The news is out and Recruiting.com has officially been purchased by Jobster.
I started writing for Recruiting.com in May of last year. I had just restarted stlrecruiting.com, rebranding it from Diogenes Corner, and a series of posts the 50 and Fired generation caught Jason's eye. He invited me to become an author at Recruiting.com and I jumped at the chance. After all, it was his domain name that led me to call mine StlRecruiting.
Over the course of the last year, I have worked with Jason, Anthony, Michael and others towards building an online employment community that helped promote new tools and new personalities. I'm a big fan of blogs - I've been writing for over four years now and reading for over five. That makes me a granddaddy blogger, but I have to say that watching Jason go about building a community helped me understand the business potential of blogging.
Eventually, the lessons I learned at Recruiting.com helped me gain the courage to start my own company, Durbin Media Group. Building the community over the last year has shown me what can be accomplished, and my trip to Toronto last winter ignited a spark of entrepreneurship that wasn't fulfilled in my role as an account manager for a large staffing firm.
So now Recruiting.com has been purchased, and Jason has allowed me to financially benefit from the transaction. We had no formal agreement in place, but Jason decided that fairness was more important than legal niceties. When I first started, I did not anticipate that I was doing anymore than joining a group blog. I felt the publicity I received was more than enough compensation for what I was doing, and I anticipated that if we truly built a large community, any financial reward would come later.
Recruiting.com, for me, has always been about promoting the larger employment community. Now, money is involved, and that may change how people perceive us. That would be a shame. Jason made the deal for his own reasons, but in weekly (often) daily phone calls, he has always pitched the value and the wonder of blogging over financial reward.
I don't see that changing anytime soon. As for specifics, well, I'll still be an author for Recruiting.com, and I'll work with Jason and Anthony on providing relevant content to the audience. I'll work to promote technology and companies and people under the theory that Recruiting.com grows the pie, and everyone gets a bigger piece.
Personally, I'm only under a short-term obligation to Jobster, but I will hold shares in the company when that agreement is done. It's important everyone knows this, and judges what I say about the company and others with full disclosure. If there is any reward in the future, I will disclose that relationship. That's a pledge you have from me.
So here we go into a new adventure. I have my own company to run, but I'm still keenly interested in the online employment world, and will continue being a regular contributor for recruiting.com
Thank you for reading for the last year. The announcement is here.
