I was at the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan when it hit me.
I was with my Ladybug at Rise Bar — that gorgeous 14th floor hideaway in the Battery Park Ritz overlooking the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and New York Harbor. The centerpiece at the hotel for Easter weekend was an enormous six-foot-high tower of chocolates. The tower was like one of those gushing fountains, with candies, chocolate rabbits, and Easter eggs overflowing the brim. And as I got closer it turned out that the tower itself was pure chocolate!
Now six feet of chocolate is a wondrous thing. The cascading circles of chocolate coins, that heavy fulsome aroma of cocoa, and the beautiful deep dark brown of the chocolate tower itself, made for a sight that your $100K+ job-loving correspondent won’t soon forget.
And that’s when it struck me, looking at all those chocolate eggs?
The $100K+ job search is an Easter Egg hunt. We all believe that our special surprise is out there, somewhere, tucked away in the bushes. And we spend our time, too much time really, running around in circles trying to find it.
And you might think that the typical 47-year-old executive would be a whole heck of a lot better at finding his or her next great role in life than a 5-year-old running around the backyard.
But somehow, the job hunt has become much more difficult than retrieving a hard-boiled egg from under Fido’s dog dish.
And, gosh, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
There are perhaps 100,000 recruiters at companies and executive search firms who hire or place a $100K+ professional in the course of each year. And by our count, there are 4 million hires, transfers, and promotions at this level in the U.S. every 12 months. So why is it so difficult for us to find our next great role in life?
Your next job is out there. It’s on the computer desktop or in the file folders of a recruiter right now. But like the Easter eggs, it’s hidden.
And the saddest part of it all is that the recruiters want to hire you, that’s how they get their bonuses, and kudos, and recognition at their firm. They didn’t really intend to create a system where jobs were hidden away from the job-seekers they wanted to reach, but the internet (and the way it’s given the whole world easy access to information) has forced our recruiter friends to hide their great $100K+ jobs away.
You see, when you post a $100K+ job on my old employer, HotJobs.com, or on one of the new-fangled phenomena like Craigslist.org, everybody on the internet, all over the world, can see it.
And what do you think happens when you post a really great job where everybody can see it?
That’s right, that job posting gets more interest than Leonardo DiCaprio at an all girl’s academy (I’ve never really understood that fella’s attraction, by the way, but I’m off to see The Aviator tonight so perhaps the clouds will part and I’ll be enlightened).
So recruiters, in order to keep their lives reasonable, their schedules sane, and their inboxes free of muck, have had to hide their best job postings from the great unwashed masses on the internet.
And that’s where your buddies at Ladders.com come in. Each week, we search through thousands of company career sites, we email thousands of recruiters, and we call hundreds of them directly on the phone to say: “Got any $100K+ jobs for our 307,674 subscribers this week? It’s really targeted — we only accept subscribers who’ve made more than $75K recently; on average our readers send only 18 highly qualified resumes per job; and because we’re a member-supported organization, we can’t and won’t accept your money.”
Well, you can imagine their glee at this proposition, to the tune of 18,893 new $100K+ jobs in the past 30 days alone.
And by collecting all these Easter eggs, er? $100K+ jobs, in one place, we’re making your job search so much easier than looking under every couch, checking the cookie jar, and climbing the old apple tree in the backyard.
Happy hunting, Readers!
NEW FEATURES ON THE WAY
Now a lot of you have written in with great suggestions about how we can make the hunt even easier: keyword search, sorting jobs by distance from your zipcode, letting you know which jobs you’ve clicked on recently, etc.
Well I’m pleased to let you know that “Sapphire”, our next generation product, will be coming out in early May. It has all of these great features and more. We’re putting the finishing touches on the code and then we’ll be testing, testing, testing it for the month of April, so please stay tuned.
Ladders.COM IN THE PRESS
And Readers, let me tell you, word about our vision for a faster, simpler $100K+ job hunt is spreading!
Click here to see my interview with Lester Holt on MSNBC on age discrimination.
JOBS ACCEPTED BY SALESLADDER SUBSCRIBERS THIS WEEK Just as reported, typos and all…
Title | Compensation |
Account Director | $100,000 |
Account Executive Advertising Sales | Salary plus commission |
Associate Publisher | $140,000 |
B2B Sales | all comish, $150K+ potential |
Branch General Manager | $112,000 |
Business Development Manager | 140000.00 |
Channel Manager | $140K OTE |
Client Team Leader | 120000 |
Consultant | 160K |
Custom Network Solutions Sales Manager | |
Dir. Business Development | 200K |
Director, Business Development | 120,000.00 |
director | 130,000 |
Director | $120,000 |
director | 200k + |
Director | 160000 |
Director of Advertising | 137,500 |
Director of Membership Sales and Marketing | |
Director of Sales | 250 |
Director of Sales | over $100K |
Director of Sales | |
Enterprise Account Manager | $150K OTE |
Executive Director | $115,000. |
General Manager | 100,000 |
Global Sales and Marketing Manager | 125k |
Group Publisher | $140,000 |
Midwest Sales Manager | 100,000.00 + |
National Account Manager | $118,700 |
National Account Manager | 100,000 |
Partner Development Manager | Total Comp. =$160K |
President | confidential |
Regional Sales Manager | $115 Base, $250 Total package |
Regional Sales Manager | 185k |
Regional Sales Manager | 100,000.00 plus |
Regional Sales Manager | $100,000 |
Regional Sales Manager | 225,000 |
Sales | $100,000.00 plus commissions |
Sales Manager | 125,000 |
Sales Manager | 140,000 |
Sales Rep | 100K+ |
Sales Representative | 100K |
Senior Director | 170K |
Senior Director | 250,000 |
Sr. Account Executive | $162K |
Storage Sales Specialist | 165K |
Vice President | 165000.00 |
Vice President | 120,000 |
Vice President Sales | $125,000 |
Vice President, Installation Services | 100+ |
VP of Sales | 120K |
VP Sales | $300K |
VP Sales | 300k |
VP Sales & Marketing | 120K + Bonus |