Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:49:00 GMT
in the recurring theme of job board discussions I seem to be having I thought I would continue it a tiny bit.
37 signals just announced a generic job board called gigs (note to jason: the page it points to isn’t the one I’m thinking you wanted it to point to ;-)
If you want to post on 37signal’s job board it is $250 for 30 days. gigs is $100 for 3 weeks. This should tell you something about the competitive nature of generic job boards, and the lack of competitive advantage 37signals brings to this arena.
While I wish them all the success in the world, I don’t think they are offering anything new or exciting in this field. I can’t actually see the site, as it isn’t up, so I could completely wrong about it.. but any innovation they bring on the site will be easily copied by their competitors anyway.
I still think the only way to do a truly awesome job board is to make it social and network based.
The best jobs are usually offered to friends/people in your network of known associates.. a job board should reflect this fact if they want to separate themselves from the pack.
Posted in Business Related | Tags jobs, strategy | 3 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Thu, 07 Sep 2006 05:23:00 GMT
as a followup to me saga about job boards I’ve got a brilliant addition that they should add (and I plan to add to gypsyjobs ).
user-feedback and reputation.
for longer term jobs and contracts this kind of thing isn’t as important, but for short term work I think it’s critical.. especially if you don’t have a signed contract, or lawyers to enforce it.
I think opening it up would provide a way to signal to potential employees (and employers) that the pairing will work out.
The hard part about all this I think is
1. anonymous cranks… just posting endorsements to fluff up a company or person, or to tear them down, without having actually worked for them
2. he-said she-said type arguments which come about when a pairing ends on less than friendly terms. personally I think these should be exposed so that potential employees know what they are getting in to.
so.. the plan is to allow feedback to be displayed at the option of the company/employee (you would be able leave feedback but only they would be able to see it if it is turned off). I’m also curious about how this kind of thing relates to defamation laws. .. anyone know about this?
Even if they don’t have any feedback, allowing feedback to be left would be saying something I think.
Why am I doing this now?
well.. I just started working for a local startup (not mentioned on the blog at all) yesterday when a previous employee mailed me (and the founder) about lack of payment.
and.. to make matters worse another short-term contract is about a week behind in their final payment as well.
That being said.. I’ve had 4 other short term jobs over the last couple of months where I have been paid in full, and have had a great time doing the work.
Posted in General | Tags jobs, strategy | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Ian Holsman
Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:46:00 GMT
as a follow up to my dissing of job boards
I thought I would put a few notes on what I think they could do to actually ‘add+capture value’ for themselves.
the first thing you need to do in these kind of situations is look how they can differentiate themselves for each other and from other potential new entrants.
so what could makes CrunchBoard different than jobs.gigaom.com ?
well.. lets go through what isn’t different:
- technology.. both do the job well enough so that this isn’t an issue
- the jobs themselves, although crunchboard seems more ‘businessey’ than gigaom’s currenty, this isn’t the intention by the looks of the categories they have on the site.
so far.. nothing even which sets them apart from monster (besides a better look and navigation)
ok.. so lets analyze who these people (Michael Arrington and Om Malik) are, crunchboard gives a hint on their site.
It’s the electronic version of the ultimate insider’s network.
These guys are insiders. They know people, they have access to information that us mere mortals merely dream about.. cool parties.. the VC groupies, and more importantly access to the senior officials in most of the startups and VC firms.
These guys live on whispers, and rumors.. they need to make their job boards more like that.
They need to remodel their “job” businesses like that of a typical recruitment agency, not a job board. They know when people are ‘looking’, they know the people in the ‘biz’ inside out. A job board is for when you have no knowledge of the people.. a mass market sledgehammer so to speak.
So instead of making their network contacts post jobs on a board, they should thinking of who in their extended network could fill that position. Use those networks..keep the secrecy that startups love.. thats their competitive advantage. They know the right people.
I know it isn’t web 2.0, and it doesn’t require a web site, just a couple of HR recruitment specialists to do the interviewing/weeding… but on the flip side they could then charge 10-20% of the salary (thats the going rate I believe) which is much more than $200/post.
Posted in Business Related | Tags jobs, strategy | no comments | 1 trackback
Posted by Ian Holsman
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 03:41:00 GMT
Mike Arrington’s Crunchjobs is doomed to failure due to it’s own success, and although it’s winning praise as being really good .. it isn’t going to last.
why?
It doesn’t have any secret sauce, and network effects it depends on can’t happen, and as it gets more successful others will come in and compete.
In b-school we learn that any idea needs some kind of protection so competitors can’t imitate it. This can be in the form of patents, hard to reverse engineer processes, lower costs, or even exclusive deals with key-suppliers.
1. Any patents to be gotten for a job listing board have been done. There is nothing revolutionary about putting a job listing onto a search service.
2. It takes about 1-2 weeks to create a job board.. scalability may be an issue later on when you get 300-400,000 views a day.. but this is not a new problem to solve.
3. Lower costs is important. can you run a job site for less than anyone else? this is important when competition forces you to drive your prices down, and you have to live on razor thin margins. Having extremely low costs can deter others from entering the market, as they won’t be able to make their cost of capital on the deal. (profit isn’t enough.. you have to be making more profit on the money than you would in a alternative investment.. say sticking it in a bank)
4. Sweetheart deals with Key suppliers. This is a key factor. It isn’t the same as network effects (which I’ll go into later). Take 37Signals for example.. they are ‘the’ people to go to for RoR. so when they open a RoR job board you know that most people will use that. They supply the framework, and as such can use that position to give their job board an unfair advantage over other potential Rails job boards (unfair in the business sense… every business aims to get a unfair advantage over their competitors). So I’m thinking 37Signals’s job board can survive just on this, and can continue to charge whatever it likes..
The other thing b-schools teach you about is network effects. The more people who use a service, the more others will use it. Digg and eBay are examples of this. Are job boards an example of this? you bet. they used to be perfect examples of this. Job suppliers would try and find the one with the most reach and advertise on this.. we see it in most markets.
but in the web2.0 version of job boards this isn’t the case.
1. There is no network effect yet.. none have been around for long enough. all of them are busy convincing people to list with them.
2. No Unique audience. While one might be slightly more popular than the other, most of the ‘key influencers’ they target read both. With RSS-readers it is simple to subscribe to their feeds and even see them listed side by side. RSS is their enemy in this case. The cost of subscribing to a new job-posting feed is about zero for most people. I can easily scan through 10 job feeds.
3. Aggregators are making the source irrelevant.. Indeed.com and EdgeIO. A job supplier could even submit their RSS feed directly to these companies if they choose, bypassing the middleman.
So .. why I think
CrunchJobs and
GigaJobs are not going to last.
- Both serve exactly the same business savy audience.
- Both are perfect imitators of each other. There is no differentiation to speak of
- Neither have a network effect
- None have any real influence with the job suppliers which could serve to limit the influence of their competitors
* Even if they do merge, there is nothing stopping a 3rd entrant in the market. Any web2.0 blog with more than 10,000 regular visitors a day could open a board.
So.. my recommendation is for them to differentiate, and get something which others can’t copy easily.
FWIW GypsyJobs which is a job board dedicated to Django positions is no different than the boards I’m describing. Which is why it doesn’t charge a fee to list.
Posted in Business Related | Tags jobs, strategy | no comments | 2 trackbacks