September 2001 Column

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE 

A recruiter from a retained search firm with about 80 recruiters called for help to identify candidates for a VP of North American Sales for a small, privately held wireless equipment manufacturer.  The key things to know from a sourcing perspective were that the candidate could live anywhere and that the client wanted someone from a direct competitor.  The recruiter wouldn’t name his client, but said that one competitor was Andrew Corporation.  Based on that, here is what I produced:
 

Andrew Corporation has appointed three new vice presidents:
Rolf Bergmann is promoted to VP of Europe, Africa, Middle East, South Asia and CIS, based in Munich. 

Jim McIlvain is promoted to the position of VP Asia Pacific and global OEM sales, based in the company’s Orland Park, Illinois headquarters. He recently spent three years in Hong Kong as director, Asia Pacific and global OEM sales.

Donn Peterson is promoted from director, Wireless Infrastructure, to the position of VP of Wireless Infrastructure Sales for the US and Canada. He will be based in the company’s headquarters in Orland Park, Illinois. (2000 June 19) 

ANDREW CORPORATION
10500 W 153rd St.
ORLAND PARK IL 60462-3099
General Tel +(1) 708-349-3300
General Fax +(1) 708-349-5943 

Other competitors were identified, including:  

Thomas J. Burke has served as Vice President of Sales and Customer Service
for the Company since September 1998. Effective January 1, 2000 Mr. Burke is
responsible for sales and customer support for the U.S. market. From 1996
through 1998, Mr. Burke was employed as the Director - Worldwide Sales and
Customer Service for Robotic Vision Systems Inc. From 1993 through 1996, Mr.
Burke served in various capacities at Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Inc.  As of 
December 31, 1999, the Company had a total of 79 employees, including 8 in 
software and research and development, 26 in engineering and program 
management, 16 in sales, marketing and customer support services, 15 in 
production and 14 in administration. Thirty three employees are located at the 
Company's headquarters in Horsham, Pennsylvania, 21 are located in California,
14 are located in Israel, and 11 are located in Germany. None of the Company's 
employees is represented by a collective bargaining agreement, nor has the
 Company experienced any work stoppage. The Company considers its relations
with its employees to be good.  Here is his contact information:  
 BUSINESS ADDRESS: 
STREET 1:                                            506 PRUDENTIAL RD	
CITY:                                                    HORSHAM
STATE:                                                 PA
ZIP:                                                       19044
BUSINESS PHONE:                              2156745100


MAIL ADDRESS:             


STREET 1:                                              506 PRUDENTIAL RD
CITY:                                                      HORSHAM
STATE:                                                   PA
ZIP:                                                         19044 


     EMS TECHNOLOGIES NAMES MICHAEL L. GULLEDGE VICE PRESIDENT, 
MARKETING, FOR EMS WIRELESS    

EMS Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq – ELMG) is announcing today the appointment of Michael L. Gulledge as vice president of Marketing for its EMS Wireless division, effective Jan. 17, 2001. Gulledge will report to Gerald Hickman, vice president and general manager – EMS Wireless. Gulledge will be responsible for all marketing, product development, advertising, sales and customer service activities for EMS Wireless, now the United States’ leading cellular/PCS base-station antenna manufacturer.

“Michael brings a strong background in marketing and strategic planning in the  terrestrial wireless industry. Because his background includes both marketing for wireless service providers and selling to the service provider market, he will play an important role in guiding the direction of our division,” said Hickman.

 

Gulledge joins EMS with more than 12 years in marketing focused on the telecommunications industry. He most recently was vice president, Marketing, for Glenayre Electronics, where he implemented marketing programs for service providers in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. “I am excited about the success of EMS Wireless in the growing wireless industry,” Gulledge said. “There is tremendous potential for growth from new technologies and emerging markets. EMS Technologies is uniquely positioned to take advantage of these trends.” Staying at their web site, the contact information is: 

660 Engineering Drive
Norcross, GA 30092
Phone: (770) 263-9200

PIETRAMALA, KEVIN W
Vice President Sales
1000 Avenida Acaso
Camarillo, CA 93012
Phone: (805) 388-1345

6/25/2001

ARC Wireless Solutions’ Subsidiary Winncom Technologies Names Former Cisco Target Market Manager as Director of Sales. For Immediate Release: 

Company Contacts: ARC Wireless Solutions, Inc. Randall Marx, Chief Executive Officer Phone: 303-421-4063 randall.marx@arcwireless.net Fax: 303-424-5085 Richard Anderson, Investor Relations richard.anderson@arcwireless.net web page: www.arcwireless.net

 

ARC Wireless Solutions’ Subsidiary Winncom Technologies Names Former Cisco Target Market Manager as Director of Sales.

Wheat Ridge, Colorado, June 25, 2001 – ARC Wireless Solutions, Inc. (OTC BB: ARCS), today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Winncom Technologies Corp. has named William B. Whelan as Director of Sales. Mr. Whelan will be responsible for all sales activities for Winncom Technologies. Mr. Whelan has more than 15 years of experience in applying wireless technology to business solutions. After graduating in 1984 with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Mr. Whelan worked first as a design engineer and later held domestic and international sales positions at Telxon Corporation, a leader in application-specific wireless solutions. In 1994, Mr. Whelan joined the newly-formed Aironet subsidiary of Telxon Corporation as a sales manager and later as Director of Sales responsible for developing distribution, reseller channels and O.E.M. sales. Aironet, one of the first providers of ISM-band WLAN connectivity products, was purchased by Cisco in March of 2000. After the acquisition by Cisco, Mr. Whelan was a Target Market Manager for the Middle East, Europe and Africa for Cisco Service Provider Channels. ``We are excited about having Bill on our team,” stated Winncom Technologies President & CEO Gregory Raskin. “Bill has tremendous knowledge of wireless technologies, markets and products, and we are eager to take advantage of his proven track record of growing sales to help further our leadership in wireless solutions.” “I am very excited about joining Winncom Technologies,” stated Mr. Whelan. “Winncom is a true leader in delivering wireless solutions, and they have tremendous expertise in all aspects of wireless system design and implementation. As Winncom grows we will continue to add to our portfolio of antennas, accessories, services and third-party products in order to provide customers with unmatched value-added products and services.'' About ARC Wireless Solutions, Inc. ARC Wireless Solutions, Inc. is a wireless technology company that is involved in marketing, distribution and servicing, as well as selective design and manufacturing, of a broad range of component and network solutions in support of wireless applications. The Company’s wireless solutions are marketed through the Company’s internal sales force, OEMs, numerous reseller distribution channels, retail and the Internet to support network deployment in the growing domestic and global wireless markets. ARC Wireless Solutions Inc., together with its Antennas America Division, is headquartered in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The Company’s Winncom Technologies Corp. subsidiary is located in Solon, Ohio, and its Starworks Wireless, Inc. subsidiary, doing business as The Kit Company, is located in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information about the Company and its products, please visit our web sites at www.arcwireless.net, www.antennas.com, www.winncom.com and www.thekitcompany.com
 

I could go on, but we do have limited space.  This is good research that can’t be matched by going to a job board.  Notice that I haven’t done a technology based search from keywords I have harvested from direct competitors yet.  I also haven’t done an industry hub type search, including industry organizations and trade shows yet.  If I were getting paid for this research, I could easily bury the recruiter in qualified prospects in a day, but I think I’ve given him enough to get started, don’t you?

 

Monster Discussion

Pasted below is the contents of an email I sent to Amanda Blevins, one contact that I have maintained at Monster.com, July 17, 2001 at 1:48 PM.

         Amanda:

 

Hope all is well. Haven’t communicated since the split-membership fiasco. I still get emails from interested parties. If I was at fault for not understanding you then I do apologize. I do admit, though, I was a little confused by the whole thing.

 

Anyway...I didn’t want the same thing to happen again. Both Fordyce Letter and I personally have been getting some emails from current Monster members who have noticed an oddity in the way that candidate’s respond to their online job orders.  They have noticed when a candidate replies to an order the resume does not go directly to the customer, but is routed through another email address. It has been discussed in a recruiter forum that this is being done to further populate the Monster resume database, without the candidate’s or customer’s express permission.

 

Sounds farfetched to me but I do plan on researching this, communicating with some of the forum attendees and perhaps writing about my findings in the next Fordyce column.  I would appreciate any comments that Monster has to offer. If there is, again, any type of misunderstanding, I would be most interested in hearing from you prior to my next deadline, which is August 15th (September Issue). Thanks in advance for your attention to this matter.

 

Mark

 

I received no response from Amanda or anyone else at Monster.com. As the title suggests, I am more interested in relating to you some comments from the professional forums about Monster. All of the comments below are on a public site, in this case the AIRS discussion group that anyone can visit at http://discussion.airsdirectory.com/ then click on the link to DISCUSSIONS, then Job Boards. Search the discussions using the keyword ‘monster’ and you will see I have excerpted a few comments from various discussion group members but the full text of each message can be located by following the instructions above. I also viewed the Forums at ERExchange. You can visit their site at http://www.erexchange.com/forum/, then again use ‘monster’ as a search keyword and you will find a number of items relating to the same topic.

 

It all started with a few posts:

 

…a local office administrator who regularly "tweaks" the board and the company's postings noticed that in the "Email Reply" portion of ALL of our postings our email address had been changed to some email string that we believe eventually found its way into Monster's database. When we clicked on the posting and the auto-mailer came up, it DID NOT route directly to our email server. We specifically put our corporate email address in that spot and always have. Yesterday is when we noticed the change and when corporate called Monster, within 24 hours it had been changed back to normal.

 

… we were specifically told that the routing of "ALL" resumes through Monster first in a capture scenario before the resume gets to the company is being considered to become a standard practice in the near future and as contracts are renegotiated.

 

The part you are missing is that several weeks ago, monster tried running a test that cloaked the email address on the job postings so that all emails were routed through monster and then on to the intended recipient. When I called and complained, they said that all emails with resumes attached would be added automatically to their database.

 

If I understand you correctly, then Monster can be taking resumes that were submitted for jobs that I have posted on monster and using these replies to try and place these people through the recruiting firms that their parent owns. Am I getting your message correctly?

 

…on that day, when the redirection happened, even our embedded links in our  Job descriptions were redirected. This was not a glitch.

 

There were a few that threw up their hands and tried to make the best of it.

 

… keep in mind if these are truly active candidates then the savvy, resourceful recruiter is bound to find the same candidate somewhere in the search process.

 

I doubt that this is illegal, but it should be!

 

Most of the candidates I get through Monster are worthless anyway, so I guess it's no great loss if they clutter up TMP's database!

 

At least Recruiters still have RON - Recruiters Online Network -- who isn't out there selling everything to all the HR Managers like AIRS, TMP and the others.

 

From a very smart person.

 

The only reason we opted not to use Monster was because of the conflict of interest posed by being BOTH recruiting entity and Job site. My personal view on this was why pay mega bucks for job postings only to expand a competitors' resume database?

 

From a Monster.com fan.

 

Let's put an end to this right now, shall we? … … … Puh-leeze people, get a grip. … And find another topic for your conspiracy theory - this one is SO old and tired.

 

I’d encourage everyone, especially Monster.com clients (I know there are a lot of you out there), to go to the discussion sites and read the full text of the messages. You should also realize how professional discussion groups could be of benefit to you. I have mentioned two quality discussion groups, free to any participant, but am certain there are other quality groups as well. I’d like to hear of any other good ones.

 

In closing, I would still like to hear from Monster.com with regard to anything they would like to say to the Fordyce Letter readers. Will keep you posted. 

TIP

 For those of you that regularly relocate people keeping up with telephone area codes is bound to be a nightmare. There are a few decent resources around the Internet.       

One is from ProDial Communications. They appear to be some type of long distance company but offer an excellent area code resource for the USA, Canada and the Caribbean listed either numerically or by state/province. Check it out at http://www.prodial.com/codes1.html.

Aegis Publishing is a niche publisher for the Telecom industry. They do not have an area code look up but they do offer, for free, a downloadable area code map you can view on your screen or print out for your own use. You can locate the free map at http://www.aegisbooks.com/download.html then click on the Free Download link.  You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader software installed on your system in order to view this PDF file. If you do not have this software it is also provided free of charge from the same page.