As an employer, chances are you use sites like Craigslist or Monster.com to try and get the best candidates for vacant spots. If that’s indeed your modus operandi for recruitment, than you’re probably also used to receiving bad or incomplete resumes, applications from totally unqualified persons or just utter spam. LocalBacon thinks it doesn’t have to be that way, and believes the solution to the problem is making job seekers pay to apply for jobs.
Launching at the TechCrunch50 event today, LocalBacon wants to remove the clutter from the inboxes of many a manager or HR professional looking for the right person to put to work while at the same time giving job seekers the opportunity to stand out from the crowd in their quest to land a good position. The way they want to achieve that is by both increasing the quality of applications and decreasing their amount by charging potential candidates $0.99 (or more based on interest/demand) to apply.
If you think about it, making potential candidates cough up cash – well, virtual currency in the form of credits – for applying is a solid way to weed out the ones that apply just for the sake of applying even if they know they’re not really qualified for the job. It also decreases the chances for employers, who get to post job openings for free, to get sent incomplete or sloppy resumes because applicants would likely make more of an effort having put some money on the line. This in turn means solid candidates have a better shot of getting noticed in the first place.
Aside from the fairly innovative business model, LocalBacon also offers a pretty amazing lightweight program for employers to keep on top of applications across vacancies and applicants for managing their profiles and resumes. LocalBacon uses a standardized listing format and application process that is aimed to reduce the amount of time it takes for job seekers to search and apply for openings. Job seekers also receive specific contact information about the hiring manager, real-time updates about the status of their application and timely concise feedback regarding their application.
Expert panel Q&A:
Q – Roelof Botha: I like the idea of turning the job board concept upside down. No one seems to be satisfied about it. Think about clever ways to extract more value. I really like it though.
Q – MM: I want to complement the app, but I have a question about the social component. How are you going to work social behavior into the service?
A: Facebook is a potential way to go, and we’re thinking more about referrals.
Q – Tony Hsieh: It doesn’t seem to fit with Zappos to have job seekers pay for applying?
A: Certain cultures might conflict what the job seekers paying. But remember they wouldn’t
Q – Paul Graham: Is the chronological listing of incoming applications scalable?
A: We’re in early stage right now, so we’re thinking of ways to add more features for organization for premium users.
Q – Tony Hsieh: Do you integrate with existing ATS systems?
A: Yes, we can (with APIs and such).
Video:
Pictures:
Extra coverage:
TC50: Localbacon wants to fix job sites by making job-seekers pay VentureBeat.
TechCrunch50: Localbacon Charges Job Seekers for Quality Service Trends Updates.
LocalBacon – A Simpler Way to Find Jobs #tc50 Techgeist.
localbacon.com Flips Job Board Model JobsPortalWatch.
This sounds like a great idea. Im really looking forward to seenig how the idea develops and i hope it does really well at techcrunch50. Its not just employees who need a decent service to be found and hired its employers to look for that right emploee. Its got a really good name has this site, very brandable.
what a stupid idea. This might work if employers did 100% of their recruiting on this site. But they won’t. What they’ll do is have the same exact jobs listed on other sites, so what exactly do they hope to gain from this service? Just another job board to post jobs on, that might be a little less spammy. And for the actual user? Why would I pay money to apply for the same job that’s listed on monster and dice?
localbacon guarantees job seekers see exactly when their application is viewed, receive feedback from employers as well as have the benefit of having their application submitted being submitted through a less noisy channel. For serious job seekers these features are worth more than what we charge.
I couldn’t agree more. I would probably pay up to $100 bucks for that dream job if I could guarantee the employer views it and give me feedback if he rejects it.
How different is this from TheLadders?
@Alex
Agreed… I like the concept, but it won’t work unless LocalBacon can somehow develop a monopoly on listings for certain key companies.
Interesting…(rubs hands together)
These guys have it completely backwards. The problem with online job listings is on the supply side.
As mentioned above, sites like theladders.com already try to bilk money from job seekers for listings which are freely available elsewhere.
Recruiting agencies already cross post multiple incarnations of the same job which may or may not exist.
Seriously, has anyone you know, anyone, ever gotten a job from a posting on monster.com or other related website?
Craigslist charges users to post real-estate ads in an effort to combat this problem and the apartments for rent area is still a total cesspool. Can you imagine how bad it would be if these posters were getting PAID to post???
The real question the “expert” panel should have asked is, “who is your vc and how much uncommitted funds do they have?”.
Paying every time you apply for a job is a bad idea, more so with respect to the problem localbeacon is trying to solve. The problem you are trying to solve can be easily solved by allowing as many people to apply for the job and use technology to match the relevant ones and showcase them to the employers automatically. The resumes that do not match the job advertised, can be pushed to the end of the list, which need not be even looked at by the employers.
Sites like Realmatch and JobsByRef do this already effectively.
Also, candidates who do not match the job requirement of the advertised job, can be in the employers database and when a new requirement is there, they can search through their database to find the candidates who are suited for the job, rather than starting the candidate search from scratch. This will be a huge saving in time and effort.
Are you serious? This idea has a longgggg way to go. Not impressed.
http://www.yousalary.com same thing.
Umm this looks like it was built overnight, once Local Bacon came out of stealth mode…no chance
I agree it’s an interesting idea only because its model IS different from major job sites that currently exist. But we have to keep in mind, just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s better.
The model of weeding out potential candidates with a fee is a bad one. After all, the goal of any HR person is to fill the vacant position with the best candidate he/she can find. I think of “the hiring process” as a very personal experience, much like customer service. It’s about the people and it’s about connecting with them. I think it’s totally wrong for HR people to think that they have the upper-hand in the hiring process and make job-seekers jump through hoops to apply. It’ll only hurt the company in the long-run.
I can’t help but think only large corporations would be interested in a service like this, even then, it would only work for certain positions. Say, a cashier job at Walmart. It would never work for employers who are interested in hiring true talent (instead of just bodies).
I think the current solution to hiring more qualified candidates is to be looking in the right places. A company’s HR person should know which job boards are relevant to what vacancies and post accordingly. Of course you’ll get unqualified applicants if you keep looking in all the wrong places. I doubt any experienced CTOs would job search on Monster.com.
Like Einstein said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” change your career.There is good demand for nurses check out http://bit.ly/HdrTn
Honestly this is one of the worst business ideas I’ve ever seen here on techcrunch. Neither people who are good and have no problem finding a job nor people who struggling and have to send out 10-20 resumes a day will ever pay even a dime to apply for a job unless it becomes a common practice. Trying to make employers life easier? Really? It takes 20 seconds to know whether resume or application is worth considering.
Why all the hate on this idea? I’ve considered doing something like this for a few years now, since I saw (and used) theladders.com.
There’s definitely room in the market for more innovation in the labor / job market, and this is a good attempt at trying something new.
“It takes 20 seconds to know whether resume or application is worth considering”. Have you ever put out an ad on monster or craigslist and then had 150+ replies, 90% of which are unqualified? By your own reckoning, that’s 50 minutes of time gone, but it’s more like 3-4 hours of wasted productivity, because they all come in at different times over a couple of days.
*IF* the company posting also posts the same listing in 5 other spots, then it’ll be a bust for them. The benefit will come to companies if they *only* use this service (or use it first), because they *will* get fewer but arguably somewhat higher quality applications.
No one yet makes a good tool for the hiring party to help sift through apps, do basic skills testing, and manage followup with applicants. If you as the hiring party are going to pass on someone, at least have the courtesy to send an automated reply telling the applicant you’re passing on them, for example.
If localbacon adds those features, they’ll have a very solid app that few will be able to touch.
So the idea is to solve the recruiters’ problem and have the job seekers pay for it? There’s a conflict right there.
If by recruiters you mean outside headhunting firms, I suspect they won’t use this much. This is much more valuable to companies to use it directly themselves. And it’s not just solving a company’s problem, it’s solving the job seeker’s problem too. For the job seeker, they may find they get lost in the flood of unqualified and not serious job seekers.
Years ago someone would have paid $1 just to print a cover letter and resume on nice paper and have an application mailed to a company (I know I did). Decades later and we’re bitching about having to pay $1 to apply to a company? You’ll spend far more than $1 in your own time (or you should) getting a resume and cover letter prepared. Think of this as a fee to ensure a real person reads your application. I wouldn’t pay this for every single position I ever applied to, but for some positions, I’d definitely like to know I’m ‘getting through’ to someone. It also shows the company you’re applying to that you’re perhaps slightly more serious than other applicants.
Michael,
Your comment is spot on. For a small application fee (basically the same cost as sending in an application manually) job seekers get the benefit of knowing exactly when the employer viewed their resume, get feedback from the employer and get noticed by the employer because they submitted their application through a channel with much less noise.
Very intersting model and the pricing is good! Good luck with this model.
Thanks, appreciate the support.
I can’t believe in an economy like this where thousands of people are losing their jobs, anyone would be heartless enough to start charging desperate job seekers for trying to get their resumes read.
Most people out of work right now are struggling just to support themselves and they don’t have money to waste applying to jobs. I think the entire concept is insulting and I think the timing of launching such a company really signifies a complete lack of tact on the part of localbacon.
Trying to stop people from applying to jobs because it makes the person reading the resume spend an extra 30 seconds deciding whether they that resume should go in the interview pile or not is an inane reason to charge job seekers an application fee.
This is a really stupid idea obviously put together by people who’ve never really been on the job market and knows what it’s like to search for a job. When your searching for a job you send out hundreds of resumes sometimes before you actually find a job, So let’s charge me the job seeker 99cents or more for each application I send out. Like it’s not hard enough to find a job. Like I dont have to deal with discrimination in the job market. Like I couldnt be a college grad who has enough bills and can’t really afford to spend a couple hundred dollars on job applications. Like I can’t be one of the millions of people that are unemployed right now and have bills piling up to the ceiling in danger of losing my house among other things. This is a really stupid idea and i hope it crashes and burns and never goes anywhere. I know what it’s like to have to send out resumes all day long for weeks, even months to find a job and the idea of me having to pay for every job that I apply for is truly sickening. This idea makes me angry and i can’t even express it in words. REALLY STUPID IDEA!!!!!!!!!.
Joshua,
Let us help you find a job. We will let you know what employers think about your applications to increase your chances of landing a job or interview the next time you apply. Feel free to contact me and I will set you up with an account and some complimentary job credits.
I think you need to take a step back and try to provide some objective feedback here. You’re clearly a bit emotional here and I don’t blame you if some of the things you are saying are true. But consider the flip-side, if you paid 5 bucks and 5 out of 5 employers viewed it and THEN notified you WHY they weren’t interested…wouldn’t that be so much value for you now as you continue your job search. I think the feedback in itself covers the cost of applying.
Isn’t it illegal in California to require someone to pay to apply for a job?
This is one of those things where people say, I would never pay for that then they need a job or really want a position and see this as a way to separate their resume from the pack – in a competitive job environment who wouldn’t pay $1 for even a perceived advantage?
As one of the original founders of the Internet Recruiting Industry, this concept is a failure in the making. In fact, it has to be one of the dumbest ideas I have heard in 13 years.
I’m sure their is no one on the LocalBacon.com staff that has ever recruited anyone, or has ever worked in the recruiting industry.
#1 One commenter mentioned the exclusivity of the posting that would be required… won’t happen.
#2 If candidates thought they were qualified for a position, they would find a referral and get a referral to help them apply for a job.
#3 Paying a website doesn’t help the employer find good candidates. In fact, good candidates might be turned away… so the remaining candidates are the desperate job seekers who wouldn’t get hired in the first place.
Next up???
Jonathan,
I appreciate the passionate argument you made regarding our product.
The idea for localbacon was born from frustrations I personally experienced while recruiting management and entry level positions over the past ten years.
The application fee does not just give the job seeker the advantage of coming in through a less crowded channel, we guarantee to let every job seeker know when their application is viewed as well as provide direct feedback from the employer or recruiter responsible for staffing the position.
When a job seeker is serious about landing a specific opportunity and not just interested in “getting a job” the value localbacon provides far exceeds the price we charge.
I’m not so sure about this idea. Resume submission just doesn’t work anymore, given the number of applicants vs. the number of opportunities in today’s job market. So requiring candidates to pay only to submit a resume seems to be worsening the issue, not resolving it. You’ve clearly accepted the perspective that old-fashioned job boards just don’t work anoymore, and I agree with you there. But why pay to apply for a job if you don’t have to? There are plenty of niche sites out there that are free and use a better application process than resume submission. For example, OneWire.com (http://www.onewire.com) matches qualified candidates to opportunities based on thorough and detailed profiles–for free!
Joe,
Any chance you go local? I am very much interested in country managing Ukraine — i see a huge demand in it right now, right here.
I’ve recruited hundreds of people over 15 years building my company, despite never being a recruitment manager per se. We used Monster a lot, as well as placing university ads, and newspapers. they were all successful to some extent. We would certainly have given this a go.
The people who are saying this is plain dumb should be aware that there are lots of possible avenues in major markets. This doesnt need to ‘tale over’ to be a success. It just needs to be a viable and useful possibility. And I suspect it is just that.
Indeed, @localbacon, I think we should have a chat about how you might extend to the UK – where I am – successfully. Any ways to help jobseekers at the moment deserve support.
Would love to chat feel free to ping me with your contact info.
My favorite part of this idea is guaranteed feedback. But where is the incentive for the employer to say anything helpful, or honest?
I like how this empowers job seekers. So why not refund the $1 depending on the feedback? I would pay $x for an interview, zero for non-helpful response. Also, how about showing prospective employers where else I submitted a resume.
And why can’t I monetize my own resume? For example, do you want my phone number, date of birth, email address? That data is worth money, if an employer wants that personal information (after reading my resume) they should pay me for it. Good: I give my date of birth to Starbucks and they give me a free drink. Bad: I put my resume in Monster and I get spam asking me to invest money in a franchise.
I’m not a spray-and-pray job seeker, the $1 is not an issue. But maybe your competition isn’t Monster, Yahoo or Craigslist, maybe it’s oDesk, Elance or Facebook.
We actually did this a few year back (it’s still running), for a client in Australia who uses our ATS product. They are a low-cost airline and were inundated with applicants.
Being an airline they had a bit of a ’sex’ appeal about them, which tended to attract an element of the ‘less serious’ candidates. The problem manifested in a high failure rate of applicants taken into the classroom training environment – Read cost.
In an attempt to ensure candidates took the process seriously, we implemented a ‘cost to apply’ fee for the airline.
Of course it was unheard of – and the board and industry went nuts over it – but it worked, and here is why.
1) The fee was implemented for every job in the airline – got to be non discriminatory!
2) The airline had a public brand of ‘cost savings’ and passing those savings onto the customer – so this initiative was seen as an extension of that ethos
3) The fee was pitched to the market as ‘a processing fee’, not an application fee (bad) The upshot was – it worked.
The applicant volume did not decrease by much strangely, but the candidate completion rate went up (significant cost savings).
We processed about 200,000 applicants a year under this model, at a $20 fee – not a bad business if you get the messaging right.
Where this (the new business defined in this blog) may fail, is that it’s core customer is actually the employer, not the candidate (weather they know it or not), and unless those employers who use this service to accept applications have a story to tell (like the airline did), in which that story justifies the means, then the end is likely to be soon
Cheers – Jason
Jason Kerr
http://www.QuietAgent.com
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