Too Many Job Ventures

The number of new job-focused companies is overwhelming. The latest is Zubka.com, a new European company that pays people for referring suitable job candidates for listings on its site. Here’s your chance to win $3,600 for referring a Java architect for a job in Florida.

However, Zubka is just the latest in a barrage of companies doing similar things (H3.com, BountyJobs, and Blue Chip Expert). The opportunity is significant because no one company dominates the multi-billion-dollar market for hooking up employees with jobs. However, the noise is terrifically loud. Very little new technology here; merely refinements of social networking strategies that are the rage.

YEP.  But the lack of new technology isn't even the problem.  Lack of technology might be a good reason for a VC not to fund.  But what's really going to kill most of these new ventures is lack of marketing.  

This is my 10th year running a job board and my experience is that the online recruiting game is not about technology. Talk to someone knowledgeable at Monster and they’ll tell you most recruiters won't use technology. We’ve got  great feature in our service (the virtual interview questions) that I always use when recruiting internally, but only a minority of our customers actually use them.

This is a marketing business and we’re running media companies. That’s why most of the VC backed companies will evaporate given a couple of years. The real problem is that recruiting is hard work nowadays. But it isn’t a technology problem, so we don’t need 99% of these new ventures and  they won't be around long. 

The idea that you can launch a job board with an idea for a new feature is laughable.  If all the recruiting world needed was a couple of new bells and whistles, why wouldn't the leading job boards adopt these new wonder features quickly eliminating the whole painful startup industry? Business process patents maybe?  Ok, show me an example of a startup that beat out the incumbents with a patent in our industry.

Walk before you run.  If you're really a genius, solve the marketing problem first and when your new job board is a success, then you can introduce the killer new features.  You'll have earned the right and when the old school companies adopt your killer features, you'll survive it.

In other words, start a new job board in an unworked niche like RetirementJobs.com is doing or go geographic like RecruitingNevada.com.  Creating a viable traffic stream alone will cost you millions in any considerable niche. There are hundreds maybe thousands available.  But if you think you've invented a better recruiting process, you've solved the wrong problem. 

Hat tip.