Part 2: The best job matching services - DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

How did Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn and Indeed succeded?
Immerse in their innovation strategies 💡 💲  📈. 

Discover also innovative placement offices and media in the 17th century.
Serial entrepreneurs:  J. Taylor, R. Hoffman, P. Forster, T. Renaudot (1586), J. Fielding (1721)

Innovating places in Job Search

Book "Innovation 50 success stories" printed in French by Dunod - looking for a publisher for the English version

 

Montaigne, reported about his father, mayor of Bordeaux in 1554-1556 (the essays, ch 34) : "My father once told me that he once had thoughts of endeavoring to introduce this practice, that there might be in every city a certain place assigned to which those who might need something could go (literal translation) and have their business entered by an officer appointed for that purpose. As for example, I’m looking to sell pearls; I’m looking for someone who has pearls to sell; such a one wants company to go to Paris; such a one seeks a servant of such quality; such a one a master; such a one an artificer; some inquiring for one thing, some for another, every one according to what he wants. And doubtless, these mutual advertisements would be of a clear (no contemptible) advantage to the public commerce: for there are evermore conditions that hunt after one another, and for want of knowing one another’s occasions leave men in very great necessity."

Many sites matching offers and job applications have been developed with the Web. The interest in this type of service is old. The idea of such a service spread in the 17th century with the success of the writings of Montaigne. Several companies drew inspiration from it and created places that match job offers and demands. Such a search service providing recomanded addresses, businesses and service offers includes intermediation, information and matchmaking.

In the web age
Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn and Indeed

If you are searching for a job today, you will probably consider Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed or LinkedIn websites. A study conducted by CareerBuilder in 2015 indicates that in France when people are looking for a job, 69% of them use a career site such as Monster or CareerBuilder, that addresses a global recruitment process , 56% a social media, 69 % Google, 51% a job board that lists offers for a kinf of job , compared with 80%, 70%, 73%, and 53% in the United States.

Monster

Monster, was the first Web-based job search platform that has anticipated successfully the addedd value of the Web in this domain. This service was conceived in 1993 by Jeff Taylor while the Internet was not yet recognized as a future media. Designed before the "time to market", he had to be persistent before becoming a leader in the field. In 1994, Monster took the form of a webpage where job offers were provided by few partners in the Boston area. As its Internet users were dispersed around the world, the offers did not match very well the local job applications. At that time, the promotion of this idea required first an evangelization of the Internet business. J. Taylor's need to be strongly convinced of having an important idea. He had to face to the reluctance of investors and partners and composed with low technical maturity. In 1998, Monster became the first job search site on the Internet with 2 million visitors per month and 50,000 job offers.

SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR

Jeff Taylor is American. Graduated from the University of Massachusetts in human resources, he highlights his ability to connect with talented people and with ideas. He had first developed Adion, an advertising agency for the specialized press, which employed about thirty people. He created then Monster in 1993, Eons, a social network for the Baby boom generation in 2005, and Tributes.com in 2008. He left Monster in 2005 and sold Eons in 2011.

Adion and Monster were acquired by TMP (Telephone Marketing Programs) in 1995 for $ 400,000. A few years later, such Internet companies in the field of employment will value several tens of millions of dollars. TMP is an advertising agency focused on yellow pages that was created in 1967 by Andrew J Mc Kelvey. TMP was interested mainly by Adion in order to expand its business in advertising. However, it will provide to J. Taylor the resources needed to develop and operate Monster. For consolidating its business, TMP acquired international advertising agencies. Indirectly, Monster will take advantage of it, that provides it national and international offers more in line with its worldwide users.

💡  Innovation: The idea of ​​creating such a platform on the Web was new. Monster filed a patent in August 1995.

📈 Development: the communication strategy played an important role in the rapid development of this service. It is based on a well-chosen brand name - "Monster" - that attracts attention and on a strong marketing investment ($ 50 million in 1999). The advertising campaign for Monster during the broadcast of the Superbowl in 1999 was a success. The sales forces also contributed to its rapid development. Thousand sellers were recruited from the first years based on the fact that each vendor ad a profitability twice its cost. From 1999, TMP consolidated Monster through successive acquisitions of competing sites . The service was interfaced with the university career management centers in 2000. TMP became Monster Worldwide and then TMP Worldwide. In 2007, the company had more than 5,000 employees in 36 countries and had over $ 1 billion in revenue. The service was deployed  in USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France and Austria. However, international deployments require major adaptations. For example, the deployment in Netherlands will take two years. Yahoo HotJobs is acquired for $ 225 million in 2010. After the fall of its stock market in 2012 and the decline of its traffic site in recent years, is it still a success?

Career Builder

CareerBuilder, originally called Netstart, was founded by Robert McGovern in 1995. At the begining, job were posted on the websites of their partners. The service then moves to an online intermediation platform.

SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR

Robert McGovern is American. He founded the companies CarreerBuilder in 1995. Andrew Evans joins the company in 1996. They will then create Jobfox in 2005. Robert McGovern launch Cobrain in 2012.

💡 Innovation: CareerBuilder was founded on technological innovations. A first patent was filed in 1997 and then granted. The service included progressively a web application for recruiters, custom search facilities and e-mail notifications for candidates.

💲 Business Model:  Contents were provided in partnerships with the media.

📈 Development: The company was sold in October 2000 for $ 200 million to Tribune and KnightRider, two media leaders (newspapers, TV channel). A third media player, Ganett joined them in 2002. The aim for these society is to capture the web audience and redirect traffic to their media through the job ads. In 2001, the service has over 300,000 online job opportunities. In 2003, the audience almost doubled, and CareerBuilder became the leader in the US market. It then successfully continued its development by successive international acquisitions.

 # 1 LinkedIn: a social network for professional life

LinkedIn maintains and exploits professional relational networks through a web platform. It applies the technologies used by social networks to the professional context. The service is founded by Reid Hoffman in association with two former collaborators of SocialNet and Fujitsu, Jean-Luc Vaillant and Allen Blue. It is created in December 2002, before the creation of Facebook. The site automatically maintains the update of the user' s address book; it allows to knoww the professional contacts of his contacts. Users update their individual profiles precisely. This global base of knowledge is reused in jobs and profils search.

SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR

Reid Hoffman is American. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Stanford and a Master of Philosophy in Oxford. Since the early 1990s, G. Hoffman was intended to establish a business that impacts lifestyles. This resulted in the creation of SocialNet.com in 1997. He founded LinkedIn in 2002. He participated in the eBay adventure, where he was in charge of relations with partners. He joined the Greylock venture capital fund in 2009.

The website SocialNet.com created in 1997 was based on an intermediation and linking platform. It was quite close to an online dating site. It broadly addresses the search for people sharing a common interest, such as matching tennis players, employing housekeepers ... The success is moderate, it was sold to MatchNet in 2001. One year before, R. Hoffman joined PayPal. The financial success of PayPal will make it possible to financially support the launch of LinkedIn.

💡 Innovation: LinkedIn is the first service to apply Web social networking techniques to the professional world. The notion of network is extended and generalized. An "economic" graph connects an individual not only to these contacts but also to companies, jobs and announcements searched by him. The business model is also innovative.

💲 The business model combines: (1) the production by the network members of self-generated contents about their experience and professional development, (2) a paid profile search service for recruiter, (3) targeted advertising valuing the site audience, (4) a premium paying service. The motivation of the members is to keep in touch, to extend their professional network and to emphasize their professional career. LinkedIn becomes an intermediary in recruitment, its cost is much lower than agencies using head-hunters. This business model crossing job offers and profiles was introduced in 2005. The targeting based on the CV profiles, is reinforced by the analysis of interests and thematic publications.

📈 Development: the service was opened in 2003. LinkedIn and Tribe.com bought for $ 900,000 a fundamental social network patent from Six Degrees from 1997. The success was not immediate. Several factors will facilitate the development of LinkedIn: the increasing use of relational networks in the professional world ; the increasing interest for social network in private life. LinkedIn indirectly benefited from the sale of PayPal to eBay in 2002 for a record amount of $ 1.5 billion. The founders of PayPal were investing in LinkedIn, followed by Sequoia Capital in 2003. The company becomed profitable from 2006. International deployment were taking place from 2008 and its growth was accelerating from 2010. At the end of 2010, the service counted 90 million members and the company nearly 1,000 employees. Its number of unique visitors per month reached 100 million in 2016 with a total of 433 million members. In June 2016, the company was bought by Microsoft for $ 26 billion.

  # 2 Indeed: the success of a meta-engine

Indeed is positioned as a meta-search engine interconnected to other sources of job offers such as Monster, CareerBuilder and newspapers. Indeed re-exposes their ads in one place. It combines the functionality of a search engine and a board where job listings are displayed. The business model is largely inspired by Google's, with the integration of sponsored links and a pay-per-click payment. This service was founded by Paul Forster and Rony Kahan in 2004. This was their second company in the employment domain. In the past, in 1998, they set up JobsInTheMoney, a job search service in the fields of banking, finance and accounting. With such a target, it was not a direct competitor of Monster, already popular in 1998. The evolution of their business thus goes from a hyper-vertical model to a vertical one. P. Foster and R. Kahan used their experience in the financial sector to create their first company. The beginning of this one was difficult: investment funds found the strategy too restricted in comparison to sites such as Monster. The Enron case (Sarbanes-Oxley) will change the situation, causing a recrudescence of recruitment of accountants through JobsInTheMoney site. The company became profitable. Their company was acquired by Financial News in 2003 for a few million dollars. The door was open to establish a new business and create Indeed which will address a very wide audience - potentially all people - which opens up more perspective. From its launch, its ambition was probably to challenge the leaders of the field such as Monster!

SERIAL ENTREPRENEURS

Paul Forster is English. Graduated from a Master's Degree in Science in Oxford, he subsequently made an MBA at the Insead french business school. He worked successively in South Africa, Asia and in the United States. He founded with Rony Kahan JobsInTheMoney in 1998, and then Indeed in 2004 in Austin, he will be Indeed CEO until 2012.

Rony Kahan has a background in economics and a MBA. President of Indeed since 2012, he is involved in innovation investment funds.

On several occasions, both invest their personal savings in the company they founded, while they are in charge of their family. Is it a reasonable risk taking, or a financial investment?

💲 An innovative business model: The service idea was very simple - integrate hundreds or even thousands of data sources - its realization was less! The previous experience of the founders in JobsInTheMoney was probably decisive. Indeed have more research space than its competitors and more interconnections to databases and websites. In 2007, it was already interfaced with 6,000 data sources, enabling the indexation of 100,000 job offers per day. It also provides notification facilities. The development of the search engine finding corresponding supplies and demands is considered from the beginning as a strategic element. Indeed applies to this field, a business model coming from advertising that is based on the pay per click. It thus transposes one factor of Google success; the sponsored links appear at the top of the search. Auction ads are also displayed. Advertising for recruiting is an important segment of online advertising. The application of pay-per-click in this area was a novelty. The partner payed only if the user clicks on the ads. Previously the business was based on 60 days campaigns or even partnerships with advertisers of one or two years who generated linear costs. With the pay-per-click model the cost per recruitment for partners is around $ 250. The pay-per-click business model is a win-win model with the sites to which Indeed is connected. It brings them additional benefits without directly impacting their business. It forwards the request to the source site. Indeed is one of the few successful metasearch engines. The metasearch engines have in fact often been blocked (blacklisted) by the sites providing the data sources. The complementarity of Indeed's business model with its partners has helped to avoid this fatal outcome.

📈 Development: Established at the end of 2004, Indeed raised $ 5 million funds in 2005, five to ten times less than its competing companies. The founders remain a long time in the executive direction of the company, and maintain like this their strategic orientation: all funds are invested in the development of the product; Indeed will not invest in brand marketing nor in the communication. By way of comparison, at the time, companies like Monster have an advertising budget of $ 250 million a year. The founders bet on an adoption of the service by word of mouth and on the supremacy of the offer of service to gain market share. On the Web, do the best solution always wins? Like in a kind of game theory where all offers are known and where there are no lies on the value of offers? Since 2007, Indeed has made a profit; The site now has 3.3 million unique visitors per month. One success factor in this kind of global market is based on the rapid international deployment. In 2010, Indeed became the leader in the audience of career and employment sites in the US market. In 2012, the company had 600 employees and 80 million unique visitors per month. It is then purchased by Recruit Co for an amount close to $ 1 billion. In 2013, the site reaches 100 million unique visitors per month, as much as Monster and CareerBuilder combined. Growth continued to reach 180 million visitors in 2016 - 50 times more than in 2007 - with a deployment in 50 countries!

The offices of addresses and placements in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

# 3 The Office Address and facilities, Paris, 1630

You are looking for a job at Paris? Ask for the “bureau d’adresses et de commodités” (Address and facilities Office) of T. Renaudot ! This system is matching offers and demands for jobs. It was launched in 1630. Until then, and for nearly 200 years, this matching was organized by people, intermediaries, such as recommenders and brokers under the monopoly of corporations. The profession of business broker, "proxenitica", had already been the subject of legislation in the 3rd century.

This office kept records of addresses of establishments and service providers. The business was extended to the sale of goods following a decree of 1637 authorizing barter, exchanges and sales. The office will subsequently make pawns and sale of goods, which will oppose it to the corporations in place, in particular to the corps of merchants of Paris: drapers, grocers, furriers, bailiffs, goldsmiths. This service was designed by Théophraste Renaudot, a true pioneer of service innovation.

SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR

Théophraste Renaudot (1586-1653) is French. It develops innovations in the fields of information, media, intermediation of offers and demands, and health. He obtains the privilege of setting up an address office whose advertising is carried out by an advertisement journal. It was also the creator of the Gazette, one of the first newspapers of current affairs in France, which will have an important success. He creates a loan on collateral financial institute prefiguring the "mont-de-piété". As a doctor, he became a surgeon of the King and experimented with other practitioners a free service of care and distribution of medicines for the poor.

What was that address office looking like? An engraving of 1697 entitled "Address offices for the curious where they will find the main events of the year 1696" gives an illustration.

💡 Innovation: The office of address was thus the first operational service of this type. After having been narrated by Montaigne, the idea of ​​such a service was the purpose of few initiatives without follow-up. T. Renaudot multiplies the efforts for establishing such a service not only in France but also in England. It obtained the exclusivity of its implementation in France in 1612, but the agreements of commissions, the Assembly and the royal publication will take time. The operational implementation did not succeed until sixteen years later, delayed by several legal proceedings of opponents to this project.
 The service was based on the establishment of an office to match the supply and demand and on the publication of an advertising journal: the address office paper (la Feuille du bureau d’adresses), which publishes job postings, sale of homes, properties, proposals of farmhouse. From the launch, ads were presented in two columns, in a format similar to that of our current newspapers, whereas at the same time the new papers, the gazettes, have a more literary layout, with a narrative in full page. The office also provides merchants with correspondence and market information on the market price to organize the business with remote areas, especially the new settlements. What an innovation! That was almost 400 years ago!

💲 Business model : The address office paper was prefaced with news that make them more attractive and broaden the audience. The foundations of the audience business model were already there! The ads are followed by an advertisement. This intermediation service must deal with several intermediaries. It provides recommendations on clerks. Distribution is based on peddlers, whose collaboration must be ensured. In order to avoid embezzlement by intermediaries, a anonymization of offers is put in place. Different business models coexisted:

- Payment to make an announcement, free consultation;

- Purchase of the notice sheet;

- 2.5% profit on certain transactions.

📈 Development: the address office, which has certain exclusivity, places more than 80,000 people in 14 years. 120,000 people, including 20,000 merchants, would have borrowed to pledge.

# 4 The Office of Addresses and Encounters, London, 1650

This service will make emulators in England. In 1650, the political and economist Henry Robinson opened the Office of Addresses and Encounters. This office was listing addresses and matching offers and demands in London. It gives access to information on jobs and available workers for 6 pence, as well as to real estate offers. The service is free for the poor. H. Robinson was inspired by the project of one of his collaborators, Samuel Hartlib, whose project remained at the proposal stage.

In 1648, in fact, S. Hartlib, still inspired by the text of Montaigne, developp the principles in an office of addresses. According to a visionary framework laying the foundations for an information society, it describes a place that provides economic information such as exchange rates and allows the matching of offers and services requests in particular for poor people. It is planned to provide information on passenger transport, freight, proposals for loans and borrowing money. His description of the service is very modern, both in the business model and in the information system. Various "public and private service registers" are envisaged. Payments in the order of 2 to 3 pence are made to the consultation procedure and to registrations, with penalties if requests or offers are not withdrawn within 24 hours. A subsidy from the city of £ 200 a year is expected to support the management of the service.

The Universal Register Office, London, 1750

The Universal Register Office was founded in 1749 by John Fielding, magistrate, social reformer, and his brother Henry, a famous theater and novelist, who sees it as a source of incomes. Saunders Welch is also associated with this business. This intermediation place is located near the Stock Exchange, from which it is inspired. This registry office is at the same time a recruitment office, a real estate agency and an investment advisory agency. Entries in the registers make it possible to qualify the reputation of the jobseekers. Promotion is provided by "the covent-garden journal" which was edited by H. Fielding under a pseudo.

SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR

John Fielding (1721-1780) is English. A social reformer, he and his brother Henry created a "universal" recording office in 1749. He then founded the first police service in London.

Employment agencies

In France, this profession of agent, broker,  in the employment business,  which had remained largely the prerogative of the corporations, became free under the French Revolution. It was regulated again from 1815 to 1852. A centralized office is created in Paris in 1848. It informs by mail the people in search of jobs to avoid their displacements. Following this trend, employment agencies are gradually being replaced by free public offices, resulting in employment grants.

Internet searches to find out more

With simple Google search find the following Expressions with and without quotes:

•  “career site“, “job board”, “labor bureaux », «labor exchange »
• "Hartlib printed pamphlet office of address 1648 "
• "A brief history of LinkedIn"
•  "Jeff Taylor Monster interview"
•  Patents: "patent US6175831"(Andrew Weinreich, Six Degrees), "patent US5832497"(Jeff Taylor, Monster), "patent US5978768"(Robert J. McGovern)
• "Rony Kahan’s entrepreneurial journey"
• "CareerBuilder 2015 behaviour study"
• "A plan of the Universal Register Office"