Interview with JobShouts CEO
Image by K. Todd Storch via Flickr
Tampa Bay job board establishes a new business model
Jobshouts.com is a new job board that began operating nationally in January 2009 when Michael Quale and Robin Eads determined that there was an opportunity to establish a different type of business model in the job board business sector.
Jobshouts.com is a job board designed to help employers, recruiters, and job seekers to find each other through social media avenues.
Recruiters and employers can post basic free jobs at no cost. Each job posted is sent out via twitter and to all jobshouts followers. Income for the site is driven by advertising revenue rather than job posting fees.
I recently caught up with Robin Eads, the CEO of JobShouts and did a short interview.
Can you describe your site and how it works?
JobShouts is free to use for both employers and job seekers. There is no registration required, although job seekers can sign up for a private profile that will allow them to receive a DM on Twitter when a job is posted that matches their profile. JobShouts.com is very easy to use. To post jobs, simply click “post a job” on the main page and follow the instructions. All jobs posted are immediately tweeted from the JobShouts account on Twitter once the job has been approved. The first time an employer posts an ad (it is email address specific), we manually review the posting to make sure it meets guidelines (this is done to prevent spammers from posting jobs that aren’t legitimate). Once your ad has been approved, it posts and you are free to continue posting jobs with no approval required.
where did you and Michael come up with the idea for the JobShouts site?
Mike liked the idea of using Twitter to distribute jobs because it’s real-time and easy to plug into the API. Mike has 20 years of IT experience and I have 15 years of recruiting experience. We both knew that job boards weren’t doing it right. I used Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, Dice, etc for YEARS and hated ALL of them. Every year there were more rules about what you couldn’t do, every year they got more expensive and delivered less (which also applied to the quality). Mike and I thought we could build a better job board and make it more useful and cost effective. We bought the domain in December of 2008 and JobShouts.com was launched January 26, 2009.
Can you share three tips that might help new users get the most out of JobShouts.com?
1. Sign up for a job seeker account (which is private, not visible to anyone) so that you can receive notifications right away when new jobs are posted that match your profile. This will prevent you from missing a tweet about a matching job! (job seeker profiles are only available to those with Twitter accounts, currently)
2. If you don’t Twitter, friend us on FaceBook! All jobs posted are also posted to FaceBook.
3. Search. Don’t rely on Tabbed categories because many employers don’t post to the correct categories. Additionally, when you type a search into the search box make sure to hit ENTER. There is a java bug (we are aware of and plan to fix) and search won’t work properly unless you hit enter.
JobShouts.com is also partnered with Indeed and delivers job search results from Indeed, in addition to the matches on JobShouts.com
Where do you see the area of jobs and job search going in the next 12 months?
I see more recruiters and HR using social media and networking sites to obtain candidates and to monitor potential candidates for hire. JobShouts.com has some very exciting things on the horizon to cater to Recruiters (which I’m not at liberty to talk about yet!) I also see more candidates using social media to look for jobs as many have become disenchanted with the larger job boards and the lack of response to applications. I suspect this is due to a large number of job postings being “bogus” (i.e. employers not having open jobs but posting jobs to develop pipelines since the postings have already been paid for).
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI stumbled upon your Blog while doing a search about horses on Google. It then came to my attention that your blog is popular. Are you aware that you could be making an income with your blog? You should check out www.bloggingtothebank.com. It's a site that shows you how to generate an income off of your blog. It's 100% risk free. I tried it and am very satisfied with the results.