Succession Registry Review

My firm is seeking to hire a new employee, so I have assisted in sending out notices through my various networks to find qualified candidates. One individual recommended that I use the services of the Succession Registry, a relatively new resource first mentioned in the October 2007 edition of Inside Information published by Bob Veres.

Succession Registry is an online career website where Rainmakers, aka employers, can post available positions that can be searched by Wellsprings, aka prospective employees. The service is free for Rainmakers and costs $9.95 per month for Wellsprings. Many have commented that the nominal fee for job seekers increases the quality of the candidates that contact employers regarding open positions, and I agree that it likely succeeds in doing so (Note that Craigslist has done the opposite where employers must pay a $25 fee to post an ad to cut down on the work-from-home advertisements).

Create a Position

To post our current opportunity, I created an account to generate an offer for a position. Establishing an account was very straightforward and I was asked to provide standard contact information and create a username and password. Logged in, I was able to access the Rainmaker menu that offers a short list of choices:

• Manage Your Profile
• Offer a Position
• View My Offers
• Sign Out

The process of adding a position is also very basic: first select an offer of Employment of Succession and then identify standard properties of the position, such as full or part time, on-site, remote, or both, job title, and a general description.

General Description

The general description text box is where the pertinent details of the position offered are described. Unfortunately, the interface is very basic and offers no discrete options to format text or generate lists that appear in other text entry interfaces, a la WordPress seen below:

If I were to improve the functionality of Succession Registry, this is where I would focus my efforts first. A visually attractive (read: appropriately formatted) description lends itself to more hits by job seekers as it is easy to read, easy to identify requirements, and most importantly easy to find the contact information.

But I’ll let you in on a secret. The general description area does support simple HTML, so if you know the basics such as line breaks <br>, paragraphs <p>, and ordered lists <ol>, you can create a fairly attractive posting that is visually appealing and easy to read. Last but not least, you can use the anchor tag <a> to include a mailto: address and also define the subject of an email to indicate the communication was initiated from the Succession Registry page!

Please, Succession Registry admins, release an updated editor for the General Description, or I suspect the majority of offerings posted on the site will be lengthy, single-spaced run-on paragraphs with no links or structured lists of requirements.

Final Stage

The final stage in the process consists of a rather lengthy list of attributes and qualities sought after in a candidate. Choices range from CFP® certification requirements all the way to basic data entry. I didn’t count them, but there must be at least 100 different attributes to select. I ended up selecting quite a few for our position, but the majority of attributes seem fairly standard for a service position in the financial planning industry. Nevertheless, I suppose too many choices is better than too few.

Wait for the Wellsprings

After finishing the extensive list of preference items (and numerous previews to make sure the HTML formatting was appealing), I added the offer to our account. Now we must wait for the Wellsprings to sign on and view our offering. One additional inconvenience is the fact that, as a Rainmaker, I cannot view the offerings of other Rainmakers and see what competition I might be up against. I realize, though, that if the offerings were visible to Rainmakers (status that requires no up-front payment), Wellsprings could simply sign in as Rainmakers and view listings for free! That’s not good for business.

So other than the ability to post an offer, Succession Registry offers little other services. What would be some attractive features? How about the ability to see how many times my offer was viewed? What about seeing how many Wellsprings have “saved” my offering for further follow up? I’d like to know how many registered Wellsprings there are so I can have a good sense of the reach provided by the site.

But considering its most basic function, Succession Registry provides yet another focused outlet for advisers to spread the word about open opportunities. The hope here is that the fee for Wellsprings limits prospective candidates to those that are serious, so at the very least advisers can avoid filtering through hundreds of resumés from unqualified applicants received through Craigslist or Monster.com.