We’re com­ing up on the end of 2019 – and (not sur­pris­ing­ly) there is, as always, more news 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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