Update: The length of the auction was shortened after this article was posted. The auction now ends on June 22.
RecruitingBlogs.com is up for auction and right now, the top bid is $6,500.
The eclectic recruitment social network with its rich potpourri of opinion, observation, social activities, and practices both best and otherwise, was put up for auction yesterday by founder Jason Davis.
“I have reached a point where it’s time for me to do something new and what I really want to do is to make placements,” Davis posted to his blog Monday. ” I am constantly having discussions with other recruiters and every time I do, I get this buzz and excitement.”
In a conversation today, Davis said he’s proud of the four-year-old site, believes it has the potential to grow beyond its 28,000 members and its 67,000 monthly visitors, but he wants to return to active participation in the industry where he launched his career 14 years ago.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Davis told me from Toronto where he’s based. “I can’t keep doing this and making placements and pick up the phone and try to sell $500 or $1,000 sponsorships… I’m a one-man show.”
RecruitingBlogs launched in 2007, a year after Davis sold an earlier recruiter blogging aggregation and information site, Recruiting.com, to ill-fated Jobster.com. Built on the Ning platform, RecruitingBlogs grew rapidly in its first two years, topping 20,000 members in October 2009.
That same year, Davis bought the popular and highly irreverent Punk Rock HR. The year prior, he launched RecruitFest, an early unconference, notable for its social environment and its non-traditional topics and agenda.
By last year, however, Davis was trying to step back from day-to-day involvement. In May 2010, he brought in Miles Jennings as COO. Just a few months later, in early September, Davis turned over his CEO job to Jennings and announced an association with Jennings and domain name investor Ashley Saddul to revive Recruiter.com, a site Saddul owned.
Today, Davis explained that after a while the three decided their vision didn’t mesh, so Davis reclaimed his CEO title, and parted with Jennings and Saddul, who today run Recruiter.com.
As Davis explained in Monday’s blog post, he decided to sell RecruitingBlogs because he’s more excited about returning to hands-on recruiting. The site, he wrote, is at a point where “a different kind of skill set is now required to take it to the next level.”
The auction on Flippa, which specializes in the sale of websites, will run for three weeks, closing June 28th two weeks, closing June 22. As of this writing, there are 12 bids, with the price now at $6,500. The bidders are all anonymous, although ERE CEO and founder David Manaster is among them.
Like most online auctions, bidding is expected to heat up in the last several hours before the closing.
What will it ultimately sell for?
“I think it’s worth a good amount of money,” Davis believes, noting he has turned down one offer of $50,000. Since blogging about the sale, Davis said he has had several calls from vendors interested in acquiring the social site. “There’s a lot of conversations going on.”
Regardless of the final price, Davis said someone other than he will own RecruitingBlogs by this time next next month. “Come hell or high water, I’m out.”