Following a 41 percent reduction in its work force last month, Jobster has turned about face by inking a deal to become the exclusive job search provider for Facebook. According to the Wall Street Journal, Jobster will unveil new features that will allow employers to post jobs for free to the site and for job hunters to attach video clips to their online profiles. Jobster’s switch to free job postings is an attempt “to make a large dent in Monster’s billion dollar a year revenue stream” opines TechCrunch.
Jobster is the first career development website to make extensive use of Web 2.0 technologies to help individuals connect with people, information and opportunities to help them further their careers. In an industry first, the new Jobster offers employers unlimited free personalized job postings, enabling jobseekers to meet the hiring manager or recruiter for a particular position, and immediately presents employers with potential matching candidates.
“We spent the last twelve months designing the new Jobster to meet the needs and expectations of the digital generation,” said Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg. “The digital generation has widely embraced social networking, user generated content and video, and Jobster is bringing these technologies to career development and humanizing the job search process. The digital generation has demanded more efficient business models, and Jobster is committed to bringing innovations to the employment category, beginning today with our unlimited free job postings and candidate matching model.
“We believe that the real value is in matching the right person to the right job, not in the posting of the employment opportunity. Today’s release is a profound expression of our Jobster mission: to help people reach their potential by providing innovative online services that enable meaningful career matches,” Goldberg said.
In many ways, Jobster is following the path of another heavily-funded Seattle Web 2.0 startup: Zillow. Just as Zillow is trying to create an interactive page around every home in the U.S., Jobster is trying to do the same around every job candidate. The idea of these free services is to sell targeted advertising around the individual pages and help people — in the case of Zillow (home buyers and sellers) and in the case of Jobster (job seekers and employers) — find one another. [24×7]
