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Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

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Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#31

Post by jeffmould »

As one of the partners for the past two years this came as somewhat of a shock, although not entirely surprising. About two weeks ago they had a "maintenance" window to supposedly make changes to their entire infrastructure to enhance performance, etc.. so to completely throw all that out the window a month later is a little surprising. In addition, this was literally a short notice. I actually never received a notice from them. I saw the TechCrunch article earlier today and reached out to one of my contacts who confirmed. For once I am glad I read TechCrunch today.

From a partner perspective, their API is pretty good and easy to use, although their support has gotten really bad over the last year. I don't think they have many working on the support team and I have had tickets go weeks without even an acknowledgement. Only after opening multiple tickets or updating the ticket constantly do I get a response.

One thing I did notice though is that they did not seem to be developing or improving much over the last year. Their partner interface can be a little confusing if you need to do more than reporting. About a year ago I was told there were some upgrades coming to the interface and API to make it easier and that they were enabling real-time reporting. Neither of which came about. When I asked again I was told they were working to make their job postings more "mobile friendly", whatever that means exactly.

We initially chose SimplyHired over others because of some of their API functionality (i.e. you can search by O*NET code for jobs) and their revenue share was higher than Indeed. For the last 6-7 months though their revenue share seems to have taken a significant hit and not sure what is happening.

I tried to get some more details from the partner director, but she didn't seem to know who or what was going on with the acquisition. I would have to agree with others that it appears to be a "fire sale" or acqui-hire, as they are not offering their partners any alternatives. In fact the only help I was offered was dumping reports or data so we could go with another partner. Luckily we didn't have clients with jobs posted through their site so we don't have to deal with refunding job postings which could be a nightmare in a short period of time.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#32

Post by yeukhon »

lukasm wrote: post #28
throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

Why did you say you were fired for underperformance? Why didn't you say it was a bad fit? Usually, that's the root cause.

Another reason I wouldn't not tell the truth is maybe the interviewer knows my ex-colleagues.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#33

Post by yeukhon »

downandout wrote: post #14

It seems that with 30M monthly users, they could have somehow made enough money to keep things going, even if they had to lay some people off. Why on earth do you just shut down a site that has 1M valuable active users every day? Simply slapping some Adsense on a site with this kind of traffic would have generated enough to keep the doors open. Even if they are getting acquired, this seems like an insane move for the…

Yeah. Indeed.com has the worst user experience and yet it is still running strong, simply because Indeed.com is everywhere!

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#34

Post by therealgimli »

throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

there's an interviewing technique among senior execs to take on an aggressive, rude tone to interviewees to "see how they respond under pressure." One way to spot it is if they respond in a contrary way to everything and generally try to pick on you to find chinks in your armor.

the first time I experienced it I was pretty shaken up.

either that or the person you spoke with is just an asshole.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#35

Post by AJ007 »

vthallam wrote: post #25
AJ007 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had to block their domain in display campaigns because it was sending a lot of bad traffic. Have not had to do that with any other "real" job/career site.

Curious on what is the website you are redirecting the traffic to? Is it a job board/ATS/a just company job board?

Another job search engine. A lot of traffic so not a statistical blip. Usually it's only the viral/buzz domains and mobile apps that need to be blocked outright.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#36

Post by AJ007 »

vthallam wrote: post #24
x0x0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but Indeed seems to be making plenty of money: $434m rev in 2014, $300m 1/2 year rev in 2015! I'm really curious what went wrong... http://press.indeed.com/press/indeed-2014-revenue-434-millio... http://press.indeed.com/press/indeed-half-year-2015-revenue-...

As i see, Indeed has better scrapers and SEO for a start. It established itself as a market leader in this business, also built simple products like letting companies directly post jobs, making it easy to apply from mobile(they acquired mobolt for this) and also working on Indeed Premium( a hired clone). With that kind of traffic, if simplyhired had launched any decent products to help recruiters, they would have eas…

SEO + they did a really good job on their partner program. In simpler terms a shitload of free Google traffic along with a safer, diversified stream which cash flows very nicely. Both things that basically act as expanding moats the longer they are maintained.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#37

Post by smt88 »

therealgimli wrote: post #34
throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

there's an interviewing technique among senior execs to take on an aggressive, rude tone to interviewees to "see how they respond under pressure." One way to spot it is if they respond in a contrary way to everything and generally try to pick on you to find chinks in your armor. the first time I experienced it I was pretty shaken up. either that or the person you spoke with is just an asshole.

They're an asshole either way.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#38

Post by blakeyrat »

therealgimli wrote: post #34
throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

there's an interviewing technique among senior execs to take on an aggressive, rude tone to interviewees to "see how they respond under pressure." One way to spot it is if they respond in a contrary way to everything and generally try to pick on you to find chinks in your armor. the first time I experienced it I was pretty shaken up. either that or the person you spoke with is just an asshole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRtBvo9grLw

Did he call it "extreme negative feedback"?

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#39

Post by clamprecht »

yeukhon wrote: post #33
downandout wrote: post #14

It seems that with 30M monthly users, they could have somehow made enough money to keep things going, even if they had to lay some people off. Why on earth do you just shut down a site that has 1M valuable active users every day? Simply slapping some Adsense on a site with this kind of traffic would have generated enough to keep the doors open. Even if they are getting acquired, this seems like an insane move for the…

Yeah. Indeed.com has the worst user experience and yet it is still running strong, simply because Indeed.com is everywhere!

I'd sincerely love to hear how you would improve Indeed.com. I no longer work there, but I did previously, and I still care about their UI. If you have real suggestions, I'll make sure someone at Indeed sees your comments.

Re: Simply Hired is shutting down June 26

#40

Post by mathattack »

throwaway59511 wrote: post #18

Throwaway to share my experience with them: I applied in mid-2014 to a software eng position based on encouragement from a recruiter. I went to two onsites with five people in total, each of which passed me to the next round. They had me come in for a third onsite(!) to meet with CEO James Beriker and some head of engineering. I had admitted to being let go for underperformance to the position I held two jobs ago (wa…

There is an enormous irony in a Recruiting SaaS company being so bad at recruiting.
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