I recently read the Silicon Valley Insiders list of 50 most valuable internet startups and saw expected names like Facebook, 
Wikipedia, and Craigslist. But when I read #19—The Ladders—I stopped in my tracks. It quotes revenue of $90 million with a value of $800 million.
For those of you that do not know The Ladders, it was developed several years ago and flipped the model (charging companies to post a job) for the job posting business that companies like Monster.com perfected for so long by. The Ladders offered companies to post their jobs for free—and charged the job seeker $30/month. At $90 million of revenue that is a lot of people shelling out money.
As an entrepreneur who has started several companies in the online recruitment area (all were acquired) I have more than a passing interest in this area and am always impressed with new ideas. When The Ladders first launched I joined up and found the jobs to be high quality—and more importantly not found anywhere else.
I have been watching it again recently—although through the free membership—and figured out that if I typed some of the keywords from the descriptions from the search results and Googled it maybe the jobs would pop up. Well I have gotten quite surprised…Many, many (in some cases all) of the jobs appear on Google from Monster.com, Indeed.com (ranked at #31 $40mm revenues/$380mm valuation), and many others websites. I checked with a few CEOs I know and they say they did not post the jobs at The Ladders that were appearing. I have had conversations with other online recruitment firms that say it is known within the industry that The Ladders—like Indeed.com—aggregates jobs and also puts them within their system with the other jobs. The difference is that you can go to Indeed.com for FREE and The Ladders charges-- what one assumes is an unemployed person already struggling-- $30/month. Ouch!…Buyer Beware.
I have seen the angst of those unemployed and want to share this to help them be successful without spending more money that they already don’t have. To be fair I did not do any scientific method in my research—but even if a company posts jobs in multiple places it leads one to believe that a job seeker does not have to pay $30 to find the job posting at The Ladders. I’m not saying stop using The Ladders (I happen to like the interface), but use it as a “screener” of matching jobs and then type in the shown parts of the job description and find the full job description and company name elsewhere on the web and go from there. Buy a massage with the money you saved for the stress relief.
Best of luck in your Search in what are the darkest days in decades.
Wikipedia, and Craigslist. But when I read #19—The Ladders—I stopped in my tracks. It quotes revenue of $90 million with a value of $800 million.For those of you that do not know The Ladders, it was developed several years ago and flipped the model (charging companies to post a job) for the job posting business that companies like Monster.com perfected for so long by. The Ladders offered companies to post their jobs for free—and charged the job seeker $30/month. At $90 million of revenue that is a lot of people shelling out money.
As an entrepreneur who has started several companies in the online recruitment area (all were acquired) I have more than a passing interest in this area and am always impressed with new ideas. When The Ladders first launched I joined up and found the jobs to be high quality—and more importantly not found anywhere else.
I have been watching it again recently—although through the free membership—and figured out that if I typed some of the keywords from the descriptions from the search results and Googled it maybe the jobs would pop up. Well I have gotten quite surprised…Many, many (in some cases all) of the jobs appear on Google from Monster.com, Indeed.com (ranked at #31 $40mm revenues/$380mm valuation), and many others websites. I checked with a few CEOs I know and they say they did not post the jobs at The Ladders that were appearing. I have had conversations with other online recruitment firms that say it is known within the industry that The Ladders—like Indeed.com—aggregates jobs and also puts them within their system with the other jobs. The difference is that you can go to Indeed.com for FREE and The Ladders charges-- what one assumes is an unemployed person already struggling-- $30/month. Ouch!…Buyer Beware.
I have seen the angst of those unemployed and want to share this to help them be successful without spending more money that they already don’t have. To be fair I did not do any scientific method in my research—but even if a company posts jobs in multiple places it leads one to believe that a job seeker does not have to pay $30 to find the job posting at The Ladders. I’m not saying stop using The Ladders (I happen to like the interface), but use it as a “screener” of matching jobs and then type in the shown parts of the job description and find the full job description and company name elsewhere on the web and go from there. Buy a massage with the money you saved for the stress relief.
Best of luck in your Search in what are the darkest days in decades.
Posts
4 comments:
THANK YOU so much for this blog entry! I've been looking for work for over 12 months and the thought of spending more money is such a double edge sword... I am disappointed that these are not the VIP jobs and insider knowledge. At least I can be confident to still find them in other locations.
Kim
New York City
Great info and advise. I just hope that the one job I qualify for is not ONLY on Ladders.
PMN
I am a recruiter in a boutique search firm and agree that in the beginning, The Ladders was very high quality and a great resource of 100K candidates for me, people who were more passive job seekers and may not be as easily found on other sites. The fact that I could post my jobs for free was also a huge bonus. However, they now charge a substantial annual fee to recruiters/employers to post jobs. You cannot "pay per posting" like with many other sites, and as a boutique firm that watches costs, we have chosen not to use their service any longer. Their fees are prohibitive to small firms who specialize in only one of their functional ladders. Too bad because I have numerous searches over 100K...
Wendy
Boston
PMN- I do not suggest not to use Ladders-or even the paid version of it-- clearly there is value. I'm trying to say that if $30 is hard to come by there are ways to still use the information to your benefit and that most companies do not just use one service to post jobs (in fact there are many websites that now pull down jobs from the hiring company websites as well).
Ian Grant
Post a Comment