Why We Reject Under $100k Jobs From MARC CENEDELLA 05/12/08

When we launched our new national ad campaign this year “When You Let Everyone Play, Nobody Wins”, we got a lot of positive feedback: from you, our subscribers; from the 50,000 recruiters that use TheLadders.com, and, heck yes, we even felt pretty good about it ourselves.

But we did catch a lot of guff from others – bloggers, some ad critics, and some very nice people thought we were being elitist, exclusionary, or narrow–minded in focusing so much on the $100k+ market.

Now we always try to learn from feedback, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to explain to you, our loyal readers, why we view it as very terribly important that we stay true to our roots of being the place for only $100k+ jobs and $100k+ job seekers.

Why We Reject Under $100k Jobs

I started TheLadders.com five years ago to focus just on jobs over $100,000 in earnings, and the job seekers looking for them. That ends up being about the top 10% of jobs in the nation.

And I started the company because in my days as an SVP at HotJobs.com, I heard from recruiters and my b–school buddies alike that the generalist, “anybody can apply” model doesn’t work for experienced professionals.

Recruiters would find that their job postings were inundated with spam and inappropriate applicants, so they stopped using the general job boards for high–end positions.

And job–seekers found that they couldn’t even reach recruiters because all the noise meant that they couldn’t stand out from the crowd.

So we focused TheLadders.com on just these $100,000 per year or more positions. And we decided that the only way to build a good, focused community was to build a wall. In our case, a wall that only let in $100k+ jobs and the people seeking them.

In order to have a community that was your place for finding great jobs, we had to make sure that it wasn’t everybody’s place.

So we have a team of experienced editors that review every job, every job–seeker, and every recruiter to make sure they’re appropriate for our $100k+ community.

And we turn away those jobs that don’t make sense – $60,000 a year jobs, or even $99,999 per year jobs.

Sales jobs with “$30k base and $200,000 earning potential!” go in the garbage.

Multi–level marketing schemes, work–at–home scams, generic postings that are fishing for resumes – we toss them all out.

And we accept only those good, bona fide, $100k+ positions that are right for you, and right for our community.

Because in order to have the community, you have to have a wall.

Or as our ads say “When you let everyone play, nobody wins.”

That’s our promise to you, and that’s why we are going to stick to our guns and make sure that TheLadders.com is only for $100k+ jobs and $100k+ job–seekers.

Now, one final note before I go.

$100,000 is a monetary figure, and it measures the monetary value of the work that you do. I don’t think that somebody is a better person, a better father or mother, or a better citizen just because they earn $100,000 a year, any more than I think that Elvis is a better musician because he’s outsold Beethoven (or the Grateful Dead)! A monetary figure is just that – it measures the economic worth of something, not necessarily its true value. We are all equal in the eyes of whatever Divine Providence created us.

And what a world has been created! I hope you take this Monday morning to thank your lucky stars, and get on the road to your next, great role in life, Readers.

I’m rooting for you.