I spent the last couple months really digging deep into the candidate side of Web 3.0 job hunting and I have to admit, I’m just not convinced that it’s ready for “prime time”. There is some great thinking and some great technology behind the existing players like Jobfox, Climber and Vitruva, but I’ve asked around, I’ve played with them and I’ve read some other blogs — I just can’t seem to find large numbers of individuals who have found success.
Now as much as people bash the “big boards” like Monster and Careerbuilder, I still think they’re an effective means of sourcing for internal corporate recruiters and a good way of finding jobs for job seekers. I work “on the inside” and the majority of our hires come from this method. I get an endless supply of emails and mailers about technologies that claim to “revolutionize” recruiting and I aim to check them all out because I have an open mind. My Agency connections tell me all this stuff is junk, but don’t kid yourself Agency Recruiters…that’s where you’re getting your candidates from too. I know this because I ask all my Agency candidates how they were found. I’ll address that in my next post on Open Market Recruiting.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not giving up on this technology. In fact, I have high hopes. The ideal situation would be a MERGER between the big boards and a provider of this 3.0 matching technology because the problem is not that the technology doesn’t work, there’s just not enough people using it. The sign-up takes too long and the number of companies putting their jobs on the site is too low. That’s a recipe for candidate and company abandonment.
So for now, I’ll leave this topic and move on to an area of Social Media Recruiting that I’ve been studying quite intensely for the last 3 months….Open Market Recruiting. I’ll take a look at BountyJobs.Com, Dayak.Com and if anyone else has any suggestions of other companies to review…please let me know. Thanks!
Web 3.0? Have you any idea how long matching has been around? Jobfox is using matching technology from WCC, who has been around since the late 1990ties. And an array of temp companies (Adecco, Ranstad, Vedior) have been using this type of technology since 2001/2002.
Perhaps you should dive in a bit deeper before making statements about the level of usage of these types of technologies.
Hi James, thanks for the thought provoking article – here is my two cents worth on the subject.
We all know job boards have by in large, remained unchanged for 10 years, and why should they change? They make money, they do work, some better than others of course.
As bad as they are, when you post a job on a board, especially a popular one, you know you are going to get applicants, and as a small business, or a big one for that matter, it’s that applicant reach that really is key – the ability to reach people who do not know about you, your brand or your industry.
On the surface, candidate-to-job matching technologies should be the ideal next step in recruitment, the Web 3.0 of recruitment if you please – it just makes so much sense.
For employers – “Why advertise jobs when I can find good people who want to be found?” and for Job Seekers: “Why search when I can be found for the jobs I want.”
The problem is not the ‘technology’ nor the’ idea’ of candidate-to-job matching, the problem is simply one of critical mass.
These new matching technologies (ours included – QuietAgent.com), are never going to make any great in-roads into upsetting the status-quo unless they can reach critical mass. The future of recruiting is not about technology alone – it will come down to a combination of technology combined with a strategy to acquire critical mass. The company to change recruitment will be one who has such a combination.
You’re right not to give up on the technologies, they will eventually be the winners, the next phase – the questions are, when and whom?
Thanks.
Jason Kerr
CEO, QuietAgent.com
PS: A merger between big boards and match technologies may be a difficult pill, as most match technologies (the god ones anyway), will be free to use and the employer will only pay if they have success (finds a candidate to hire). This goes directly against the advertising based (pay-to-play) model that most of the big board’s live under.
Take a look at http://www.SkillGalaxy.com. Its a marketplace where employers can open BOTH contract and permanent requisitions to large Skillalaxy registered supplierbase. SkillGalaxy’s supplierbase includes both staffing companiesn and independent recruiters.
Registration for both employers and suppliers is FREE. For permanent hiring, clients can fix their own fees they would like to pay. Rates for contract positions are driven by the market.
SkillGalaxy is a very powerful tool and helps clients find and hire candidates at low costs. It also has powerful vendor management features that employers can actually use to streamline their talent acquisition such as Interview Scheduling, Hiring, Timesheet Management of contractors, Reporting etc.
All permanent candidates hired through SkillGalaxy are backed by 60 days money back guarantee. Contractors are backed by performance guarantee.
This service is catching up fast. I havent seen any such open marketplace where clients can hire both contractors and permanent candidates and also provides a large supplierbase.
Marc — there’s no doubt that matching technology has been used interally for years in big staffing firm databases…but please don’t tell me that they’re using the same logic because I’ve seen those systems — and used them — most of which are still running on DOS. They use keywords as their primary source of “intelligence”.
What makes companies like JobFox more advanced and considered “Web 3.0″ (and I use the term Web 3.0 only for effect) is that the data is on a platform that allows multiple companies and candidates to create and manage their own content, make their own matches, and create a little bit more of a profile than just a resume.
Clearly, we’re talking about a little bit more here than matching.
Not sure what you’re so angry about. It appears as if I’ve struck a tender nerve without trying to do so. I happen to think that I’ve done a significant amount of research in this area of recruitment technology and would love to have a link to your blog so I can see the indepth studies you’ve done on outdated staffing firm matching technology.
Check out http://www.jobs2web.com. Their platform incorporates a number of web 2.0 & 3.0 technologies and does a good job of leveraging social media and then providing detailed analytics on the whole picture.