Sleeping With The Enemy
February 8, 2008 by Geoff Jennings
This week, Jobspeed, a new IT job board website was launched. Superficially, the marketing propaganda is probably making recruiters prick their ears up to listen. The site’s run by a consortium of recruiters, thus the we-know-what-you-need-come-over-here-and-be-with-others-of-your-own-kind spiel. It’s promising a faster service, real jobs and the pay per application fee seems, at the outset at least, to be fair.
Let’s look a little more deeply at this, though. We might find that if we scratch the surface, all that glossy, almost-dry paint might start to chip off in slimy chunks, only to reveal something that recruiters might want to steer clear of.The main problem with this concept is that it is run by recruiters, lead by Lloyd Harrington Recruitment. Even if you’re a recruiter and you’re prepared, say, in a moment of conciliation and peace to all the brothers and sisters to overlook the fact that by paying them instead of Seek, you’re feeding the opposition, would you want that same opposition plumper and stronger but also with access to all the applicant information from applicants applying for your jobs? Nup.
While employers aren’t discouraged from advertising, I don’t see how they could be encouraged to recruit from the site at the same rate as recruiters are charged. Perhaps they are being offered a different rate?And if you’re just reading this article for my witty banter, and if you don’t give a stuff about outcomes for employers or recruiters, but one day, it might be 40 degrees outside and the aircon at your office is broken and the woman in the next cubicle is munching like a cow on a packet of Thins, and they stink because they’re cheese and onion, and you decide to go to Jobspeed to check out their ‘real jobs’, then ask yourself how they’re going to verify the realness of the jobs. Are they going to check each and every one for credibility, or simply black card the recruiters known for posting false positions. Ask yourself that.
I have always been an advocate of recruiters running their own job boards. I think that if we are ever to become independent of job boards such as Seek, that this is the way to go. But with Jobspeed, as it is a consortium, there is really no difference from the recruiter’s perspective. We are still paying someone else to sell our wares.
WITH ENEMIES LIKE US, WHO NEEDS FRIENDS…..
This article wrongly presents http://www.jobspeed.com.au , a new entrant to the job market, as a shady character with an dark, ulterior motive. Not quite the vision we set ourselves when designing both the business and the website.
In response I’d like to set the record straight and expand on some of the ‘issues’ brought up.
Jobspeed is majority owned by a Management Team of four guys and one girl, each with their own field of expertise.
Myself and the Sales Director have both built and run recruitment companies in the past so ‘yes’, we do have a unique insight into both the costs of advertising and administration of the various Job boards. We have first hand sat in meetings with these Job boards and felt helpless as they continue to raise the advertising prices and are unwilling to negotiate, because of their grip on the market.
Neither of us is currently involved in the day to day running of these particular recruitment agencies. However, some of the start up costs for Jobspeed has come from the money generated from our shareholding in these businesses. Too be frank when creating http://www.jobspeed.com.au and in turn developing a new business, as any new business owner can identify with, there is little time to do anything else.
The other three major shareholders are made up of a Technical Director who has spent 12 + years answering the calls of irritated users and two Senior Marketers with a wealth of experience launching new brands.
Our agenda from the beginning is to provide an avenue for recruitment agencies to get a ‘fair go’ from the Job board industry, which realistically they helped to build.
We are a commercially minded business and our motivation is to create a profitable entity built on providing value for money, hence our payment model. As a recruiter you don’t get paid unless you make a placement, so why should Job boards be any different?
I knew from the outset it was going to be a difficult task to enter an extremely competitive market and ask competing agencies to come together and support a low-cost Job board, however in meeting with close to one hundred agencies in 2007 I was surprised and encouraged by the level of support and advice I was given in these face to face meetings.
In my opinion the majority didn’t feel like they were ‘sleeping with the enemy’, rather realising common objectives and doing what they could to accomplish them.
Do understand it is very difficult to get agencies on the phone to talk about a ‘new job board’, let alone advertise. So we are offering something in return for their initial support of an industry Job board, which we hope will ultimately reduce everybody’s advertising costs across the board in the long term.
I’d like to point out that the minority shareholders (agencies) do provide us with support and advice, however, have no direct control over the business or access to any of Jobspeed’s confidential information – the same as expected of any minor shareholder in any public company.
There is one piece of this article I can identify with. I too have been an advocate for a industry owned Job board for quite some time and if http://www.jobspeed.com.au is given the support of the ‘industry’, then maybe this will be a reality in the short to medium term rather than just a far off dream.
Since the site launch I have been approached by a number of agencies who were unaware of our initial partnership offering and are currently discussing the details with them. Please feel free to contact me directly if you would like to know more on partners@jobspeed.com.au
You have assured us, Simon, that you will not misuse the data at Jobspeed. What measures do you have in place to ensure that information is adequately protected? Also, how do you propose to determine “real” jobs from…um…fake ones?
I hope you are not insinuating Geoff that recruiters would publish fake job ads in order to fish for resumes. Surely those highly honourable reruiters wouldn’t do that!
…and sell your business for $40 mil.
speed? with all the javascript/tinymce/ibox functions it takes a while to load.