High Tech's Latest Hot Job?

Posted by Gregg at 02:30 PM

From the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition High Tech's Latest Hot Job? Selling Online Ads Amid Surge, Employers Vie For Talent in Limited Pool; Dangling a Plasma TV Set By KEVIN J. DELANEY May 27, 2006; Page A1 With ad sales on the Web booming, so is the market for online-ad salespeople, sparking intense competition for talent that is pushing up compensation and prompting comparisons with the earlier dot-com boom.

Keith Richman, chief executive of Web-video site Break.com, has taken to creative measures to find ad-sales staff. After months of searching with no success, he last week offered acquaintances a 50-inch plasma television set to anyone who connects him with an ad-sales hire.

One referral yielded fruit, and Mr. Richman filled a sales vacancy Monday. But he's paying about 50% more in compensation than he had planned a year ago -- plus the cost of the plasma TV set. "We're in a rapidly growing business with a limited number of people with the skill set," Mr. Richman says. "The question is, are we in a bubble or is this a reality of a new market?"

Either way, hiring competition is fierce in online ads sales, whose resurgence was a driver in alliances between eBay Inc. and Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. and Dell Inc. this past week. U.S. online-ad revenue increased 30% last year to $12.5 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group and consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

That has left Microsoft Corp., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit, Facebook Inc., News Corp. and others scouring for top performers. A week ago, News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media division lured away Michael Barrett, executive vice president at AOL Media Networks, which handles advertising and marketing for AOL, to be chief revenue officer.

While Internet companies, led by Google, have built large-scale automated Web systems for selling online ads, a majority of online-ad sales by revenue still is handled the old-fashioned way, by salespeople. The need for a human sales touch is especially strong as traditional media companies make video and print content increasingly available on the Web -- and support them with ads -- and traditional marketers such as packaged-goods companies buy more advertising online.

The talent pool is small partly because of the youth of the online-ad-sales industry. Also, some Internet-ad salespeople switched to other careers during the downturn in 2001. Those who stuck with it generally have been richly rewarded with cheap stock options and bonuses, and thus have little financial incentive to jump from their current jobs.

Some industry executives warn that a shortage of salespeople could be holding back revenue growth at some Internet and media companies. Small or fledgling companies without brand names or resources to draw on could also be losing out as they go head-to-head with larger rivals for hires. And some industry executives caution that competition for talent could raise the costs of hiring and retaining a sales force. Some worry that could weigh on profitability, though salespeople earn a lot of their compensation through commissions, which rise and fall with sales.

"I think we're all experiencing the same thing: a lot of poaching, a lot of phone calls," says Michael Kelly, president of AOL Media Networks. Mr. Kelly adds: "We were the poacher in many cases."

Yahoo executives last year created a program to recruit and train salespeople from radio, cable TV and print advertising. Recruits spend their first six to nine months selling ads being coached by Yahoo veterans.

Worries About Theft

The Internet company started the program partly out of concern that rivals would try to steal away Yahoo's sales team -- one of the largest, most experienced online-ad sales staffs. "We're on everybody's list," says Gregory Coleman, Yahoo's executive vice president for global ad sales.

Yahoo's concerns last year about poaching proved well-founded. Vince Messina, a high-profile Yahoo sales executive in Los Angeles, earlier this month jumped to Microsoft. Mike Murphy, Yahoo's vice president for media sales for the Western region, in March moved to social-networking startup Facebook. Mr. Murphy says he took a 50% cut in base pay, but commissions at Facebook could allow him to top his Yahoo compensation.

Recruiters and Internet executives say ad salespeople with roughly five years experience can make in the range of $125,000 a year in base salary, and the same amount in bonuses and commissions for hitting their sales targets. The booming market means that many salespeople are, in practice, exceeding those targets and earning even higher-percentage commissions on the extra amount.

Total compensation for senior salespeople is up by roughly $50,000 from two years ago, says recruiter Phyllis Egan. She says she filled 50% more online-ad posts in 2005 than in 2004, and this year is off to a rapid pace. Jeff Lanctot, general manager of Avenue A|Razorfish, the interactive marketing unit of Seattle digital marketing company aQuantive Inc., says he is contacted between five and 10 times a week by recruiters and companies seeking his help in locating salespeople. "It's not uncommon for the people contacting me to float half-a-million-dollar packages" for vice president of sales positions or above, Mr. Lanctot says.

In early March, Todd Leslie, 35 years old, quit his job as a senior account executive at an Internet-advertising company. Within days -- and without looking very hard -- he had six job interviews lined up. As he neared a choice between four job offers in the middle of last month, one Internet company said it would make Mr. Leslie a formal job offer without having ever met him. (Mr. Leslie said no thanks.) He says his compensation, including expected bonus, jumped 35% when he accepted an offer from Atom Entertainment to be East Coast regional sales manager last month.

A push by TV networks, News Corp. and other media companies to move content and ads online is fueling the market. Also, Internet start-ups are once again flush with venture-capital cash, and many are banking on ads for revenue.

Another major catalyst is Microsoft, which is in the midst of a massive push to increase its online-ad business. In the past year, the company's MSN online unit has doubled to 100 the headcount in its New York office and doubled to 120 the number of account managers it has across the U.S., says MSN Sales Director Lisa Utzschneider. "We're going toe-to-toe with some of our direct competitors to hire some of these candidates," she says.

MSN Adds Staff

In Detroit, where the MSN sales group has doubled to 12 people since early 2005, Microsoft has picked up sales people from Yahoo, AOL and BusinessWeek, says Barry Dougan, director of MSN sales for the automotive industry. Over the next year, "we're going to definitely keep pace with the investments we've made" in headcount, he says.

Google is bolstering a sales-recruiting push with ads in print publications ranging from Crain's Chicago Business to AdWeek over the next two months. But it says it's hiring more from the finance and consulting industries these days, rather than competing with rivals for veterans of Internet ad sales. "There's a pool of people who are in the rotation plan within the industry, and we generally don't recruit those people proactively any more," says Tim Armstrong, Google vice president for ad sales.

Many industry executives dismiss comparisons with the frenzied hiring and lofty compensations of the last Internet boom, saying offers now are more reasonable and companies have real ad revenue and profits to support the growth.

But others see history repeating itself. Scott Howe, president of online-ad-network Drive Performance Media, a unit of aQuantive, says: "In some respects I liken it to 1999 all over again."

Mr. Howe turned up empty-handed when he approached a short list of candidates for a senior sales position he posted last August. When Drive hired its first salesperson nearly three years ago, she was escaping an imploding start-up and was "excited just to have a job," he says.

But recently, he says, he found himself bidding for hires against companies offering "crazy money." Mr. Howe handled the sales work himself as the process dragged on. By December, he says, he was "despondent, despairing."

The intense travel schedule of the sales work meant the Seattle-based Mr. Howe saw his family rarely. "Hey, the kids, they've forgotten what you look like," his wife told him as he sat in the Phoenix airport awaiting a flight to a meeting in Philadelphia.

vin.delaney@wsj.com more

Permanent Link

---

Better Than the Alternative But ...

Posted by Gregg at 11:37 AM

I hope we learned from the last "Job Boom". If 98 - 00 was the party 01 - 03 was one hell of a hangover. more

Permanent Link

---

The Waiter Test

Posted by Gregg at 07:27 AM

This is no myth - if you're a candidate for a position at any level especially senior management you should realize that mistreating the receptionist, assistant, or waiter is not only noticed and discussed but the best way to torpedo your chances. More color in the article here ... CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character - Yahoo! News more

Permanent Link

---

The Hot Job Market

Posted by Gregg at 10:03 PM

When being a recruiter becomes the "hot" new field you know the market for talent is heating up ... evidence from WSJ (no sub required) CareerJournal | What It's Like to Work As an Executive Recruiter more

Permanent Link

---

Pent Up Energy

Posted by Gregg at 11:03 AM

Boldgett's back... ins't that against some kind of law? more

Permanent Link

---

Things are looking up.

Posted by Gregg at 05:08 PM

It seems as though we've learned a thing or two since the dot com boom/bust and jobs are rising in technology; it also feels like start-ups are the way to go. At least this is all according to CNET. more

Permanent Link

---

Employee Commitment

Posted by Gregg at 05:19 PM

Originally posted on the Boston Works site ... A recent Mercer HR Consulting study, the 2005 What's Working Survey, asks about employees' commitment to their employers. It also probes a little deeper to find out what drives employee commitment: “There's a common assumption that pay and benefits are the most critical factors in employees' decisions to stay with or leave an organization,” [Mercer's global employee research director Rod] Fralicx says. “Our research shows that other factors – many related to career opportunities – play a much bigger role.” - - - - - Eight Key drivers of Employee Commitment 1. Employees' confidence in their future with the organization 2. Employees' confidence in achieving career objectives 3. Employees' confidence in the future success of their organization 4. Degree of teamwork and cooperation 5. Employees' satisfaction with the type of work they do 6. The chance to do challenging and interesting work 7. The company's commitment to quality 8. Opportunities for continuous learning to improve skills more

Permanent Link

---

Hiring Objectively

Posted by Gregg at 08:55 AM

Joe Krause thinks about applying the principals used by the A's Billy Beane as described by Michael Lewis in Moneyball to hiring for start - up companies. The challenge with applying sabermetrics to business is that in baseball each player's offensive (at bat) contribution can be discretely measured. They either got a hit, walk or an out - you can drill down - sacrifice, RBI, homerun, hit into a double - play, left runners on, ground out, infield fly ... and on and on. To the extent that the results are available one can precisely target and recruit the kind of players a coach thinks will combine to make the winningest team. By contrast there is no way to quantify the discrete actions of a company's employees. There isn't even a universal standard for business success- is it profitability or ROI, an IPO, innovation - the answer is yes or no depending on the circumstance. As a recruiter, I spend at least three hours evaluating what a candidate has accomplished before presenting him or her to a client - phone calls, in person interviews, back channel referencing. And then after several rounds of client interviews and more referencing there's still debate about what the candidate really did and their contribution or the success or failure or past employers. more

Permanent Link

---

Effective Firing

Posted by Gregg at 09:19 AM

Jerry Colona gives sound advice on what is one of the most difficult tasks in business - firing an employee. more

Permanent Link

---

Executive Employment Agreements

Posted by Gregg at 09:37 AM

For fun and benchmarking ... Dozens of them, in full text. (FindLaw.com) more

Permanent Link

---

The CPO Goes to Washington.

Posted by Gregg at 09:54 AM

NPR's All Things Considered examines the emergence of the Chief Privacy Officer in the Bush Administration. What's Jet Blue's excuse? more

Permanent Link

---

Sign of Life

Posted by Gregg at 09:50 AM

As the market exhibits a renewed appetite for risk, interest in stock option as a component of compensation rises, as illustrated in this recent post on BenefitsLink .... A small software company has 100% of the equity distributed but only 10% of the stock issued. The current stockholders are unwilling to dilute their ownership position. We are trying to secure long-term funding. Is there a way to offer stock options to current employees based on the event of securing this funding? more

Permanent Link

---

Sociable Networking

Posted by Gregg at 09:58 AM

Kevin Laws in VentureBlog gives some practical advice and good insights into the dynamics of networking. more

Permanent Link

---

Good for the Goose ...

Posted by Gregg at 10:30 AM

An article on the Knowledge@Wharton (registration is required) site examines why high paid CEO's are vilified while athletes and entertainers are admired for the extraordinary pay they receive. more

Permanent Link

---

Thinly Veiled Self - Promotion

Posted by Gregg at 10:35 AM

Anne Fisher writes an insightful weekly career section for Fortune - solid advice for those looking for a new gig or just interested in keeping informed. She also has a knack for spotting industry experts. more

Permanent Link

---

Rich Grasso, Scapegoat

Posted by Gregg at 01:27 PM

The amount of Rich Grasso's pay is not the point. From the standpoint of corporate governance, which was the banner being waved around his resignation, it's the NYSE board that approved his deal. Grasso did not embezzle, defraud or cook the NYSE books. He simply cut himself a sweet deal - which was approved by the board of directors and members of the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, all CEO compensation in public companies is approved by the board, yet, we've heard relatively little about their role over the last few days. Over the last two years, Directors of scandalized companies have managed to stay out of the spotlight. Directors supposedly represent the shareholders - they are the check on management teams that lose sight of what's in the shareholders' best interest. Whether you agree or disagree with the amount of Grasso's pay it's unfair to paint him as the bad guy. He did what we all do - negotiate the best deal you can. more

Permanent Link

---

Analysis of the Jobless Recovery

Posted by Gregg at 01:52 PM

This artclie last week in the Christian Science Monitor does a nice job of explaining why we're in the midst of economic recovery but jobs are not being created. more

Permanent Link

---

Job Boom?

Posted by Gregg at 02:07 PM

Is the cover of this month's Business 2.0 which heralds the coming job boom supposed to make us feel better or is it just merely a case of using statistics to tell any story the author would like us to believe? The premise of the cover story is that aging baby boomers will create a shortage of workers as they leave the labor market to retire. They leave out just a couple of critical factors like the movement of "less skilled" jobs to countries with a cheaper labor supply and that US workers who have lost these jobs to call centers in Ireland and software development shops in India will have to learn new skills. What's coming is not so much a labor shortage as a redistribution of Human Capital. more

Permanent Link

---

Pay = Incentive = Action

Posted by Gregg at 02:51 PM

Brian Hall from HBS has written several papers on what kind of behavior results from complex executive compensation schemes. His findings are not particularly intuitive. more

Permanent Link

---

USA Weekend ... a plug

Posted by Gregg at 03:06 PM

Jean Chatzky gives advice from a couple experts on what to include and not include on your resume in the post Enron / Worldcom job market. Honesty is the best policy! more

Permanent Link

---