Talent scout

In the world of the Internet, you either innovate or you cease to exist.

Peter Tuttle, president of CareerBoard LLC, formerly CareerBoard.com, understands this and strives to create a culture that will keep his company ahead of the competition.

“The Internet world moves at the speed of light,” says Tuttle. “Change and innovation are inherent in the business. You have to create a culture that supports innovation, have people that support innovation and have a management style that supports it. The way I approach it in terms of culture is that people need to feel free to experiment.

“When you say that, there is an implied understanding that you need to be willing to accept failure. Experiments don’t always work.”

The nature of the Internet means that some of these experiments are happening live, with the successes and failures viewable by all.

“You’ve got to create a balance between how much experimentation is bad and how much failure you can accept,” says Tuttle. “If you are constantly disappointing your people or customers with experimentation, you are not going to do well. The organization’s structure, your management style and the implementation all have to come together.”

Giving employees an understanding of the overall business helps them put what they are doing — and the risks they are taking — into perspective.

“Everyone has to at least have an emotional ownership stake in the business,” says Tuttle. “We try to maintain a flat organization. Traditional reporting lines and work structures really don’t fit our business very well. They are too confining.

“Our financial results, operating issues and current business needs are shared openly with everyone. Those types of things create ownership in the business. They feel the pain of things that don’t work and they can see the successes. As CEO, you can’t focus your energy on tight day-to-day control of the operating facets of the business.”

Instead, you have to create the environment that allows people to innovate and thrive.

“You have to remove the fear of failure and make it OK to experiment, and they need to find out they will get rewarded and respect for their creativity,” says Tuttle. “You, as a leader, need to encourage and support and reinforce that philosophy on a daily basis in interaction with your employees. If you encourage them on one hand, then reprimand them on the other for failure, it doesn’t work. You need to set high standards for performance and provide feedback.”

Tuttle says that because in the Internet business world, your performance is visible for everyone to see, evaluation is unnecessary.

“I don’t need to go around and give them an evaluation,” says Tuttle. “They know what their evaluation is. My discussions focus on where do we need to be, how can I help you get there or how are we going to fix this. It’s more joint problem-solving than providing feedback.”

Innovation sparked CareerBoard, and it is the lifeblood of what keeps it going.

“The very fact that we exist was an innovation,” says Tuttle. “When we started CareerBoard in 1997, it was a revolutionary idea in this market. Since then, we have continually made changes and innovations to the site.”

In 1998, the company started e-mailing job and resume notifiers to applicants and companies when certain criteria were met. Now the company is pioneering videostreaming as an employment branding tool. Employers can make a short video explaining why their company is a great place to work.

“More recently, we have moved from primarily a job posting site to the point now where we provide a full Internet recruitment solution where we are automating the filtering and screening process,” says Tuttle. “You can track the progress of candidates online or create private resume pools, all within CareerBoard. It’s particularly attractive to companies under 1,000 employees that can’t afford fancy enterprisewide solutions.”

Innovation is rarely easy, and sometimes it can take years.

“Some of this stuff takes a long time to bring about,” says Tuttle. “When you talk about innovation, some of it happens quickly and some of it has a long time horizon. You have to do both.” How to reach: CareerBoard LLC, www.careerboard.com