SEEK soars, Cheezhead returns, and other news of the online recruiting world

August 23, 2016
JobBoardDoctor
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Seek Other than Monster getting sold to Randstad and Seek having a great year, nothing has happened in our industry recently, right? Umm….well, actually, a ton of stuff has gone down! So let’s take a look and see what’s what:

Glassdoor drops the ball: Turns out that anonymity isn’t what it used to be at Glassdoor: the company sent out an email announcing that it had changed its terms of service. Instead of blindly copying email recipients on the message, the company pasted their addresses in the clear. More than 600,000 users were affected by the exposure. In other news, Glassdoor once again is rumored to be getting ready for an IPO. Really.
DHI revenue drops 12%: DHI Group reported that its second-quarter net income declined 14 percent to $4.9 million from last year’s $5.7 million. Earnings per share dropped 9 percent to $0.10 from $0.11 a year ago. Revenues were $57.7 million, down 12 percent from last year’s $65.8 million. The company also announced that John Roberts, Chief Financial Officer, will leave the company, effective August 31. Another acquisition target?
SEEK has a very good year: Australian-based SEEK Limited saw its annual revenue rise 11% to $950 million, and its Net Profit After Tax rose 27% to $357 million. SEEK’s outlook for 2017 for profits is between $190 million and $195 million. Impressive.
XPAT Jobs launches new sites: XPATJobs has completed the launch of nine recruitment websites focused on the countries overseas candidates search most. The countries targeted include Belgium, Brazil, Australia, Germany, and more. Interesting.
Vettery raises moolah: Vettery, a startup offering an alternative to the traditional recruiting process, has raised $9 million in Series A funding. Vettery pairs potential job-seekers with a “talent executive” who helps them through the process of creating a profile and looking over interview requests from employers. If they accept a job, Vettery will give them a $1,000 signing bonus. The Series A was led by Greycroft Partners and Raine Ventures, and will accelerate the company’s expansion into San Francisco (where it launched about two months ago), help it move into new industries (it’s currently focused on tech and finance) and allow it to expand the product team. Interesting model.
Chatbot vs. black holes: Mya is an artificially intelligent recruiting assistant is a chatbot that communicates directly with applicants looking for tech jobs via text, email, or through its own chat platform. By automating up to 75% of the application process, recruiters are able to cut down on the time spent reviewing what cofounder and CEO of FirstJob Eyal Grayevsky estimates to be “tens of thousands” of applications, and more time conducting interviews and making offers. Sounds like something that ALL job boards and ATSs should have!
Cheezhead is back: Joel Cheesman, the seminal and highly popular recruitment blogger, has returned from doing other things (including founding Ratedly) to write for RecruitingDaily. For a taste of what he’s doing, check this post on the bump in Monster’s sale to Randstad. Welcome back, Joel!
LinkedIn goes out with a bang: It doesn’t matter (well, maybe to Microsoft) – but LinkedIn just had a very good quarter. For the quarter, the company pulled in $933 million — a 31% increase from a year ago when it generated $712 million. Not bad.
Acquisition activity in Thailand: Malaysia’s IT job site TribeHired acquired HubbaHired in Thailand for an undisclosed amount. TribeHired currently has a model unique in the region: Every week the company features the Top-50 developers who have uploaded resumes and are in its database. TribeHired then distributes this list to an exclusive group of employers, who may compete to hire the best talent.
Hiree gets bought: India’s Quikr, which has raised close to $350 million from investors to date, has purchased Hiree, a hiring startup focused on white-collar jobs with over 2,000 employer partners. The company said Hiree will merge with its own job seeker platform, QuikrJob.Quikr is much like a Craigslist for India in the mobile era in so much that it is designed to help users find all manner of information and deals in their area. It claims 30 million users across 1,000 locations in India.
inploi wants to kill the CV: London based startup inploi is gunning to replace the paper CV with a mobile profile and location-based jobs platform. The platform covers both gig economy one-offs and full-time positions. So as well as matching job seekers with permanent roles, the aim is also to be a marketplace for one-off staffing needs. We shall see.
51job has a good quarter: China’s 51job reported second-quarter revenue of $84.2 million. That is 10.2% ahead of where it landed a year earlier. Online recruitment services — accounting for roughly two-thirds of the revenue mix — saw its top-line results grow 11.2%, to $56.1 million. Other human-resource-related revenue checked in at $28.1 million, a 9.1% year-over-year advance.