Panes, gigs, and trucks: news of the recruitment marketing world

We’re coming up on the end of 2019 – and (not surprisingly) there is, as always, more news (and panes) to report. The job board and recruitment marketing industry has had a busy year. What did the last few weeks bring? Well…let’s see:

• YourMembership brings the pane:  Community Brands, the parent company of YourMembership, has launched a new job search interface  for its nearly 3,000 customized niche job boards: the “Pane View” job search. Relevant open job titles and employer listings returned in search results, and now also the associated jobs’ details, are viewable side by side on two concurrent panes, all within one individual user screen. This change is expected to double the number of views and applies. Indeed!
• Fiverr revenue up: Online staffing platform Fiverr reported third-quarter revenue rose 41.8% year over year, and the number of active buyers on the platform rose 16% to 2.3 million. Fiverr forecast fourth-quarter revenue to grow between 35% and 40%; full-year revenue is forecast to be up between 40% and 41%. Impressive.
• Is Indeed getting giggy with it?: According to HRTechFeed, which first noticed the site, the subdomain gigs.indeed.com appeared in June. The site speculated that the gig site might put Indeed’s recent purchase of the UK flexible work platform Syft into a wider context as “a look at their future plans for the U.S. market.” A spokesperson from Indeed said, ““Indeed Gigs is a product that we are testing to see if it provides value for our job seekers and employers who use Indeed to hire.” In other Indeed news, Recruit’s HR Technology segment, which includes Indeed and Glassdoor, saw revenue rise 29.6% in Japanese yen. On a US dollar basis, revenue was up 34.8%. Increased sponsored job advertising drove growth. Something going on there.
• iHire reaches 20: iHire announced its 20th business anniversary, celebrating two decades of connecting employers with job seekers. Founded in 1999 by entrepreneur David MacFadyen in Angola, Indiana, iHire began as four websites geared toward recruiting construction, accounting, legal, and therapy professionals. The company now has 56 industry-specific talent communities comprising 12.6 million career-driven candidates. Congrats!
• ‘Uber for trucking’ raises $400M: Convoy, a marketplace for truck drivers and shippers, raised $400 million in new funding led by Generation Investment Management and T. Rowe Price at a $2.75 billion valuation. By the end of 2018, Convoy was generating about $300 million in revenue on an annualized basis. Interesting.
• Did CareerBuilder screw its salespeople?: A new class action lawsuit has accused Careerbuilder of underpaying its sales representatives, allegedly stripping those workers of commissions they had earned. According to the complaint, Careerbuilder instituted a new compensation plan in the spring of 2019. Under the previous compensation plan, sales representatives allegedly were paid monthly commissions of 4% of monthly net revenue from the sale of “most Careerbuilder products and services.” Under the new compensation plan, however, the compensation was allegedly ratcheted down, first to just 0.25% of net revenue, and then commissions were removed entirely. The complaint asserts Careerbuilder first encouraged its sales representatives to “sell long-term, multi-year contracts in order to ensure a steady stream of income from commissions received under those contracts,” and then took away the income they were expecting. Hmm…not good.
• Jobiak raises money: Jobiak, best known for its work on Google for Jobs implementations, raised $2.3m in a seed funding. The company intends to use the funds to expand its go-to-market presence, product development, and make key leadership team hires. Congrats!
• Placement is a ‘talent agent for jobseekers’: In exchange for 10% of their income for 18 to 36 months, Placement will find a job seeker a much higher paying job, prep them for the interview and help them move to their new city of employment. Primarily, Placement is seeking business professionals with a skill mismatched to their city, such as sales, human resources or operations in a place without companies competing to hire for those roles. Maybe I should check it out….
• Peter Harrison snags a position at PandoLogic:  PandoLogic has named Peter Harrison, founder and general partner at Sanderhill Capital, as chairman and independent board member.  Previously, he held CEO positions at GlobalLogic, a digital product engineering company employing more than 13,000 people, and Snag (also known as Snagajob), a jobs vertical connecting employers and hourly workers.
• JobAndTalent raises funds: Jobandtalent, an online staffing platform based in Spain, announced a €70 million funding round. The funding will support continued growth in the UK, Germany, Colombia, Sweden and France as well as the development of new markets. After years betting on investors close to the founders or the financial world, for the first time the company decided to partner with SEEK, the Australian employment giant.

Quite a lot for a few weeks’ worth! I expect there will be even more before the year’s end. Until then, have a great week!

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