Jobsite.com is in beta testing in the US but it takes a much different approach to its UK namesake

Evenbase, the digital recruitment group which owns brands such as Jobsite.co.uk and Broadbean, is launching a new recruitment model in the US. Although called Jobsite.com, it takes a different approach to its UK namesake and features brand-new semantic searching technology, as well as a new scraping engine and e-commerce system.

Keith Potts, chief executive of Evenbase and founder of Jobsite.co.uk, told Recruiter that the US represents a “massive” digital recruitment market and is a “great place” to test the new model. “We’ve launched it in beta so it’s under test and review,” said Potts. “I’m very much in favour of thinking about recruitment in terms of a multi-channel approach and hopefully we’ve created a new channel that is fulfilling our strategy of making the recruitment process easier for both the candidate and recruiter.” 

The scraping engine built into Jobsite.com can collect jobs from various sources, including a company’s own website, and apply its semantic search technology called Jobtology to match a vacancy to the most appropriate candidates in its database. It will then ask the candidate if they want to be put forward for the role and sends the employer a list of highly qualified candidates with percentage scores indicating their suitability via email. The employer can view the candidate CVs and will only be charged for contact details. “Digital recruitment is all about speed and relevancy,” said Potts. “Recruiters want to fill their vacancies before their competitors do and they want relevance. Hopefully what we are doing is getting closer to that speed-and-relevance factor.”

Employers don’t have to sign up to the service and the process described above is unknown to them until they receive a list of candidates in their inbox. “We’re hoping that employers who find this happening to them and who have a positive experience will … say they want it to happen again but in a less random way,” said Potts, who admits that the service may not suit everyone. “People have to engage with their inbox for it to work and some may ignore our email but that could mean they bin an email with some amazing candidates in it. It’s a new concept: what we are doing is pointing the eyeballs of the candidate at something that is relevant to them… I think it will be a certain customer segment which engages with the service but we’re not sure who yet.”

Both Jobtology and the scraping technology has been developed in-house by Evenbase. Being a semantic search technology, Jobtology is far more intelligent than a traditional keyword search engine because it understands concepts and context and therefore the meaning behind the search term. At the moment neither technology features on Jobsite.co.uk but Potts said the UK sites were likely to be “influenced by the learnings” of the new US model by mid-2013. “I think it will be great for all of our products and we are going to learn a lot from this beta,” he said. He believes a similar e-commerce model could work in the UK. “The pay-for-performance model is already starting to gather traction here. We’ve already launched a service that lets recruiters pay per CV rather than have a subscription. If clients want a pay-for-performance model, we’re happy to build it.”