MySpace has decided to kill its jobs section, according to an interview with its new CEO. This has to be a big hit for SimplyHired, the company that powered the jobs section for the massive social network.
While the traffic loss associated with the termination of MySpace Jobs has to be significant, the bigger issue for SimplyHired is that its partners may increasingly start to question whether a jobs section is a productive use of their advertising real estate. More and more publisher may question the premise of job advertising networks.
In the same interview, it also came out that MySpace Classifieds (powered by Oodle) is gone as well.
Showing posts with label recruiting industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recruiting industry. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Does Craigslist make $96 million in profit?
The AIM Group is estimating that Craigslist is doing about $100 million in annual revenue. Given that you can physically count the number of paid listings on their site, I take this to be a solid estimate of their revenue.
The more remarkable fact is that Craigslist achieves this revenue with only 30 employees. They've built a product so compelling that they don't need any sales and marketing to achieve this revenue. Customers just show up and hand them money. If you assume a fully loaded average wage of $130,000 per employee, that comes out to a cost base of only $4 million.
So is Craigslist making $96 million dollars in profit? This leaves a heck of a lot of money to pay dividends to it's owners (and the government).
When I first started Personforce, I met with a former senior exec at Monster. The advice he gave me was try to be more like Craigslist and less like Monster. His point was that running a sales force is expensive and pushing a product that no one is excited about is not fun. Instead, build something that is so unique and compelling, it sells itself. Who wouldn't want to run a company with 95% net margins?
The more remarkable fact is that Craigslist achieves this revenue with only 30 employees. They've built a product so compelling that they don't need any sales and marketing to achieve this revenue. Customers just show up and hand them money. If you assume a fully loaded average wage of $130,000 per employee, that comes out to a cost base of only $4 million.
So is Craigslist making $96 million dollars in profit? This leaves a heck of a lot of money to pay dividends to it's owners (and the government).
When I first started Personforce, I met with a former senior exec at Monster. The advice he gave me was try to be more like Craigslist and less like Monster. His point was that running a sales force is expensive and pushing a product that no one is excited about is not fun. Instead, build something that is so unique and compelling, it sells itself. Who wouldn't want to run a company with 95% net margins?
Friday, June 05, 2009
Ha, I was right about Stack Overflow jobs!
A few weeks ago I wrote a post saying that Stack Overflow would be come a recruiting and jobs site.
Today, I logged into my Google analytics for the first time a couple of weeks and saw a massive spike in traffic to that post. One of the co-founders of Stack Overflow linked to it on twitter, saying "the silicon MBA is on to us!"
Turns out I was right. They added a job board to the site and hinted about more recruiting functions to come. Looks like a solid move for the company and an innovative way to find technical talent.
Today, I logged into my Google analytics for the first time a couple of weeks and saw a massive spike in traffic to that post. One of the co-founders of Stack Overflow linked to it on twitter, saying "the silicon MBA is on to us!"
Turns out I was right. They added a job board to the site and hinted about more recruiting functions to come. Looks like a solid move for the company and an innovative way to find technical talent.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
A TechCrunch for the recruiting industry?
It's sort of a bummer there is no TechCrunch for the recruiting industry. TechCrunch covers the latest news about web startups and established tech companies. It's a great blog to follow to find out what companies are being started, funded, acquired, as well as information about larger tech firms. I personally like the fact that TechCrunch takes an opinion on the news because I think it's generally an informed opinion.
Unfortunately, there is no TechCrunch for the recruiting industry. There is no site that intelligently covers hot startups in the jobs and recruitment space and that's a shame. Of course there are a few blogs out their about recruiting, but no publication of record (that i know of; if you know of one, let me know).
So why is there no TechCrunch for recruiting? Is it:
1. People don't care about recruiting startups?
2. It's too small a niche?
3. The recruiting industry is bereft of talented startups and sharp writers?
So, anyone out there know of any good blogs that cover and analyze recruiting startups? Heck, if recruiting startups out there contact me, I'll even review your company here. Let's hope that in the next year a sharp blog comes out that provides objective analysis about recruiting startups.
Unfortunately, there is no TechCrunch for the recruiting industry. There is no site that intelligently covers hot startups in the jobs and recruitment space and that's a shame. Of course there are a few blogs out their about recruiting, but no publication of record (that i know of; if you know of one, let me know).
So why is there no TechCrunch for recruiting? Is it:
1. People don't care about recruiting startups?
2. It's too small a niche?
3. The recruiting industry is bereft of talented startups and sharp writers?
So, anyone out there know of any good blogs that cover and analyze recruiting startups? Heck, if recruiting startups out there contact me, I'll even review your company here. Let's hope that in the next year a sharp blog comes out that provides objective analysis about recruiting startups.
Monday, May 04, 2009
AOL acquires resume-builiding site Emurse
I somehow missed this, but AOL acquired resume building site Emurse last month. Emurse allows you to build, store, and share your resume online. The design of the site looks excellent and it looks like an easy to use tool for job seekers.
Great to see some acquisitions going on in the recruiting space. As far as I can tell, the founders of the company were former AOL employees who struck out on their own before being acquired by their former bosses. No word on the purchase price, but I imagine it was enough to make the founders quite happy. Congrats!
Great to see some acquisitions going on in the recruiting space. As far as I can tell, the founders of the company were former AOL employees who struck out on their own before being acquired by their former bosses. No word on the purchase price, but I imagine it was enough to make the founders quite happy. Congrats!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Stack Overflow will become a recruiting site
And Dice will be screwed. So will technical recruiters. That's my guess anyway.
I just watched part of a presentation by Joel Spolsky at Google about his startup StackOverflow.com. Stack Overflow is sort of a Yahoo Answers for programming questions. During the presentation, Joel hints that in the future the site could help connect programmers with jobs.
Since Stack Overflow members answer specific programming questions, the site knows exactly what technical skills its members possess. This will make it a far more valuable data resource than Dice's resume database. Instead of companies buying access to an unwieldy database, they can probably pay to connect with programmers who actually demonstrate prowess on the site. Through the job board on his blog, he probably has direct relationships with thousands of employers already.
Moreover, I have a feeling that Joel probably doesn't like the fact that technical recruiters are so important in recruiting engineering talent and charge such high fees. My guess is he'll try to leverage the data created by Stack Overflow to disintermediate Dice and technical recruiters as well. We'll see how it plays out.
I just watched part of a presentation by Joel Spolsky at Google about his startup StackOverflow.com. Stack Overflow is sort of a Yahoo Answers for programming questions. During the presentation, Joel hints that in the future the site could help connect programmers with jobs.
Since Stack Overflow members answer specific programming questions, the site knows exactly what technical skills its members possess. This will make it a far more valuable data resource than Dice's resume database. Instead of companies buying access to an unwieldy database, they can probably pay to connect with programmers who actually demonstrate prowess on the site. Through the job board on his blog, he probably has direct relationships with thousands of employers already.
Moreover, I have a feeling that Joel probably doesn't like the fact that technical recruiters are so important in recruiting engineering talent and charge such high fees. My guess is he'll try to leverage the data created by Stack Overflow to disintermediate Dice and technical recruiters as well. We'll see how it plays out.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Social Networks and Finding a Job
I spoke to my friend Christian today about a paper he was writing for a class at HBS about how social networks were affecting job search and recruiting sites.
Some random points I jotted down about my thoughts on how social networking will affect finding a job:
1. Social networks offer reach and targeting. That makes them equally useful to a company's marketing department as recruiting department. In that way, social networking isn't differentially impacting recruiting more so than other functions.
2. Social networks don't attract users that have "search intent for jobs."
3. Search sites (vertical search, Google) are probably more disruptive to the industry in my opinion.
4. LinkedIn is monumentally useful for job search, but isn't really a social network in my opinion. LinkedIn is a big database of contacts so it's useful for finding people.
5. Candidates find jobs through people with which they have strong ties (friends and family), loose ties (friends of friends), or no ties (strangers). Job boards specialize in finding the jobs in the "no ties" department so are less affected by social networking. Social networking can increase the number of people in the "loose ties" group though.
6. New information such recommendations and people's social networking "fingerprints" may become part of the job application.
Some random points I jotted down about my thoughts on how social networking will affect finding a job:
1. Social networks offer reach and targeting. That makes them equally useful to a company's marketing department as recruiting department. In that way, social networking isn't differentially impacting recruiting more so than other functions.
2. Social networks don't attract users that have "search intent for jobs."
3. Search sites (vertical search, Google) are probably more disruptive to the industry in my opinion.
4. LinkedIn is monumentally useful for job search, but isn't really a social network in my opinion. LinkedIn is a big database of contacts so it's useful for finding people.
5. Candidates find jobs through people with which they have strong ties (friends and family), loose ties (friends of friends), or no ties (strangers). Job boards specialize in finding the jobs in the "no ties" department so are less affected by social networking. Social networking can increase the number of people in the "loose ties" group though.
6. New information such recommendations and people's social networking "fingerprints" may become part of the job application.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Are paid job postings sites dead?
Running Personforce has caused me to think about whether employers will continue to pay money to post jobs in the future. There are a lot of reasons to think they won't. That has significant implications for the recruiting industry and means that sites like CareerBuilder and Monster might not be around in a few years.
1. All job postings are available through Google for free. If a company can post a job to its own site and people can find it through Google, it is less likely to pay money to post a job to a big site.
2. All job postings are available through vertical search engines like SimplyHired or Indeed also. Companies can post jobs to their own websites and they'll show up in vertical search engines as well as a google. Another reason not to pay to post jobs.
3. Any job site can offer an index of all the jobs on the web through Indeed, SimplyHired, or Google's API. On Personforce you can find all the jobs on our network + about 2 million more posted on the web. This means almost any site can offer more job postings than Monster.com or CareerBuilder.
4. Big job sites don't offer the ability to target specific population. Sites like Facebook or TechCrunch give you a much better ability to target exactly the kind of jobseeker you want. Big sites might offer applicant flow, but don't really offer any way to target desirable audiences.
5. Craigslist is free or mostly free.
That's not to say that paid job postings are definitely going away. However, I can't really think of any countervailing forces that will prevent these trends from further growing.
1. All job postings are available through Google for free. If a company can post a job to its own site and people can find it through Google, it is less likely to pay money to post a job to a big site.
2. All job postings are available through vertical search engines like SimplyHired or Indeed also. Companies can post jobs to their own websites and they'll show up in vertical search engines as well as a google. Another reason not to pay to post jobs.
3. Any job site can offer an index of all the jobs on the web through Indeed, SimplyHired, or Google's API. On Personforce you can find all the jobs on our network + about 2 million more posted on the web. This means almost any site can offer more job postings than Monster.com or CareerBuilder.
4. Big job sites don't offer the ability to target specific population. Sites like Facebook or TechCrunch give you a much better ability to target exactly the kind of jobseeker you want. Big sites might offer applicant flow, but don't really offer any way to target desirable audiences.
5. Craigslist is free or mostly free.
That's not to say that paid job postings are definitely going away. However, I can't really think of any countervailing forces that will prevent these trends from further growing.
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