Last Friday, the Jobster crew came into town and delivered a presentation on the state of recruiting and how Jobster products fit into the solution. Franki and I had a chance to speak to the CEO Jason Golberg before his presentation, and we took some notes on what to expect.
First things first, I have a much better understanding of what Jobster does from the employer side. Prior to the meeting, I was aware of a referral network software as the main product, but didn't quite understood how it worked.
Wow. That's what I think of it. Yes, I am associated with Jobster through Durbin Media Group, but I think I can safely and objectively say, "Wow."
The Jobster software allows you to truly build a talent pool of interested contacts, reach out to passive prospects through the use of a social network, and stay in touch with them. The software manages the process for you, both within and without an ATS.
What this means is if you contact 20 developers for a position, and fill it - you can stay in touch with those 20 developers through the click of a button. You can group your talent pools by skill, diversity, time contacted, and how helpful they have been in forwarding contacts.
That's all well and good, but how about some Jobster numbers?
- 20% of the Fortune 100 are customers.
- Hundreds of customers.
- 50 million in VC, but 50% quarteer on quarter revenue growth over the past five quarters.
That wasn''t the best part of the presentation.
Franki and I are experts. We can lay claim to that title in a half-dozen areas, including; interactive marketing, internet research, online communities, Web 2.0 technologies, Blog Marketing, and CSS design. Because of the nature of our work, we are compelled to be early adopters. Our business depends on it.
Because of that, we often lose bearings on where the majority of the business world (including staffing) lies on the technology adoption axis. Many corporate recruiting departments are still struggling to adjust to job boards, applicant tracking systems (only 30% even have them), and large scale e-mail submittals. Thus the advent of blogs, RSS, wikis, MySpace, and the wealth of Web 2.0 online employment technologies seems as far away as flying cars and space elevators.
For most of the audience here in St Louis, Digg, Technorati, GoogleBase, Recruiting Blogs, and even the word "Web 2.0," was new. And thus the Jobster Tour, far from being a sales seminar, was a teaching and informational event. Introducing the recruiting audience to the topics we regularly discuss in the recruiting blogosphere is the single greatest boon that Jobster could do for us. In fact - I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my posts (on Harry Joiner's site from the BlogSwap) front and center in the Jobster marketing materials.
John Sumser pointed out that 97.5% of recruiters have never heard of recruiting blogs. That's probably true, as only 22% of Americans read blogs (as opposed to 7% that write them). Of course, the statistic I'm most interested in is how many recruiters, having been introduced to blogs, now read them. That retention statistic is more important than the current number.
If companies like Jobster, who are making a big splash with Staffing departments around the country, are educating our target audience on the future of online recruiting, the recent dip in recruiter blog growth is minor compared to the projected future growth.
Spherion, Yoh, Careerbuilder, AOL, and Volt have all started blogs in the last few months. As Jobster continues their tour, adding clients and teaching the rest, I expect even more companies to jump on board. It looks like the gold rush is just beginning.
