This week brings a crop of new job sites, including an ambitious (should we say quixotic?) effort to change the very nature of third party recruiting. We also tell you about Kenexa’s latest acquisition, heralding another step into providing a full-service solution.
First up, is the story of Staffingbook and one man’s quest to alter the course of recruiting:
Steve Harari has ambitious hopes for the recruiting industry. Not content to simply help recruiters place candidates and employers find talent, Harari wants to convince recruiters to mentor their talent over the long term.
“I don’t think it’s too far-fetched that a recruiter might be mentoring a candidate,” says Harari, who has launched his culture-changing effort at Staffingbook.
Were he talking about boutique search firms working at the highest levels, it wouldn’t be far-fetched at all. Even less-lofty placements involve some amount of coaching and mentoring to at least prepare a candidate for an interview.
But Harari’s quarry is the independent recruiter who lives for their next placement. His plan is to convince these recruiters to nurture their candidates for 5, 10, even 20 years.
It’s “a significant behavioral departure for recruiters,” Harari admits. His trump card is that a long-term relationship can lead to multiple fees. “Over 10 to 20 years I might place the candidate four or five times.”
Staffingbook, branded as “The Marketplace for Passive Talent,” is the platform to make it happen. Recruiters post their candidates here. Employers peruse the inventory to find those they want, then, facilitated by the Staffingbook platform, notify the recruiter who decide whether to present the candidate.
If it sounds a little like some mashup of BountyJobs, TopEchelon, and LinkedIn, you would be sort of right. Except at Staffingbook, everybody pays a fee and splits aren’t in the picture.
Setting it all apart is that mentoring issue. Staffingbook will encourage its recruiters to stay in touch with their candidates and have a conversation at least quarterly.
Kenexa acquired Batrus Hollweg, a hospitality industry talent management consultancy and tech vendor. The announcement was made this week. Kenexa said the addition of Batrus Hollweg will enhance its existing research and content portfolio.
Headquartered in Plano, Texas, BHI is especially strong in the restaurant industry, where it focuses on helping companies select and develop hourly and management workers. It also offers an ATS branded as Click and Hire.
“BHI’s wealth of research and content regarding talent best practice, as well as their assessment solutions, are recognized as some of the top-notch content and solutions in our industry today,” said Kenexa CEO Rudy Karsan. “The combination of Kenexa and BHI will provide the most researched and proven talent solutions content, particularly in the hospitality industry.”
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Earlier this month, Kenexa reported an especially strong 3rd quarter. Its 23 cents per share earnings on $77.2 million in revenue, handily beat Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 20 cents a share. The company predicted its 4th quarter would be equally strong, with revenue in the range of $76 million to $78 million and per share earnings of 25 to 26 cents per share.
Proving that every variation of the word “career” has not yet been used in the job-site field, in January 2012 we will have CareerFruits. While the site is being built, a blog and LinkedIn post briefly describe what the company is up to: candidates will “search a job or shortlist many jobs and apply to all of them using LinkedIn/Visualize.me/Video Profiles. You can even add comments to a job and vote if you like a job. You can even ask questions and refer friends in single click to earn reputation and rewards.” Recruiters “can post jobs for free and track responses online, rate/comment on a candidate profile so that others can get benefitted with your feedback, and set up your own team and share profiles that you feel your teammates can utilize.”
The managing partner, from Singapore, tells us that “the seamless tracking of candidate responses and automated workflow to schedule and track overall interview loops are one of the most sought-after features we are working on.” The site is mainly funded through family and friends; a few investment proposals last month were rejected.
Out of the UK comes JobPage, in beta, for technology jobs and marketing jobs. The JobPage team also was behind Page/Do, an award-winning site for making landing pages. JobPage is a sort of a one-stop-shop for posting a job. You use the site to post a job; broadcast it to various job boards like Indeed and share it through your social media sites; get analytics on who’s viewed the job; and manage the whole process, such as make a note that you need to do reference checks. This pricing chart (in British money) gives you a sense of what you can do with JobPage.
And out of Idaho we have InstantJobFair.com launching this week. You pay $100 to send jobs to a category of people who’ve signed up to receive text messages; for example, southern California salon-health/fitness-beauty job candidates. Job seekers who get your text message are directed to a basic web page with info on where to email their resume.