I met Jason Goldberg, CEO of Jobster.com when he spoke at one of our networking events back in November 06. I was struck by his passion for his organisation but in the short slot he was allocated I didn’t get a good feel for what Jobster was about. Other’s I spoke to at the event felt the same. So later that month I spoke with Jobster’s UK PR people to see if I could find out a bit more about Jobster and what their plans were for the UK. They sent over a Q&A document. However, after 30 seconds I realised that I’d need to actually speak with a human being if I were to get anywhere.
I thought, just for fun, I’d share the first question and answer (I wonder if you’ll get past the first sentence).
What is Jobster?
Jobster is an online recruiting service that provides the most relevant job search experience for jobseekers and the most effective tools for employers to target, engage and hire the right candidates. Founded in 2004, Jobster has offices throughout North America and is backed by industry-leading investors Ignition Partners, Trinity Ventures, Mayfield Fund and UK based Reid Elsevier. At Jobster, we believe that great people know other great people. Putting this belief into action, we gain referrals through relationships the company has with employees and their extended networks, insuring quality results every time.
Anyway, due to busy schedules I’ve only recently managed to catch up with Jason on the phone. The first thing I asked him to do was give me a layman’s briefing on Jobster. So what is Jobster about?
Jason says it’s about bringing social networking to recruitment. Employers and recruitment agencies use the Jobster technology to reach into relevant networks to build and manage relationships with potential future hires. The main difference between Jobster and a traditional job board is how Jobster helps leverage the power of relationships to attract the right people. As Jason would say, it’s about matching not posting. However, they do offer job posting facilities and to pull jobseekers to the site they aggregate postings from other job boards. At present they have around 2 million jobs on the site. They also have a database of over 30 million people worldwide which is available, for searching, by recruiters. They are a generalist site with a broad base of vacancies/candidates – covering all sectors/functions and at all levels.
However, as a “Career service for the digital generation” and because of their recent alliance with Facebook (which is basically for individuals of college age) they are bound to attract a younger audience. I’m not saying you can’t use the site to recruit for Financial Directors I’m just guessing the majority of jobs are a little lower down the organisation.
So what about the UK?
Jobster already has several clients using their services in the UK, including recruiters such as Norman Broadbent and Alexander Mann. They will be expanding their UK capabilities towards the end of this month to make Jobster more UK specific.
For example, they’ll be making sure UK cities and postal codes are in the system and addressing any American English v’s “proper” English language issues (that’s me saying “proper” English – not Jason!). At present they are not looking to open UK offices but are serious about tapping the UK market.
If you want to know more about Jobster and keep up to date with developments you ought to read Jason’s blog. Written without input from, or probably consideration for, his marketing team/PR company; it’s refreshingly free from PR speak.
