Just the Facts Sumser…Just The Facts…

It can be said that John Sumser wrote a piece this morning about the Replacement of America’s Job Bank. Now in keeping with the spirit of being totally wrong about just things in general, I will stand up and say that John Sumser is a freaking…ok…stop…breathe…be nice…. If John Sumser is to be actually taken seriously and professionally then my prayers go out to all of the retarted young minions in the recruit-o-sack….pull out your drool cups and strap on your special helmets…the road ahead may get a little blurry…filled with words like “compliance”…

Sure he is a stodgy stalwart of the industry…Johnny trigger finger— sure as shit didn’t pick up the phone to call Bill Warren at JobCentral or Dennis Martin at Navisite for comments or clarification. Which begs the questions…can he be TRUSTED with a medium like recruiting.com? Can he be considered an editor? A Journalist?

Ok please allow me an opportunity to straighten out Johnny Trigger-Finger

1. In March 2006 the DOL/ETA sent out notifications to um just about everyone on the planet, that they would no longer support funding for the America’s Job Bank. It should be noted that the DOL had been funding AJB to the tune of $8M-20M for the past 10 years or more. In turn they felt that the technology was quite antiquated (see John Sumser for definition) and that the private sector would replace the federal posting requirements set forth by the OFCCP, JVA (Jobs for Veterans ACT), VEVRAA (Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Act) and EEOC.
2. Enter DirectEmployers Association. Basically a group of about 265 major companies who started their own association, as a HR leadership consortium and leadership community where the members could design and develop recruiting and HR technologies like the NACElink, the college recruiting platform and the JobCentral.com national labor exhange.. The Non Profit Group is run by Bill Warren widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of internet recruitment. DirectEmployers Association, using the JobCentral.com engine, indexes the links of company jobs, directly from their corporate career pages, and then redistributes the job-links to hundreds of different sites on the net. One of these sites where members of DirectEmployers Association would have their jobs sent was to AJB, in order for the federal contractor members of DirectEmployers Association to meet federal posting requirements.

When the Association members were notified that AJB was shutting down, they immediately began work on developing a tool (NOT A SITE) that would index member company jobs and deliver them to the State Workforce sites, the Career OneStop Centers, the Local Veterans Employment Resources (LVERs) and the Disabled Veterans Outreach Programs (DVOP). This was designed with a firm understanding that the goal for companies would not be TRAFFIC or a NEW SITE but that DirectEmployers Association would deliver their jobs to the appropriate areas to make companies COMPLIANT. It should also be noted that DirectEmployers Association’s JobCentral National Labor Exchange was endorsed by NASWA (www.naswa.org) –the National Association of State Workforce Agencies- as the replacement to America’s Job Bank. DirectEmployers Association/JobCentral also has one hell of a reporting feature that show’s its member companies where and when their jobs were delivered to the state and local levels. Therefore upon an audit by the OFCCP are in good and safe hands.

3. Now Please let us take a look at Navisite… a publicly traded company base out of New York State and was the third party vendor who has operated and run America’s Job Bank. This team has received in excess of over $126 MILLION DOLLARS of Tax Payers Dollars over the last 10 years. The DOL decided to stop funding the America’s Job bank because is was outdated and did not meet the compliance requirements set forth by the federal government (never mind that companies posted there because it was a requirement and most companies had seldom if ever received a hire form the AJB site/interface.) simply put, AJB was/is not working. The Department of Labor has explained to Navisite that they are not allowed/authorized to use any AJB related materials…No URL’s, LOGOS, SERVERS, DATA, Resumes, Etc…ABSOLUTELY NOTHING..AJB …IS FINITO..

Dennis Martin who runs navisite has chosen to create a new job Board in light of America’s Job Bank being shut-down by the feds. This site called America’s Job Exchange, while dubbed the successor to America’s job bank is NOT a successor by any means. Martin and the Navisite Team have decided to create a site that will be supported by advertising dollars and a “scalable subscription based model”. Details on how the site plans to survive remain to be seen. Further it remains to be seen how navisite will be providing a solution to the smallest of Federal Contractors to meet federal posting compliances. I’m sure that the folks at Naviste mean well but there is too much that is simply NOT THERE…too many question marks… especially as it relates to meeting govenment requirements when their contract with the Department of Labor expires on June 30th. Can they survive? Can companies trust them with compliance? Can Navisite raise money to support their initiatives in light of losing a major federal contract and no experience sustaining a job board w/o that federal taxpayer dollar? I Personally dunno.

Let it be known by John and others that the Federal government kicked AJB to the curb because the technology was not working and was simply put, outdated…kinda like John himself. Which begs the question…”If AJB was “fired” by the government, and does not work, does it make sense to build a job-board business using the same interface?”…um no…which is why the member companies of DirectEmployers rose to the challenge and built the national Labor Exchange….

Good work Sumser, you have proven, once again, why you have no business in the recruit-o-sphere and that you surely have no business as an editor…I don’t think that either organization was opportunistic, but rather that if AJB was shut down, then all of the companies needing to meet OFCCP guidelines by MANUALLY posting each of their jobs to State sites, Career OneStop Centers, LVERs, DVOPs and be able to REPORT on those postings upon an audit were simply up shit creek w/o a solution.