Recruiter publicly insults young female sales rep, falls flat on glamour shot

* Update: This post has been edited from its original version. The recruiter's name was removed because he responded professionally both on and off-line.

Note to bloggers, if you ever post a glamour shot of yourself on your blog and decide to publicly insult a young female sales rep...get your facts straight.

Unfortunately for Bill, this wasn’t the case when he picked on a young hotjobs sales rep in his post, ‘Hotjob’s Failed Attempt to Steal Me from Monster.’

His post fell short of calling the girl an idiot and giving himself a medal for knowing more about job board traffic than she did.

Since the girl, whom I don’t know has no way to defend herself as publicly as she’s been ridiculed. I figured I'd point out a few things that are wrong with Bill’s post.

First: He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

His original post (it has since been changed) quoted Google Analytics as a source for major job board traffic reporting. That’s wrong. Analytics does not track and report major job board traffic.

Second: He didn't admit he was wrong. 
I commented on his original post, pointing out that Analytics does not report on this traffic.

Rather than comment back, he edited the original post; erasing the error, never admitting he was wrong. Weak.

Third: Even his fix is wrong.
His post now references Google Trends as the source of job board traffic reporting.
Wrong again.

Google Trends does not report on traffic to any site, let alone major job boards.

It estimates the number of search queries for a particular term, which is in no way an indication of job board traffic.

My point is this…
If you’re going to insult someone publicly to prove how smart you are, you should

1. Know what you’re talking about
2. Admit when you’re wrong
3. Go after someone who can defend herself just as publicly

Comments

[Mike D]

Nice beeeaatch slap matt. how to stand up for the little guy. Although that dude looks like he could scrap...

[Internet Inc]

his Google trends analysis ignores the fact that lots of kids probably search on the term 'monster'...

[Paul Pickthorne]

it also ignores the fact that HotJobs is a subdomain of Yahoo which makes doing traffic comparisons is harder, even on a site like compete.com

Paul Pickthorne
Chief Free Officer
Smuz.com - 100% Free Job Board

P.S. We don't have sales reps because we're free!

[Tim]

Yeah, pretty lame to use Google "Analytics" or Trends to support any position, but the claims by Hotjobs that he re-states sound pretty bogus too.

"Hotjobs has 112 million unique users in the US who have requested employment information."

I'd like to see some supporting data on that one - that's a ridiculous number. There wouldn't be so many other niche or regional jobs being successful if Yahoo had anywhere near that kind of dominance.

HotJobs can't just claim all Yahoo users or all unique visitors from newspaper sites as jobseekers!

[matt]

@Tim

Agreed. But, two points....

1. When I left yahoo, approx 3 months ago, hotjobs had more uniques than monster, though it trailed careerbuilder...still..not 112m

2. When it comes to the email product that the rep was trying to pitch, that get sent out to yahoo users, not hotjobs users...so to some extent quoting yahoo's reach is relevant when pitching yahoo(not hotjobs) products...like email and search engine marketing.

Great feedback. Thanks.

@Paul

Good point.

[Bill Branstetter]

Matt,

I like your post! I can understand your defensiveness since you are a former employee of Yahoo. I'm sure you might even know who the rep is that we worked with. In all sincerity, she was the WORST sales rep that I have ever spoken with. We gave her ample opportunity to give us facts, but she either couldn't answer our questions or refused to. Instead, she sent cut and pasted scripts that suggested we would be fools to not use Hotjobs. I think it would be worse for her if I called her out by name just so she could defend herself. Do you disagree?

Thank you for pointing out the mistakes in my original post. I WAS WRONG! I said Analytics when I meant Trends. After seeing your comments, I immediately went back and did my research. I posted the chart so the discerning reader would be able to judge for themselves. Would it really make you feel better if wrote a separate blog post about being wrong (Analytics vs. Trends) in my original post? If I'm going to do that, I need solid numbers from Hotjobs, not questionable statistics. Seriously, do you really believe that more Americans request employment information on their Yahoo accounts than have cell phones?

I care about being right more than I care about being clever, so help me get some facts.

[Mandy]

That sales rep sounds pretty pathetic. Way to draw more attention to her! But now, unbeknown to her, she's, like, way popular and stuff!

(Bill's picture is sexy. Don't be jealous.)

[matt]

@Bill

It def would have been worse had you called her out by name. Though that doesn’t justify ridiculing the girl in the first place.

Im sure your smart enough to get your point across without the insults.

There's no need to write a post saying you were wrong, but making changes to your original post without marking the change as an update leaves my comment to seem irrelevant; referencing material that doest exist and which readers don’t know ever existed.

In my comment, Im talking about Google Analytics while your post references Trends.

Any reader would obviously think I didn’t read the post in the first place and my comment is ridiculous.

It would have been better to respond by commenting, not changing the post.

…but you did follow up here. So thanks for commenting.

[Bill Branstetter]

Matt,

I debated whether or not to criticize the salesmanship of the rep in the blog. I finally decided to go ahead based on the fact that our experience was that terrible. But I am generally a nice guy, so I will delete the post. If you help me get some facts, I'll rewrite the review (playing nice this time).