Their idea of recompense for a complete day's loss of revenue on one of the busiest shopping days of the year is to refund one month of sales transaction fees.
Does this remind anyone else of the Capital One commercials with the old school corporate banker trying not to be bothered by the minuscule small business owner? Should we not expect one of the internet's leading provider of services to be more responsive and caring toward their own customers? With over $13 billion spent online so far this holiday season, how confident should a small business be that Yahoo will allow their uninterrupted participation in the marketplace?
Yahoo should realize that this small gesture and words expressing their priority of this service is not enough. It goes beyond recompense, they need to rebuild confidence in their current and future customers. This can best be done with open and honest communications and then following through on their commitment.
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