SPECIAL BULLETIN
ICANN Decision Supports .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, stating that .JOBS Domain Cannot be Used to Operate Job Boards, which means universe.jobs must be shut down.
• ICANN Issues Notice for Employ Media to Cease Operation of “Dot Jobs Universe.”
• Strongly Worded Breach Notice Affirms .JOBS Compliance Coalition Position.
• ICANN Investigation Concludes .JOBS Domain Cannot be Used to Operate Job Boards.

ICANN Decision a Victory for .JOBS Coalition

After weathering a ferocious public relations blitz, the .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition learned today that its opposition to the .JOBS Charter expansion had been vindicated by a recent notice posted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In this notice, ICANN states:

The recently launched universe.jobs appears to be a job board that advertises job openings for multiple employers. It is our understanding that one registrant, who is a member of SHRM, registered forty thousand second-level domain names in the .JOBS TLD for use on this job boards. … These registrations appear to serve the interests of the registrant or company causing the registrations, as well as Employ Media and SHRM rather than the interests of the human resource management professionals.

Employ Media and SHRM’s failure to establish policies, in conformity with the defined purpose and intent of the .JOBS registry is inconsistent with the .JOBS Charter ….

Those factors support ICANN’s opening sentence of the notice which states:

“Be advised that as of and before 28 February 2011, Employ Media is in breach of its Registry Agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) and Employ Media LLC (“Employ Media”).”

The notice further requires Employ Media that “cure” or fix the breach. It states:

Should Employ Media fail to cure this breach within 30 calendar days, ICANN may commence the termination process as set forth in Section 6.1 of the .JOBS Registry Agreement.

Essentially, SHRM was found at fault for not living up to it’s commitment regarding ICANN registrations. SHRM was willing to let a single vendor create 40,000 job boards further diluting the job board industry as well as making it more competitive for employers to direct hire using search engine optimization techniques.

This is a clear win for the .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition:
Here are the companies and individuals responsible for this industry victory!

The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition was chaired by John Bell, the Founder and CEO of Boxwood Technology. Its members include AHA Solutions (American Hospital Association); the American Society of Association Executives; the American Society of Civil Engineers; the American Staffing Association; Boxwood Technology, Inc.; CareerBuilder, LLC; the International Association of Employment Web Sites; twenty-three individual members of the International Association of Employment Web Sites, including CollegeRecruiter.com, Dice, HigherEdJobs, Indeed, JobG8, Jobing, VetJobs, and WorkinSports.com; Monster Worldwide, Inc.; the Newspaper Association of America; and Shaker Recruitment Advertising & Communications.

The following press release was issued by the Coalition this morning:

.JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition Applauds ICANN’s Delivery of Firm Breach Notice to Employ Media LLC Regarding Improper .JOBS Expansion

ICANN Makes it Clear that .JOBS Domain Names May Not be Used to Operate Independent Job Boards, Including the “Dot Jobs Universe”

Employ Media LLC and DirectEmployers Association, Inc. Directed to Cease Operating in Violation of the .JOBS Charter

Hunt Valley, MD and Stamford, CT, February 28, 2011 – The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition (the “Coalition”) today applauds the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) for delivering a strongly worded breach notice to Employ Media regarding its improper expansion of the .JOBS Top-Level Domain (“TLD”). The breach notice details how Employ Media, along with its alliance partner DirectEmployers Association and its sponsoring organization The Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”), failed to operate and manage the .JOBS TLD in a manner that was compliant with the .JOBS Charter. The breach notice is posted on ICANN’s website here.

One of the most significant Charter violations identified by ICANN is the operation of the so-called “Dot Jobs Universe,” a series of “integrated employment domains” that has been the subject of many “too-good-to-be-true” promises over the past several months by Employ Media and DirectEmployers Association. The Dot Jobs Universe was created when Employ Media and DirectEmployers Association teamed up to seize approximately forty thousand domain names ending in the .jobs suffix. This surreptitious transaction between the alliance partners temporarily gave DirectEmployers Association the ability to erroneously claim to “own and operate” the .JOBS TLD. ICANN stated in the notice, however, that the operation of the Dot Jobs Universe is “inconsistent with the purpose stated in the .JOBS Charter and stated to the ICANN community” and “serve[s] the interests of [DirectEmployers Association], as well as Employ Media and SHRM rather than the interests of the human resource management professionals.” ICANN called on Employ Media to take immediate actions to implement policies that would effectively terminate the operation of the Dot Jobs Universe. In sum, through its breach notice, ICANN has correctly and definitively concluded that the .JOBS Charter does not permit .JOBS domain names to be used to operate independent job boards.

In addition, ICANN admonished SHRM and Employ Media for failing to establish meaningful registration restrictions regarding which types of persons or entities could register second-level domain names within the .JOBS TLD. ICANN determined in the notice that Employ Media and SHRM were “exploiting” the Charter language “at the detriment of some participants of the human resources community” and “the loose restrictions established by Employ Media and SHRM appear to exclusively serve the financial interests of Employ Media and SHRM.” SHRM’s actions appear to contradict its contractual obligation as the sponsor of the .JOBS TLD, which is to act independently and in the best interests of the international human resource management community.

ICANN’s breach notice to Employ Media is the product of an extensive review process by ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Department. In December, the ICANN Board directed ICANN staff to closely monitor Employ Media’s compliance with the .JOBS Charter, and ICANN’s breach notice reflects the overwhelming public evidence of material violations of the .JOBS Charter by Employ Media, its alliance partner, DirectEmployers Association and its sponsoring organization, SHRM. ICANN has given Employ Media thirty (30) calendar days to cease its non-compliant use of the .JOBS TLD. If Employ Media fails to cure its breach within the allotted time period, ICANN may terminate the .JOBS Registry Agreement it entered into with Employ Media.

Peter Weddle, Executive Director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites, stated, “While Employ Media and DirectEmployers Association have created many false expectations about the Dot Jobs Universe, ICANN’s strong stance is a victory for the Internet community, as well as for employers and job seekers. First, the Dot Jobs Universe was not an innovation but rather an unprecedented attempt by a registry operator to misappropriate an entire TLD for itself and its alliance partner in blatant disregard of ICANN’s rules. Fair and honest competition is welcome in the online recruitment industry, but a TLD operator must be held to the commitments it makes to the Internet community, and upon which ICANN’s approval rests. This principle is particularly important as ICANN prepares to expand the domain name space by hundreds of new TLDs. Second, Employ Media and DirectEmployers Association can no longer infringe the trademark rights of third parties by thoughtlessly launching numerous .JOBS sites with names that are confusingly similar to those of long established enterprises, many of them small businesses. Finally, the lofty promises of completely free and fully vetted job postings were simply not economically viable and could never have been fulfilled, ultimately resulting in frustration for both employers and job seekers.”

John Bell, Chairman of the Coalition, stated, “The Coalition welcomes ICANN’s enforcement action and commends ICANN’s Legal Department and Contractual Compliance Department for conducting its review of the non-compliant actions by Employ Media, DirectEmployers Association and SHRM. The Coalition has stated for months that the facts in the matter would lead to this inevitable result. ICANN obviously reviewed all of the relevant facts and arrived at the correct conclusion. We are confident that ICANN will follow through on this demonstration of its commitment to enforce its rules and take all necessary and appropriate actions to terminate the non-compliant Dot Jobs Universe as soon as possible.”

Has Cheezhead lost his mind, selling to Jobing.com?

Yesterday, September 9, 2009, Jobing.com announced the acquisition of the Cheezhead Group, with infamous HR blogger, Joel Cheesman.

Why would a Aaron Matos, CEO of Jobing.com, want to buy a notoriously outspoken blogger?

While the answer might seem strange, but Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably the #1 reason.

Over the years, Jobing.com has been purchasing a lot of undervalued or distressed recruiting websites, including; Employocity, ColoradoJobs, JobSummit, the California Online Job Network, Rhinomite, Careers Colorado, LocalCareers Network, CanJobs.com, and WorkMetro.

Most of these properties were small and barely profitable websites, but they all had one thing in common, hundreds of very valuable job search related domain names.

OLD Jobing Strategy = Defense

In the past, Jobing’s purchasing of other websites and domain names seems to have been a defensive strategy. Buy the companies and domains, do some limited integration, but generally keep others from acquiring and competing on a local basis.

That strategy might finally be over.

New Strategy- Low cost Job Seeker and Employer Acquisition

Jobing now controls one of the largest collections of the most valuable job search related domain names. The value of these domain names has yet to be exploited to its full potential, from a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) standpoint.

Joel Chezman is one of the few people who could unlock the value in the thousands of domain names that Jobing.com now owns. Bringing Joel on board to integrate the SEO strategy is a great move.

Each month, there are over 150 million job related searches originated on Google.com. The majority of these searches lead job seekers to the largest job boards, who have made significant investments in search engine optimization (seo).

The top ranked career sites are using search to generate upwards of 50% of their job seeker traffic. Meanwhile, search is one of the lowest cost of job seeker and employer acquisition models.

SEO is a Zero Sum Game – Jobing stands to Win, and Big!

Search engine optimization is also a zero sum game, by integrating the domain into a search engine optimization network of job seeker eyeball-grabbing domains, Jobing could quickly pull millions of job seekers from competing national and local job boards. There are only 10 Top 10 positions, and the Top 1 ranked position can receive as much as 65% of the search traffic.

Currently, Jobing relies on one of the most expensive job seeker acquisition models, utilizing a lot of offline and outdoor advertising. Additionally, outdoor advertising attracts a blue collar labor workforce, while online advertising and marketing, including both SEO and SEM, attract a white collar workforce.

Bringing in a recruiting specific search engine optimization strategist to integrate and leverage thousands of highly valuable domain names makes a lot of sense. If this is Jobing’s strategy, which it seems to be, Jobing could expand nationally much quicker, with not only lowering its cost of marketing to job seekers and employers, but also doing this at the direct cost of its competitors.

In the end, I think this is a real win for Jobing and Cheesman.

What’s interesting is this, maybe Gannett and Tribune already discussed their ownership needs, (ie possibly cash), and they have already starting sucking the cash out of CareerBuilder. The rapid, and all of sudden, “boxes coming up the elevator”) speed of the layoff, makes me think it was definitely scripted to happen at the same time Tribune filed Chapter 11.

This action, on behalf of Tribune says to the ownership, debtors, and judges… “This is a solid cash business, we want to continue owning it, and not sell it, but we need to “restructure”. And with the restructuring plan we have already started implementing, we think we can take a little extra “profit” out of it, to help pay some of the other bills.

Most in the Internet Recruiting Market would agree that CareerBuilder has become THE leader in providing employers with job seeker candidates.

What’s really going on?

9/25 -Sales VP giving low performers notice.
10/10 – CareerBuilder CEO states headcount will drop.
12/4 – Mass Layoffs at CareerBuilder headquarters.
12/9 – Tribune Co. announces bankruptcy.

CareerBuilder ownership, as reported in May 2007, looks something like this:
Gannett    40.8%
Microsoft    4%
Tribune    40.8%
McClatchy Co.    14.4%

From my experience, here is one way it could play out.

In a chapter 11 bankruptcy, the management, creditors, and judge have to come together to figure out how to pay the bills.

Option 1- Tribune sells to Microsoft

From the management and ownership side, this is probably not a good option, but it might be one of the only options, depending on how bad the situation at Tribune Co is. CareerBuilder is one of the business units that is probably generating cash and its equity continues to grow. So selling now might now sound all that attractive. However, we are facing a massive hiring slowdown, which in turn is going to kill Q4, Q1, and probably Q2 and Q3 revenues. So is CareerBuilder at its valuation Peak?

A sale would be enticing, IF they could get a solid valuation Bankruptcy bad for Tribune Employees cash, which might come from Microsoft increasing their stake, or other major suitors coming in. There probably aren’t many others with cash on hand to invest, so I’m favoring a Microsoft deal.

Option 2 – Tribune, and other owners, start pulling cash from CareerBuilder.

This, of course would cause some serious long-term affects to the brand, because their market share would drop, which would devalue the property even further. Not only would this be bad for CareerBuilder, but it could become a real ugly mess internally. Because of the slowing economy slowdown, this too might be a really ugly choice, as cash is going to be drying up anyways.

What are other options?
What do you think CareerBuilder will look like in 24-36 months?
Will companies start focusing on their own Career Sites?
Will HR Search Engine Optimization take off?
Will employers start engaging their potential job seekers with social networking and marketing, and owning their own brands online?

If CareerBuilder does tank, this would probably be a major shot in the arm for Pay-Per-Click Recruiting? The clear winners will be the aggregators, like Indeed, SimplyHired, JuJu.com, TopUSAJobs, GO Jobs (our aggregator business), and others.

What are your thoughts? Comment below!!!