With Jason Goldberg out and former investment banker Jeff Seely in as CEO, Jobster is heading down a new path. It will be interesting to see what a company so well funded does competing with a class of companies marginally funded in comparison.
In December ’07 on Jobster’s blog Goldberg made a reference to the new direction…
‘We’ve also recently entered into some truly game-changing partnerships to enable large publishers and website operators to build their own career networking services utilizing Jobster’s technology. We’ll be announcing the first of these partners and launching their sites in early 2008.’ continue reading.
Today those, ‘game-changing partnerships’ are a little more transparent, though to my knowledge; Jobster has yet to announce a single partner.
Variety is an early partner. In February ’08 Variety sent an email to registered users announcing its new site called, The Biz…
‘The new site (Called The Biz) will be a business networking site encompassing careers, community and content. Users will be able to upload profiles, photos, portfolios, videos and more.
A cross between Facebook®, IMDb® and Linkedin®, The Biz will connect professionals and enthusiasts within the entertainment industry and encourage people to network, exchange ideas, search for jobs and recruit new talent!!’
A partnership with The Wall Street Journal may also be in the works. Multiple sources confirm that Jobster has either secured that partner or is working hard to land it.
With Jobs representing such a significant portion of online advertising, monetizing career sites has become the trendy and smart thing to do if you’re a niche publisher.
Just ask MediaBistro or Nielsen. Each is a niche publisher. Each has aligned its business for better monetization of its career site. Each has hired top producing Yahoo! HotJobs sales talent to lead its recruitment media sales efforts.
Nielsen’s jobs sites like adweekjobs.com and editorandpublisherjobs.com run on adicio. I’m not sure about MediaBistro’s career site.
Not surprising, top blogs are well into the, ‘monetize your career site,’ movement. Paidcontent, Read/WriteWeb and Slashdot are all powered by JobThread. GigaOm is using Simply Hired. Techcrunch is powered by PersonForce.
This trend and this new direction represents a growth opportunity for Jobster. One that places Jobster in direct competition with each of the above mentioned players, plus Beyond.com.
In March ’07, Beyond landed $13m round of funding. It’s the only competitor besides Simply Hired to land a multimillion-dollar round.
Beyond and the field are bringing job postings and job boards to niche publishers and blogs, much like Yahoo! HotJobs is to hundreds of local newspapers.
What differentiates Jobster is the fact that it’s bringing social networking (for career opportunities) to these niche sites which may lead to a more engaging experience for the publications’ audiences (a.k.a niche passive talent) and therefore more opportunities for employers to attract, engage and hire that talent.
