DirectEmployers Association has entered into an agreement to sponsor “Cheezhead” which was voted 2006’s “Best Blog” by Recruiting.com. The Cheezhead blog is written by Joel Cheesman, president of HRSEO, a search engine optimization firm specializing in the online employment space.

We believe strongly in supporting creative initiatives that add value to our industry. Joel has done an outstanding job of not only adding value, but pushing the envelope and spurring lively debate on a wide variety of topics. In my opinion, he is unquestionably the leading blogger in our industry.

In addition to search engine optimization services, the sponsorship will also include JobCentral’s logo prominently displayed in the header of Cheesman’s blog, banner advertising, representation at industry conferences by Cheesman, exclusive content created for JobCentral clients, promotion via RSS feeds, and JobCentral’s brand highlighted in the blog’s online videos.

Cheesman issued a press release saying, “The JobCentral team has been very supportive of my blog and the benefits of blogging as a whole since the phenomenon really took off a few years ago. With their financial support, I’ll be able to dedicate more time on making Cheezhead the best it can be. In the process, I hope to be a positive example for all bloggers.”

JobCental and Cheezhead first made a splash in June 2006 when Cheesman auctioned sponsorship of his trip to the 2006 SHRM conference via eBay.

This sponsorship will provide much needed search engine optimization as well as a presence at all major industry conferences in 2007 and 2008 for JobCentral National Labor Exchange. We look forward to working with Joel and to continue providing outstanding value to our member companies.

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A special thanks to Job-Hunt.org for selecting JobCentral as the “Best General Job Site” on the Internet.

DirectEmployers Association, through the DirectEmployers search engine and JobCentral National Labor Exchange, continues to be a leader in Internet recruiting. Several years ago our search engine started the shift to what some have called “aggregating jobs” from corporate sites which has of course resonated well with job seekers. This was the original premise of DirectEmployers — we have stayed true to our beliefs from day one and have not changed direction from our stated mission. However, “aggregating jobs” – a term commonly used by those from the “Flipdog” and “Grass is Greener” era — has never appropriately described our operations or industry-leading job search-engine technology.

Using the DirectEmployers job search engine, we have continued to build on our early success with the introduction of the JobCentral National Labor Exchange which allows job seekers to search jobs with one search across thousands of corporate web sites in addition to Google, networking site Jobster, and leading Internet employment search engines such as Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com. Over five million (5,000,000) jobs are available to job seekers from corporate web sites, newspapers, trade associations, and other Internet sources in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, 230 major metropolitan areas, and all U.S. cities and postal zip code areas.

We thank the hundreds of major corporations which have supported our initial efforts and look forward to continuing to work with these and other leading companies in 2007.

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Paul Forster, founder and CEO of Indeed and Phil Carpenter, SimplyHired’s Vice President of Marketing, spoke at DirectEmployers’ annual meeting last month in Las Vegas. Their presentations were very well received and were highly rated by recruiting professionals from leading U.S. employers.

The reaction I witnessed from some of the country’s leading recruiting professionals was exactly opposite to some of the opinions I have recently heard expressed on blogs. Some critics seem to be equating vertical search engines to the original Flipdog site (not the Flipdog site that has been recently resurrected by Monster).

The big difference — and it is a very BIG difference — is the old Flipdog crawled around collecting job information, brought it back to its own site, and displayed it in frames as if it was its own content.

If the descriptions I have recently heard applied to vertical search engines were applied to the old Flipdog I could understand the point. However, these descriptions in no way apply to today’s vertical search engines because the technology, process, intent and end results are in no way similar.

Today’s vertical search engines act in many ways for jobs like the Google search engine works for the Internet in general. They identify the link and take the job seeker to the job on the company or job board site. Bottom line — more traffic to the corporate web site or job board. Bottom line for job seekers — much faster job search across many corporate employment web sites and job boards. It is safe to say the Las Vegas audience was thoroughly impressed and expressed no concerns or apprehension about their jobs being “stolen” from their web site.

Gautam Godhwani, SimplyHired’s CEO, clearly articulated his take on the industry better than I ever could in an extremely well done (podcast) interview with Joel Cheesman at the recent Kennedy Conference in New York. Taking 12 minutes to listen to the interview will be time well spent.

The folks over at Google and individuals like Gautam Godhwani and Paul Forster are bright, articulate, passionate, and high-principled — and they are building better mouse traps. That’s what this great country is all about.

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WEDDLE’s has announced topics and dates for their Fall/Winter Training Series. WEDDLE’s training programs, widely recognized for their innovation and helpfulness, are delivered by WEDDLE’s Publisher, Peter Weddle — all in the comfort of your own office or conference room.

These are great learning opportunities presented by one of our industry’s most highly rated speakers. In addition, you can’t beat the price — significantly (as in hundreds and maybe even thousands of dollars) less than comparable programs elsewhere. We highly recommend this popular training series presented by a real industry pro!

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Tomorrow we will announce a partnership with Recruit.net which will bring almost two million job listings in Asia indexed by Recruit.net to JobCentral.

We are excited about the opportunity to work with Recruit.net which has quickly become the leading vertical search engine for jobs throughout Asia.

Using one search a user looking for job opportunities on the JobCentral site will now also be able to find additional job opportunities in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Singapore and India.

Our member companies, all leading U.S. corporations including many with operations in Asia, have been extremely impressed with Recruit.net’s vision, development and rapid expansion in the Asian market.

Kudos and “Welcome Aboard” to founder Maneck Mohan and his staff who have done a fantastic job developing Recruit.net into an Internet leader.

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On the road again next week…not much time for bloggin’ 

It’s back to Washington again Monday morning…lots of meetings related to the phase-out of America’s Job Bank. I should have time to send everyone an update by the middle of next week.

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Gautam Godhwani, CEO and founder of SimplyHired shares his thoughts on the evolution of search to the proliferation of the vertical search markets. He explains the SimpyHired business model and his insights into entrpreneurship in an interesting interview with nPost.com.

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Robin Katzman, Program Manager for Staffing Services at Lockheed Martin has been elected president of DirectEmployers Association for 2006-2007.

She succeeds Ray Schreyer, IBM Corporation’s Program Manager, Internet Recruiting Strategies who will continue on DirectEmployers’ Board-of-Directors as Past-President. Randy Shute, Sr. Manager of Recruiting at Internap Network Services is the Association’s new President-Elect and will become President in 2007-2008.

We all appreciate Ray Schreyer’s many contributions and the far-ranging impact he has had as one of the founders and as the first President of DirectEmployers Association. We look forward to working with Robin who has previously served on DirectEmployers’ Board-of-Directors and has been an ardent supporter of the Association since its inception.

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Kudos to Peter Weddle for all the work he has done to get the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS) organized and fully functional. It has been needed for a long time and is something that should have been done long, long ago. Peter stepped up and made it happen!

Through its Members, the International Association of Employment Web Sites acts as a reliable source of timely and accurate information about the services, practices, and status of the global online employment services industry. The Association also supports a range of initiatives to bring the contributions of its Members to the attention of the public at large as well as members of the media and government. The Association also provides a forum for its Members to discuss, ratify and promulgate standards of operation that will best serve the job seekers, employers and recruiters who use their sites.

Many thanks Peter. I totally support the concept and appreciate your efforts in making it a reality.

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Joel Cheesman was a tremendous hit as keynote speaker at our annual meeting for corporate members in Las Vegas last week.

I would highly recommend him to any organization looking for a keynote speaker with tremendous knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO), Internet marketing, emerging technologies and Internet recruiting in general.

Cheezhead is the real deal!!!

Joel is very personable and extremely knowledgeable with a great delivery — you could hear the proverbial pin drop and the audience loved it.

Currently president of HRSEO, he is arguably the Internet’s most famous and widely-read blogger on emerging recruitment issues and is the recipient of Recruiting.com’s Best Technology Recruitment Blog in 2006.

As an employee and insider of some of the America’s biggest online job sites since 1997, Joel founded HRSEO to help employers and companies in the recruitment space move to a world where search engines deliver high quality and cost-effective traffic — and he proved to us he knows that of which he so eloquently speaks.

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