MrTed Founder and President Jerome Ternynck is a man on a mission. A free mission.
“Would you pay for an email account today?” he asks.
In the consumer market, he says, there are a lot of business models that exist around this concept.
He points to the Gmail concept, which he says is a model that has not been applied to the B2B market yet.
“I’ll make money, for sure, but I am not making money on you,” he says, alluding to his master plan behind the launch of SmartRecruiters.
This service gives recruiters in small and midsized businesses full access to an ATS without any restrictions or limitations. Never paying again for your ATS? Is it an off-the-wall idea? (Martin Snyder has likened it to “running your car on tap water,” though he admits the idea might end up taking off.)
In fact, Ternynck admits that he will generate profit by recruiters bringing business to service vendors like job boards and background screening firms.
Just this week, the company launched a new alliance with eQuest to integrate eQuest job postings with SmartRecruiters.
Ternynck says this is all part of his master plan to offer a “one-stop, one-click eCommerce application” for job board purchasing, job posting deliveries, and candidate sourcing.
Initially, the company will offer some free boards during its beta phase and later offer a wide variety of pay-per-post boards.
6 comments
Jana Nov 12, 2008 at 2:26 pm
This is great, thanks for your article elaine. I just went to their website and registered. They claim you can sign up and start working in a few minutes, which is a pretty bold statement, but it actually worked. I tested it for half an hour, there seem to be some bugs and other issues but considering it is still the beta, it looks very promising.
Ryan N Nov 12, 2008 at 3:41 pm
It is an interesting idea and if it catches up it can certainly change the industry. The question is if smartrecruiters will have the same functionality as other leading (and not for free) tracking systems out there and if they can bring enough revenue from job boards and background screening firms to sustain themselves. I agree that right now it looks very promising.
Stacey Jan 31, 2009 at 10:29 am
Initially it looks good. But, you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position depending on a web-based ATS with no backup options. What if they go out of business?
ChrisS Feb 3, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I agree with Stacey, and there’s also the security issue… if candidate information is compromised, there could be a huge liability issue. But I think I’m willing to give it a try.
After all, the price is right.
Nathan Mar 24, 2009 at 10:26 am
I wonder what kind of technical support (if any) they offer. Their website makes no mention of technical support. Having managed a web-based software product for years I can tell you that the biggest cost for a web-based software company is not servers or utilities – but technical support! It’s the people on the other end of the phone or email that make all the difference. Unfortuantely most people don’t think about support until they have a problem and need help (oops, I accidentally deleted some data!). By then it’s often too late.
anthony Jan 10, 2010 at 2:30 pm
We will give her a go – Is this still around?