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October 27, 2006

Simply Hired, Now for Senior Gay Mothers Who Love Dogs & the Environment

Michael Arrington

26 comments »

Simply Hired, which is partially funded by Fox Interactive, is a great job search engine that continues to do well against arch-rival Indeed.com, which is backed by the New York Times. On Monday Simply Hired will announced another specialty search engine, this time for 50+ year olds. This adds already existing search engines for dog, mother, environmental and sexual orientation friendly companies.

The new senior-friendly job engine is live and can be accessed here. Simply Hired says that there are 77 millon baby boomer Americans who will begin to turn 60 this year, and that a crisis is on the horizon as these people drop out of the job market. Simply Hired wants to make it as easy as possible for these more mature citizens to find a job, should they choose to continue to work.

I like all of these specialty search engines, but I note that you can only search one engine at a time. So if you are a Senior Gay Mother who’s into the environment and has a dog, you’ll have to run multiple searches across five different search engines. Simply Hired says cross-searching on these engines is coming soon. In the meantime, Simply Hired has 5 million or so current job listings just waiting to be filled.

Our previous postings on Simply Hired are here, and Indeed are here.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 3:04 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Emre Sokullu

    October 27th, 2006 at 3:12 am

    but I note that you can only search one engine at a time. So if you are a Senior Gay Mother who’s into the environment and has a dog, you’ll have to run multiple searches across five different search engines.

    :) well said..

  2. Emre Sokullu

    October 27th, 2006 at 4:20 am

    Seems a bit too vertical to me :)

  3. Duncan

    October 27th, 2006 at 4:47 am

    I think you forgot the part about where the old lesbian mothers with dogs and greenpeace membership cards are also probably left handed and hop along on one leg as well…after all, we can’t miss that part!
    Top headline BTW :-)

  4. Allen

    October 27th, 2006 at 5:22 am

    I have a nice interview with Julie from SimplyHired here:
    http://www.centernetworks.com/.....implyhired

  5. overcast

    October 27th, 2006 at 5:57 am

    lol @ headline :)

  6. MartinE

    October 27th, 2006 at 6:18 am

    Wouldn’t it be a violation of labor laws for an employer to run an ad on an age specific search?
    You can’t specify age in employment advertising. I checked with our HR manager and she wouldn’t touch, nor would she include language that would get picked up in the other vertical searches they’re proposing.

  7. Clay

    October 27th, 2006 at 6:47 am

    Wow, they trumped Monster’s imminent announcement of their vertical search for left handed truck drivers.

  8. Sean

    October 27th, 2006 at 7:36 am

    How many seniors actually use the internet? I just have a hard time picturing it. Especially with such a “2.0″ web site, it’s way too hip.

    Loved the headline. :)

  9. sam

    October 27th, 2006 at 8:03 am

    my fundemental question regarding simplyhired.com, indeed.com, et al, is what happens if/when the sites that the engines are scraping refuse to allow the scraping to continue.

    if a site, ala monster where to tell simplyhired to no longer scrape their jobs, for inclusion on the simplyhired site, simplyhired would have to stop.

    it will be interesting to see over time, how these kinds of issues play out in the market.

    peace!

  10. Patricia

    October 27th, 2006 at 8:26 am

    I know Fox is trying to do all things Google and everybody else, but I think they’re making foolish mistakes, personally, with some of these moves.

  11. Dylan Hunter

    October 27th, 2006 at 8:31 am

    First, another excellent post - got a fine chuckle out of! :)

    Sam, in the main, the market actually promotes the type of relationship that Monster, et al have with SH / Indeed, etc. The “prime” job boards tend to make most of their money off of listing fees, which are primarily affected by how cost-effectively they’ve managed to get the job filled. Presuming the infrastructure cost is more than well-enough covered, (which is a fair presumption) Monster and the gang are more than happy to have folks help them spread the reach of their posting to increase the odds of delivering the right candidates, thereby keeping their per-listing fees up.

    Actually, since they’re predominantly ad-supported, SH / Indeed end up effectively being free “super affiliates” to Monster, et al, (just as if I ran traffic to Amazon) where a normal affiliate model would suggest that not only should Monster, etc. not cut off SH / Indeed, but actually should give them a cut of their revenue for the referral.

    Now, were this the normal case of a general SE scraping another general SE, (i.e. the way that Mamma.com, Dogpile, et al) scrape results from more main SE’s, throw their own ads on, entirely bypass the main SE and don’t split rev, then I agree with you, (and hence is why I blocked Mamma when she tried to meta me many, many years ago @ AlltheWeb.com). Actually, there are other reasons for letting this continue, but don’t want bore the heck out of everyone with discussions of SE business models when the conversation should keep on in the spirit of the original post - i.e. having a good bit of fun! :)

    Later,

    Dylan

  12. sam

    October 27th, 2006 at 9:05 am

    #11 - dylan…

    i would agree with your points regarding the scraping in the abstract. however, indeed/simplyhired “is” trying to generate “revs” from the listing of the ads on their sites, and they aren’t looking to “share” this rev with the sites that are being scraped.

    also, when i spoke with the general counsel of a few few of the companies, the response was “we’re keeping an eye” on it.. (keep in mind, this was a few years ago.) a reason to maintain “control” over the posting is that you might get the listing from the company/client, and if someone scrapes you, you have no idea what site will be displaying the listing.. ie a porn site scrapes monster for job listings.. and winds up displaying GE job ads.. i’m not sure GE would be too thrilled if this were to occur…

    the final point is that the sites doing the scraping will eventually want to encroach into the space owned by the traditional job sites. why help your future competitors by letting them have amunition now!!! without the ability to scrape job listings, the simplyhired/indeed sites can’t survive.

    peace…

    we now return you to your thread!!!

  13. carl rahn griffith

    October 27th, 2006 at 9:16 am

    well, that’s certainly niche marketing … long tail theorists would be proud!

  14. Noel McKinney

    October 27th, 2006 at 10:14 am

    Most of my firm’s clients are in the baby boomer segment, so I went to the fifty-plus site. I liked the idea that the front-page had larger fonts, but after that page nothing else looked special… the fonts were small, information was cluttered, etc. Claiming a “senior-friendly” website takes more than a front page with a soothing picture and large fonts, right?

  15. gabs mcjabb

    October 27th, 2006 at 11:03 am

    to sam:

    my belief is that the isolationist route would lead to a slow decline and eventual death. in order to stay ahead of the competition, key partnerships are crucial.

    while monster is one of the (or The) biggest job board, the job posting model is not restrictied to them. more and more sites are increasingly posting their own specialty jobs (by trade, interest, income level, education, experience, etc) in order to find more focused candidates. simplyhired seems to recognize this “long tail.” if monster were to turn away from that, they’d turn away from all that potential business.

  16. Rajan Tawate

    October 27th, 2006 at 11:28 am

    It makes lot of sense for new comers to get into specialists niche areas where the long-timers (who are saturated in their response) do not feel that the segment would be big enough for them. this is a good entry-strategy

  17. Paul Drago

    October 27th, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    #8 Sean–

    if I remember correctly the number of senior citizens that use the computer regularly for leisure is large than the number of twenty-somethings.

  18. fiat lux

    October 27th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    Interesting comment about the potential legal liability inherent in job postings on a senior-specific job board.

  19. Michael Arrington

    October 27th, 2006 at 2:12 pm

    I wasn’t clear enough - It’s not a senior-specific job board, it just lists companies who are senior-friendly, who agree not to discriminate.

  20. Javvadi

    October 27th, 2006 at 11:55 pm

    //”Michael Arrington

    October 27th, 2006 at 2:12 pm

    I wasn’t clear enough - It’s not a senior-specific job board, it just lists companies who are senior-friendly, who agree not to discriminate.”//

    How would we / SimplyHired know if a company is senior-friendly? Is there any company that would say it’s not senior friendly?

    Does anyone know the criteria used by SimplyHired to indicate some companies as senior friendly?

    Otherwise, this looks like a great niche (profitable for SimplyHired) if the descrimination / legal aspects are taken care of.

  21. Phil Carpenter

    October 28th, 2006 at 6:36 am

    Phil Carpenter here from Simply Hired. Javvadi — our partner in this venture, Retirementjobs.com, determines whether or not companies are “age friendly” using a rigorous vetting process. You can find details of that process here:

    http://www.retirementjobs.com/.....ation.html

    Some of the companies that been certified by Retirementjobs.com, and whose jobs are now available through Simply Hired, include Borders Group, REI, H&R Block, Oakwood Healthcare System and Robert Half International.

  22. Meneer R

    November 2nd, 2006 at 8:42 am

    It seems to be people get it all backwards. If this search engines is used, then discrimination exists.

    The search engine itself is not discriminating.
    Here in Holland we also have some job-agencies specifically targeted at the seniors. But that kind of works the other way around: they have jobs seniors would like and they take the time to talk to them. (and charge well for that I must add)

    On the other hand, is it really like this in the US? That you can’t get a job because of your sexual preference?

    I mean, I can understand in certain jobs you need certain types of people. I can imagine that they don’t hire 50-year-olds to work at a hip student bar.

    But I can’t understand how sexual preference or race should be a reason not to get a job…

    I guess America is so proud of there little bit of freedom they do have, they think it’s special. Go travel :-)

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