Apparently, you can use the coupons at over 1,000 niche, diversity and regional job boards that are slashing up to half the price on their job postings, all to help make the world go round. Think of it as cross between an economic stimulus package and a licked-to-go Green Shield Stamps program.

In times of economic collapse it is only natural that the industry’s leadership should bandy together and step up to the plate. Rewarding good behavior [buying postings] and facilitating commerce [direct marketing] is not a bad thing. To the contrary, it is a good thing. And programs like this are quintessentially American, aren’t they?

To the cynics who might postulate the alliance between SHRM and JobTarget has more to do with monopolistic price fixing than affinity programming, I say this: Phooey!

And to the preposterous argument that this scheme has more to do with deflationary pricing to offset falling demand and the no-cost alternatives that may be even more effective than traditional job postings — double phooey!

SHRM-sponsored programs like this one have always been about reducing the cost-per-hire and getting the best return on regular HR folk’s advertising dollars. I think its wonderful that the nice people at JobTarget would help out this way.

Every responsible job board owner should be buying into this historic blow-in. And to the blasted cynic who would say that the only thing being cached here are job postings and commission checks — phooey, phooey, phooey!

Change happens in front of our very eyes but we often miss it. In so doing we miss out on developing a level of appreciation of things that should come as part of the pay-off. Somewhere in the over abundance of social media, participation, micro-blogging and chat we’re short-changing ourselves. It’s not sustainable.

John Sumser’s Digging into RecruitingBlogs.com post today was remarkable. Not so much for the content, but for its timing.

The significance of turning the page to open a new chapter [v 2.0] would not be lost on anyone who has been reading John’s recruiting annals for as long as some of us have. In his chronicling of Recruitopia particularly, John was articulating what RecruitingBlogs.com could become long before we had considered today’s nuisance in getting our email synced.

I was reflecting today that 2008 was the first in a few years that Jason Davis wasn’t hosting a Best Recruiting Blog Awards. It seemed to me as if in the raising of this barn, such things didn’t matter anymore. And perhaps they really don’t.

Happy Friday, Bloggers.

Kick it…The intrinsic value of Recruiting.com beyond it’s earlier googliciouness and rambunctiousness has been reworked by the Recruitosphere’s alchemist Jason Davis. The transfiguration of Recruiting.com in RecruitingBlogs.com has been more than a reinvention. With less emphasis on the blogging bit and dollops of slobber about “community,” Jason Davis has enhanced his reputation for being the guy in the right place at the right time. If nothing else, the passing of Recruiting.com and ascension of RecruitingBlogs.com, — Jason’s hand in both — reminds me that there is indeed a time and place for everything.

…see if moves! No doubt for some, Recruiting.com will continue to serve a purpose. One imagines that when Steven Rothberg, Andy Headworth,  Jason Buss and other longstanding posters stop submitting their articles we might observe the stillness of the corpse, and the decomposition can begin. While revolting to thinkabout blueflies and maggots doing their thing, without their feasting we could never get beyond the off-topic stink. Who knows, I might continue to post my occasional musings on Recruiting.com too, just to appease the SEO gods. On the other hand, continuing to share the love with a stiff Recruiting.com, well, that would be sick — wouldn’t it? Yeah, probably — sacrilegious too.

Nah, its a goner. Oh well, in blogging as in life I guess, all things must come to an end. Otherwise we would never know that it is time to begin again, would we?

At this point I have to ask: “Who cares?” John’s throw-away remark at the end of the Recruiting Animals’ Morning After Show referencing his exit suggests he may feel the same way. Who knows? For sure, for those who look within the Recruitosphere’s publishing clique for amusement it will be amusing in the coming weeks, no doubt.

To my own pathethic contribution…hmmm. Recruiting.com has been an interesting place for me to experiment with a number of ideas some of which fizzled out, some of which sputtered along and some of which remain open-ended.

Moving forward, I shall simply plug my Bunsen into the new mixture of gas and hot air on RecruitingBlogs.com, the combustible bloggy-ning thing where I now spend my early mornings. Like you perhaps?

Ah, Recruitopia…doesn’t it just make you sick?

Now I have a place to apply some of what I understand to be the value in the recursive nature of blogging which was difficult to grasp when I flirted with the not-quite-so-self-referential RecruitingBloggers.com and the issues of cross-posting. I think I also understand now some of the payoff for “digesting” as opposed to ruminating, giving back more than I am taking I hope. We’ll see.

I was rather pleased with my first post on RecruitingBlogs.com, The Virtue of Short Posts. Unfortunately, it seems only John Sumser got the joke. Maybe.

To hell with it! I will not be cowered by convention or conventional people.  For as long as I cause no serious offense to the public-at-large, or breaches of national security, I will blog as I please – to please you I hope – but in the final analysis, because I have an idea and I want to think through, or an opinion to voice, or something to share, or a spare five minutes between spasms.

Important new development number one: As recently predicted, the new-look Recruiting.com is now running a few innocuous banner ads, with more to come. And, why not? God forbid someone should make enough dosh blogging to pay the bills. I have already asked for a media kit so I can forward the information to potential advertisers, thinking even candidates might want to pay the freight for such marvelous exposure.

Important new development number two: Despite suggestions from luminary John Sumser to the contrary, Jason Davis continues to bring his personal charisma to Recruiting.com, helping people connect, as is his forte. In his post Let’s Make A Deal, Jason Davis not only does what he does best, that is broking deals and throwing down gauntlets – even at the expense of potential advertisers – but comforts us that advertising on Recruiting.com does not mean an immediate stop to shilling for the products and services we love, like Jason Davis does for ZoomInfo.

Jason is very clever. Recruiting.com wants and needs advertisers. Vendors want and need Jason Davis’s endorsements. Either way “product placement” is a sure-fired way to monetize your blog – assuming you have enough self-interested, self-important, self-promoting and self-indulgent pseudo-recruiters backing you up.

Keep plugging.