Ranjit Jatar who till recently used to head Pepsi's Sri Lankan and a part of South India operations has turned an entrepreneur in the job site space by launching Reffster, a referral based job site. Though I must add, the site is still not live and does not have any content.
It's interesting to note that NDTVjobs has also recently started advertising how people can make money by referring their friends for jobs listed there.
Reffster however claims not to be a regular job board but says it will only list "Premium Mid and Senior Management jobs" and that "Resumes will be forwarded to the specific Employer after a back end rigorous screening to ensure that only relevant CVs reach the HR department of the company".
While the latter USP would be a boon to many employers who reel under CV spam (lots of people post their CVs for all jobs listed without seeing if they meet the selection criteria or not) but it is the first claim that might make or break the company. Whereas the current jobsites all target their mass numbers (most jobs listed, most jobseekers registered) Reffster seems to be be taking a contrarian stand in the jobsite game.
It's important to realise that even in a mature market like the US when Jobster launched it focussed on the referral aspect with their tagline "great people know great people" but I guess that didn't work so well because they quickly moved to integrate vertical search and now aim to become a web 2.0 jobsite with people's career pages and a facebook application too.
So I am a bit sceptical of Reffster being a pure-play referral based job site, specially since premium middle and senior management people don't like to float their CV still on jobsites in India.
Thanks Gautam for your critical appraisal of my new about-to-be-launched middle and senior level recruitment website Reffster still in its introductory phase (www.reffster.com), on which premium jobs will be listed when the launch takes place very soon.
ReplyDeleteI quit PepsiCo’s international operations after 12 long and fruitful years with them in different roles in India and abroad. I also have with me two partners Arjun and Arun Yadav who have rich HR recruitment domain expertise and who have worked for a leading international Executive Search firm.
Currently the website is getting a fair number of hits and people are registering themselves as potential referrers/applicants.
I wanted to clarify some of the points that you have raised. You have rightly observed that one of our USPs will be to make life easier for companies who are hiring (by avoiding a deluge of irrelevant Resumes reaching them as is the case with other on-line sites). However you have also mentioned that on the flip side this USP could boomerang against us since we would not have a large data base.
Let me further clarify /amplify--
We are at the outset not competing with existing on-line websites who are a subset of the huge Indian Recruitment industry, which had recruiter fee revenue of Rs 4500 crore in 2006(Ma Foi study data). The on-line Industry out of this is only approx Rs 500 crores. The balance of Rs 4000cr has 10,000 small and 30 large recruitment companies operating in this space --with no website help to source candidates. It is these 30 national scale recruitment companies that are likely to be our competitors while many of the 10,000 smaller, regional recruitment companies could be -- well, our partners.
Now that sounds strange! How the dickens do we partner with other recruitment companies?
And that’s where the referral system comes in.
We want good referrers to be registered on reffster including those with databases of many potential candidates. I am referring here to other recruitment companies.Reffster would like to partner with recruiters who have the wherewithal and inclination to guide the careers of candidates in their databases --whether active or passive job seekers--and draw attention to jobs that could help them in meeting their career aspirations. Who can do that better on a large scale than the large network of recruitment companies who are in touch with candidates? A good 'finders fee' reward should facilitate that process for referrers who may be recruitment companies or could be individual professionals with a network of friends whom they would like to help. After all, for a recruitment company, if one does not have a particular company as a client (which Reffster may have), the next best thing is to get a reward by 'supplying'a candidate from ones database.
Incidentally our website will further facilitate the process by including corporate branding material from customers. You could have for e.g. the PepsiCo HR head explaining on video or in a written format why candidates should join the company...We will also have informative content related to careers/general management and other topical material and will encourage professionals to write on the website as contributors.
...Having said that, let me add another important point. We plan to provide value added services to companies that would include psychometry, reference checks etc. This is not what the other websites do which basically act as post offices with a vanilla service(I am with due respect not saying this in a derogatory sense) where Resumes once uploaded on other websites can be seen by all the website subscribers. No wonder discreet middle and senior managers stay away from on-line websites.
Reffster will be confidential. A resume will be uploaded only for a specific job and will be only visible to reffster and to the specific company. And we will screen it for suitability in a unique manner (which is not the subject matter of this blog comment).
Hence readers of this blog are requested to come to reffster and register as potential referrers. We will inform you when the launch takes place and jobs are hosted.
And by the way -- one need not ONLY refer someone else. If a visitor /registered referror thinks a particular job suits oneself, reffster will have a provision to directly apply too.
cheers
Ranjit Jatar
CEO
www.reffster.com
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI am an employee of a large MNC firm and am currently in the middle management. I would agree with Ranjit since the primary reason that I desist from posting an online resume is because of the confidentiality risk. Additionally, what applies to the recruiters apply equally to us. We get a large number of calls from consultants to apply for jobs that are actually irrelevant from our perspective. The ratio of jobs fitting our specific requirement is extremely low and hence tends to become an irritant.
Since, Ranjit is going to work on a more 'personalized' basis, I think the prospective job seekers too will stand to gain largely from this initiative.
I wish Ranjit all the best for a roaring success in his venture.
Cheers
Hello Ranjit,
ReplyDeleteI agree in totality about your plans you have for Reffster, however, i must add that we are in the age on Web 2.0. The advent of Web 2.0 has changed the way people find/apply jobs, especially mid or senior level management jobs.
I am talking of people getting hired through LinkedIn or something similar. More and more companies are moving from the being a job site to being a social-networkig site cum referral site cum job site. Even though, Indian companies still use the old medium (read: naukri, monster), within no time we could go by the social-networking formula. TechTribe (social networking for techies) is going the LinkedIn way.
It would be interesting to see the growing graph of executives getting hired through social-networking sites.
Getting personalized can not be the only way for Reffster. I suggest that you also consider setting up RSS feeds for Reffster. People would then aggregate them to a service like Google Reader, or use live bookmarks. This saves time entering the same criteria day after day.
My two cents worth...
GOOD LORD !!,, I wonder if the ndtv`s jobsite concept is so gud to be copied like this,, i think.. reffster would be the third or fourth website with similar concept...
ReplyDeleteAs a Recruiter, my question would be how would the job sites decide which all are premium jobs...?? Or is it just another Phrase to get the Jobseekers ..!!
yeah anonymous, the model is exactly that of ndtvjobs. people in the industry sure dont want to do anything original. only copy others model. as for the fate of this reffster.com time wl tell.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting discussion here, and it proves that the time obviously is right for the referral concept. At yellojobs.com (we are the guys behind the NDTVjobs.com website), we totally believe in this true web 2.0 consumer proposal, as it uses a few original web ideas and puts them together in a new way:
ReplyDelete1) eliminate the middle man (guess who?)
2) make participating thrilling and fun
3) use variable pricing to create a market
4) involve the community
All in all, everybody will win when referrals are involved. Candidates get a new job, companies get better quality of employees, and the referrers get money they would never have been able to make. Talk about a winning proposition.
Dr. Andreas Koestler
CEO
Yello - Yellojobs.com
NDTVjobs.com
Great to read so many comments on the referral concept, the core USP of the new e-recruitment website www.reffster.com. Reffster will go live with jobs at 12 noon on Thursday , 27th Sept.
ReplyDeleteLet me summarise my response to the 5 comments that followed my initial response to what Gautam wrote about Reffster --
1) The CEO of yellojobs.com( which is part of NDTV.com) Mr Andreas Koestler has rightly said that the time is ripe for referral systems. Bingo. Undoubtedly!
2)The anonymous mid management level contributor from 'a large MNC firm' makes an important point when he says that "the primary reason that I desist from posting an online resume is because of the confidentiality risk". Well, Reffster will be totally confidential because it will a) not accept Resumes unless there is a specific job posting and b) it will not be subscriber based -- hence ONLY Reffster and the specific client can view the Resume. This is a privacy promise that Reffster makes.
3)Thanks Vijayendra for also coming to the same conclusion about Reffster having RSS feeds so that people can aggregate them to a service like Google or use them as live bookmarks. Watch out for updates!
4)Fortunately we are not copying any other referral or non-referral based website as remarked by someone anonymous. Neither referral based NDTV.com( alias yellojobs.com) nor anyone else.
Reffsters referral system is far different than other referral based sites. The other referral based sites have much lower rewards to start with --on an average Rs 5,000. Also they only put up a job when THE CLIENT offers a Reward as some of them do for an internal referral system. Reffsters rewards are much larger, eg Rs 30,000 for a Rs 15 Lac CTC hiree.And unlike all other on-line portals, Reffster provides a specific Resume screening service -- what a brick-and-mortar recruitment company would provide to clients.
Mr Andreas says that Yellojobs is intended to eliminate the middle man. I presume he means recruiters.I beg to differ. Firstly to call the 10,000 recruiters as middlemen may not be very true for most diligent recruiters who do a professional job in searching, evaluating Profiles, managing career aspirations of candidates and then looking at a cultural fit with an organisation having vacancies. And the market is only going to mature where companies will need to do Corporate branding with job seekers and with the 75% passive 'fence sitters', as a recent economic Times survey called those professionals who are neither totally dissatisfied with their current job nor totally satisfied. Professional Recruiters will always be needed. Reffster will co-opt professional recruiters as Referrers to leverage their candidate data bases and to share the commission that Reffster will earn in an equitable manner as a 'Finders fee' Reward.
Net Net , exciting times ahead for all!Yellojobs and other on-line portals will have their own space in the on-line recruitement market. We wish them well.
www.reffster.com will operate with a keen eye on the brick-and-mortar Recruitment space which has an Industry annual fee revenue of USD 1 billion in India .And we hope to collaborate with some of the smaller Recruiters as Referrer partners. What about the branded 30 large Recruitment firms in India ( who charge fat fees)? Well we would like to wish them well too. The market is large enough for all good players.
Cheers
Ranjit Jatar
CEO and co-founder
www.reffster.com
Hey... this makes sense.
ReplyDeleteWonder why ebay got so popular? Why travel portals are giving cheap tickets & fetching attention? its because the middlemen are bypassed and the power has reached the general internet users.
Great going Yellojobs !!! Fully agree..
I think the next BIG thing would be refferal recruitment and I really do expect a lot of action in this space.
ReplyDeleteIt seems reffster.com has a great business model.
Wish them all success!