01.25.09

Data Breach at Monster being plugged

Posted in Uncategorized at 6:11 pm by Jobblogger

News is spreading that monster succumbed to it’s second database breach in the last 18 months

“We take this very seriously,” Nikki Richardson, spokesperson for Monster said. “We’re devoted to continuing to put significant resources toward the protection of our database, and no company in our business can completely prevent unauthorized access to data. We believe Monster security measures are as or more robust than other sites in the industry.”

Richardson declined to say when or how the breach occurred, but say that the persons responsible did not access resumes, social security numbers, or financial data.

In 2007 a Trojan Horse program accessed resume data belonging to over 1 million Monster customers. At the time, Monster explained plans to beef up security, but it appears the site is still vulnerable to attacks.

Based on the information provided, it would seem most accounts were unaffected on the seeker side – it was just the employers who might login to post jobs who should change their login information.

However, this story continues to develop, according to Read/Write Web - Monster.com Loses User Data Again

UPDATE: Nikki Richardson, VP Corporate Communications at Monster Worldwide has replied to our e-mail saying that the company is in the process of contacting users but can not disclose specific details of the breach right now.

Update: Monster Worldwide replies to our questions

RWW: How many user accounts have been compromised?

MW: To be prudent, we are notifying all of our job seekers and customers.

RWW: Will Monster be contacting users?

MW: Monster elected not to send e-mail notifications to avoid the risk that those e-mails would be used as a template for phishing e-mails targeting our job seekers and customers. Monster believes that the combination of on-site notification and password changes is the most effective way to address the situation.

RWW: Is it an internal or external breach?

MW: While Monster is sharing the information necessary to assist and protect our job seekers and customers, we cannot disclose specific details of the situation because we need to protect the integrity of our security systems and our ongoing inquiry into the situation.

RWW: Why are passwords not encrypted, or if they are, how are they compromised?

MW: We don’t comment on specific security measures.

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01.21.09

Are You In The Right Job?

Posted in Careerbuilder, Monster at 7:47 pm by admin

Humor in a cheerless economy = the new Monster ad. And the best part: People really like it according to Omnicom.
Today the NY Times published a great article about the new ad campaign of Monster.com. The campaign will run in January and will go toe against toe with Careerbuilder during the Superbowl. Will be interesting to see whether Monster and Omnicom or Careerbuilder and BBDO will pull in more traffic

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01.20.09

MyPath.com from Manpower

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:49 pm by Jobblogger

Actually we liked what we saw a t MyPath.com, it was also featured in a post at Cheezhead mypath: manpower’s first global foray into social media. Here’s the thing that appealed to me the most – the assessment tests – they were pretty good, and gave me some ideas on how certain statements and ways we define ourselves may benefit from a wider vocabulary – and some of that vocabulary I’m finding in the MyPath.com career assesment reports.

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01.15.09

Stranger Recruiting. Don’t miss out.

Posted in Recruitment at 5:16 pm by admin

It’s becoming more and more known, that a positive web presence increases changes of finding a new job. At least that’s the case in the IT sector.

Also numbers are out…and it’s estimate that 80% of jobs are gotten by referral.

Today J.T. O’Donnell posted a great article on Mashable
about the phenomenon of online recommendations of strangers. Very good read!

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01.13.09

Doostang Exclusive Recruiting Network For Ivy League Schools

Posted in Doostang at 7:24 pm by admin

A friend of mine just showed me Doostang, an invite-only community that connects only the world’s most talented your professionals with exclusive career opportunities.

Sounds like a good headline and this is certainly interesting since Doostang is apparently growing like week under Standford MBAs.

Apparently already a half-million young proffessionals joined.

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01.12.09

Obama Economic Plan should subsidize Bloggers

Posted in Uncategorized at 2:57 am by Jobblogger

A recent OPED by respected Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman has ideas for Barck Obama including more long term investment; what he left out was that it could also apply to the investing in Bloggers and Jobs Blogging...

“….As far as I can tell, Mr. Obama’s planners have focused on investment projects that will deliver their main jobs boost over the next two years. But since unemployment is likely to remain high well beyond that two-year window, the plan should also include longer-term investment projects.

And bear in mind that even a project that delivers its main punch in, say, 2011 can provide significant economic support in earlier years. If Mr. Obama drops the “jump-start” metaphor, if he accepts the reality that we need a multi-year program rather than a short burst of activity, he can create a lot more jobs through government investment, even in the near term.

Still, shouldn’t Mr. Obama wait for proof that a bigger, longer-term plan is needed? No. Right now the investment portion of the Obama plan is limited by a shortage of “shovel ready” projects, projects ready to go on short notice. A lot more investment can be under way by late 2010 or 2011 if Mr. Obama gives the go-ahead now — but if he waits too long before deciding, that window of opportunity will be gone.

One more thing: even with the Obama plan, the Romer-Bernstein report predicts an average unemployment rate of 7.3 percent over the next three years. That’s a scary number, big enough to pose a real risk that the U.S. economy will get stuck in a Japan-type deflationary trap.”

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01.11.09

Cheezhead sees more Online Recruiting Layoffs

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:53 pm by Jobblogger

According to Cheezhead – salary.com lays of 16% of workforce

“… The biggest hit to the company economically has apparently come in the form of lessened demand for their enterprise solution, which enables employers to access salary data across specific jobs. Obviously, if employers aren’t hiring, they aren’t going to be too concerned about salary data.

The company’s consumer play, which allows anyone to access salary data, was less of a factor, according to a source. However, it likely played an important part. Services like Payscale, for example, have crippled Salary.com’s ability to partner with job boards and others which drive revenue. HotJobs dumped Salary.com for Payscale back in September 2008, for instance.”

Meanwhile, last month the ax fell hard at careerbuilder and the ax all fell at Kronos with Kronos slashing 8 percent of workforce

“… Kronos Inc., a software company that makes electronic time clocks and workforce management software, has announced that it cut 8 percent of its staff.

Kronos employs around 3,300 workers globally, so the tally would be about 260 jobs eliminated. About 100 people were let go at their Chelmsford, Massachusetts hub.”

Cheezhead’s 2009 predictions for the Employment Industry were rather ugly in predicting many, many layoffs with ..

“…. With growing economic challenges in the employment sector, layoffs are inevitable. I’m particularly surprised Monster has yet to follow the CareerBuilder layoffs from December … A stagnant stock price, a not-so-sexy relaunch and acquisitions that didn’t exactly turn out the way they had planned all point to Monster replacing Sal by year’s end.”

However, the picture isn’t entirely bleak with 2009 hiring predictions from Cheezhead as more than half of the employers surveyed plan no changes at all this year.

“….14 percent of employers plan to increase permanent employees, compared to 32 percent this year. About 16 percent of employers plan to decrease staff numbers next year, 56 percent are planning no change and 13 percent are unsure.

For part-time hiring, 8 percent of employers plan to increase their staff, a decrease from 21 percent this year. Also, 14 percent of employers plan to cut jobs, 62 percent expect no change and 15 percent are unsure.”

However, if you look back at Cheezhead’s 2008 predictions almost all of them (except the real easy ones – like their will be a recession, etc) were wrong. True, 2009 is turning out to be more predictable based on the current Economic meltdown that, like an iceburg, is impossible to avoid, it’s also true that no one knows what will happen later this year anymore than anyone knows for sure what will happen, tomarrow – so there is hope.

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01.10.09

The Monster Renaissance

Posted in Monster at 8:02 pm by admin

Monster.com finally released their new product and it looks promising. First of all, Monster.com allows
Peronalisation: Private Dashboard, a career builder and all a little bit more Web 2.0. Overall it is a very interesting concept to engage the users with their system. Monster’s biggest problem was the one stop users, which came in, uploaded their resume and never came back. With the new career management tools a more helpful approach is taking over the old school search tool.

The change of Monster.com is a typical change of how companies need to adapt to their clients. Searching and finding the right job is one of the most stressful an annoying parts in life and with the new Monster, it hopefully will go in the right direction. Users are looking into more than just search when they use Monster.

Users, who want to search already found job aggregation sites like Simplyhired or Indeed.com.

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01.09.09

Where’s The New Monster?

Posted in Monster at 9:12 pm by admin

It’s January 10th 2009 in the United States and Monster.com is supposed to launch their new highly awaited Monster employment tool. Where the hell is it?