Another Y Combinator startup launches today, this one with the intent of making online job listings more effective.
Snaptalent is essentially an advertising network for jobs (currently, jobs for developers in particular). Employers add their job listings and the service displays them on the sites of participating publishers. Sixteen programming blogs have signed up so far, bringing their 4.5M+ monthly unique visitors with them.
Here’s an example of what two Snaptalent job ads looks like:
The system was designed to make it easy both for publishers to load the ad widget (a simple JavaScript snippet) and for employers to set up attractive advertisements, ones that perform better than the typical Adsense unit. Snaptalent has provided point-and-click tools that not only help employers design their banner-sized ads; they also allow employers to upload photos and embed videos that complement the text descriptions shown when users click on the ads.
But here’s the really interesting twist to Snaptalent’s strategy for getting job listings in front of the best candidates: in addition to placing ads on the blogs and websites trafficked by the target demographic, Snaptalent actively detects the IP addresses of all those websites’ visitors. It then uses the IP information to determine whether particular visitors work for companies like Google - or are enrolled at universities like Carnegie Mellon - where the best talent can be found. When employers set up their job ads, they can indicate a preference for particular organizations and their ads will be shown to those organizations’ members.
So how much does this cost advertisers? $250 for every 500 people who click on their ads, regardless of whether those people have been targeted by IP address or not. These pre-paid (and therefore guaranteed) clicks can be purchased in 500 unit increments up to 2,500 people per posting. Publishers who display the widget on their sites will get an undisclosed share of the revenue they generate.
The founders of Snaptalent say there’s nothing else available that competes directly with their offering (although deadpooled Edgeio came the closest). Of course there’s a variety of companies approaching the online job listings market in their own way. Broadly speaking, Snaptalent should be grouped with the aggregators (Indeed, Simply Hired, ZamZim, etc.) rather than the destinations (Monster, HotJobs, Jobster, etc) because they most clearly recognize the importance of distributed listings.
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sweet ad trip
This is a nice app. I like how the javascript pop open view doesn’t interrupt my surfing. Naturally, I tried to open it in a new tab but I didn’t have to.
“work in downtown San Francisco on a gorgeous consumer web application”
I’m a gorgeous consumer. Can’t wait to see my web app!
Awesome! finally something more interesting than monster
Great idea!
That’s actually pretty cool. I couldnt get the job pop open window to close in opera though. I had to refresh to get back to this page without it.
How much does Y Comb. pay for this? Every day 10 Y posts?
Tim: YC is approaching the end of the winter cycle, thus many YC funded companies are launching.
i sure like the Tour button.
Nice job. VERY slick.
SnapTalent is serving a very serious hole in the market. They are reaching passive candidates (people who aren’t NECESSARILY actively looking for jobs), who are the holy grail for job advertisers. Until now the only way to reach these candidates was by hiring a (very expensive) sourcing recruiter. Kudos!
This is the smartest new idea I’ve read about in a long time. I see a huge, calm blue ocean in front of these guys… well done!
YC’s startups continue to impress. Wow.
Hi Mark
Nice piece. Just one quibble. It is probably inaccurate to describe edgeio as deadpooled. Although that is the way it looked back in December 2007, edgeio.com and its assets were actually acquired by Looksmart (part by Vast.com). Looksmart’s stated intention is to re-launch it as an integrated part of their ad-platform offering.
So, not dead, just dormant for now.
best
Keith teare
former founder, edgeio.
Keith, one quibble. You can’t be a former founder. If you founded something, you’ll always be the founder. You just might not work there anymore.
@Keith - point taken…although we did technically deadpool it =)
I wonder what % of all the sackriders come from that hacker news ycombinator site. Is it a good idea? Sure why not, but I wouldn’t kid myself thinking this is the second coming of jesus.
friggn hilarious (view their source):
well, that didn’t post right. so here’s the source code funny bit:
http://media.snaptalent.com/st.....rosoft.css
Im not affilliate with Y Combinator … just enjoy seeing new and innovative tech!
2 thoughts:
1- Snaptelent should not be grouped with the aggregators, since aggregators are not about distributing job ads as much as a (better) destination site just like Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs, but with more jobs
2- This is not actually a new idea. Both Monster and Yahoo have launched distributed job ad networks. Monster’s is called Career Ad Network. I don’t know what Yahoo HotJobs is called.
Please, no more YC “startups”. All these YC websites are like a joke.
@ dave - we’re a real business solving a real problem.
Sumon
Snaptalent CEO & Founder
yeah saw these guys on younoodle
sounds like a cool company
How long until major employers of programmers and other talent being targeted start blocking these ads on their networks?
Way to go guys, congrats on the launch.
This looks good and I think will be appropriate for my blog.
Interesting model.
Was able to successfully post an ad for developers for my startup.
Sumon: points for keeping your servers up despite being TechCrunched. Good luck!
Should be a great widget for sites like mine where I share web lingo knowledge. People learning new stuff is more likely to look for new job opportunity.
It would be nice if there’s a wordpress plug-in made for it.
Vista | IE7 - Frontpage CSS is out, it’s all jumbled. Couldn’t link to anything. Doesn’t work…!
this is what you cover? give me a break. first the app does nothing new, two stop pandering to yc.
I released something very similar to this about 3 years ago. It’s mainly focused on Adobe technologies (ColdFusion, Flex, AIR). We use two different sized Flex-based widgets that publishers can install to their website or blog (widgets.developercircuit.com).
Isn’t Monster already there?
Monster has a Career Ad Network product that is apparently fairly successful for employers who use it. It does exactly this. In fact, the following is from their website: “Monster’s Career Ad Network transforms your existing Job Postings into dynamic hiring ads, then strategically places them on our vast network and diverse partner sites to attract the most qualified active and passive candidates who match your sourcing criteria.”
I predict an easy success. No need to even look at the software.
This is far from a new idea. Other examples:
Hidden Network (http://hiddennetwork.com) launched in October of 2006.
Authentic Jobs (http://authenticjobs.com) has also been around since October 2006.
It’s a good idea. Ads display goods and services. Why not potential employees?
This is a great team with a promising new model for recruitment advertising:
- Highly effective approach for targeting both active and passive candidates where they spend time online
- One of the best content-relevant monetization models for bloggers available
- Makes job ads fun and truly engaging
I am with commenter #33 here, predicting a successful business
While the idea is interesting, as it it is is more of a novelty. You can already target the same people using other ad server platforms including Ad Words, Yahoo’s Overture, and Facebook’s targeted advertising platform. The difference with Facebook’s advertising platform is that you can target potential employees based on many other criteria.
Bob
Jobmatchbox.com
SnapTalent is definitely a blow of fresh air on an industry that has been stagnant for a while… Although it is still in its early days, I bet these guys mean real business - especially since they are already revolutionizing this extremely lucrative industry! I will certainly be keeping an eye on their ads and hopefully, sometime soon, advertise using their awesome new technology.
Btw does anyone know how I can get some shares of this company?