Wendy Weber on Executive Recruiting

Read some recent press about our Salary Reports here.

Crandall Associates’ 2011 Salary Guides were a feature story in today’s DM News: click here.

These Guides can be purchased on our website at: click here.

In today’s E-commerce Times: JCPenney, Google Shrug Off Accusations of Search Shenanigans.

A stunning piece on the front of Sunday’s NYT Business Section reveals that J.C. Penney engaged in “black hat” search optimization to raise the profile of their website: click here.

It was discovered that for a variety of search terms, from “bedding” to “skinny jeans” to “grommet top curtains” to “Samsonite carry on luggage”, J.C. held the No. 1 spot. Apparently J.C. Penney linked to countless websites – many of which seem all but abandoned, except for the links. Exploiting those sites just for links, while not illegal, is a Google no-no. The company’s guidelines warn against using tricks to improve search engine rankings, including what it refers to as “link schemes”. If caught, the penalty is that Google will take steps to see to it that you sink in organic search results.

Last week, The Times sent Google the evidence it had collected about the links to JCPenney.com. The drop in organic search status was almost immediate.

At 7pm Eastern time on Wednesday, J.C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.” Two hours later, it was at No. 71.

At 7pm on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.” By 9pm, it had sunk to No. 68.

Penney reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Penney also issued a statement: “We are disappointed that Google has reduced our rankings due to this matter.”

Are they kidding?

Why did Google fail to catch this sooner? Furthermore, Google had detected search guidelines on 3 prior occasions, most recently in November. Each time, steps were taken that reduced Penney’s search results.

Google’s spam copy Matt Cutts responded, “Do I wish our system had detected things sooner? I do”. But “given the one billion queries that Google handles each day, I think we do an amazing job.”

Yes, they do an amazing job, but given the size of this retailer, and the fact that they had been reprimanded several times in the past…not amazing enough.

The goal of an interview is to determine whether the candidate should get the job.

The way that is accomplished varies greatly from one organization to the next.

We see it all…from clients that conduct exhaustive psychological and behavioral testing, to clients that have the candidates present before committees of interviewers, to clients that are very casual about the process and just want to see if it intuitively feels like a good fit. We track the longevity of our candidates, and I cannot see a correlation between the interview process and the success of the placement.

Here are two interview questions used by a client who recently hired through us. Quirky, yes! We’ll follow the success of the candidate at their organization with interest.

1. What is today’s Dow? (The candidate didn’t know).

2. If I gave you $10MM, what would you do with it? You cannot pay bills or travel. (The candidate said that she would use it to start a business. That was a “good answer”; the client was looking for an answer that indicated that the candidate had an entrepreneurial mindset).

I attended a program put on by the DMA at Google’s NY offices on Friday. I hadn’t been impressed with the DMA in recent years, but was curious about seeing Google’s NY headquarters.

I was pleasantly surprised.

First Larry Kimmel, President of the DMA, took the podium. I had seen him speak (actually shared a podium with him) at a Direct Marketing Educational Foundation event earlier in both of our careers. I knew he would be a dynamic presenter, and he didn’t disappoint.

One interesting thing he brought up was Wikipedia’s definition of Direct Marketing. It’s inaccurate, and damaging to our industry. I urge you to read it for yourself (click here), but particularly offensive are these points:

1. Direct marketing is a form of advertising that reaches its audience without using traditional formal channels of advertising, such as TV, newspapers or radio. Businesses communicate straight to the consumer with advertising techniques such as fliers, catalogue distribution, promotional letters, and street advertising.

Really? Have they heard of the internet?

2. Direct marketing is predominantly used by small to medium-size enterprises with limited advertising budgets that do not have a well-recognized brand message.

Untrue! Virtually every company, regardless of size, utilizes direct marketing. I challenge them to name a large company that doesn’t maintain a customer database and reach out to those customers utilizing mail, telesales or the web.

Many people, and especially young people, utilize Wikipedia as a source of information. If you were thinking about a career choice and saw the definition of direct marketing they provide, you would certainly not think of it as a relevant marketing channel. Kimmel asked us to contact Wikipedia to correct this widely disseminated mis-information.

He defined Direct Marketing this way:

The channel agnostic approach to driving maximum customer satisfaction and optimal marketplace results.