Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

14 Comments For This Post

1. Colden O'Keefe Says:
   November 30th, 2007 at 10:54 am

   I agree with everything Jason said and can write “War and Peace” on why I think this model will eventually implode. The cliff notes version…classic bite the hand that feeds it, trying to create a transactional environment where relationships are primary, and by reducing fees to the clients those participating will only get the scraps that we recruiters cannot place for full fees. But what I find most interesting, as a 3rd party recruiter, is that the co-founder actually admits that he’s trying to help companies reduce their recruiting costs going so far as saying his analytics will help determine if they should “use a contract recruiter” vs. 3rd party recruiter. Wouldn’t that put Bountyjobs.com out of business since their revenue stream relies on 3rd party recruiters? I’m all about new business models but this one takes the cake…Brilliant!

2. C-Store Guy Says:
   November 30th, 2007 at 4:07 pm

   I also agree with Jason and Colden… A transactional environment is difficult to work with when relationships and COMMUNICATION are so important to recruiting.

3. Jeremy Lappin Says:
   December 1st, 2007 at 5:20 pm

   Quick comment about our site. Saying we eliminate communication between employers and headhunters is completely missing the point of our business. BountyJobs is all about communication. There just happen to be better ways to communicate…things like email, blogs, discussions, etc. Platforms like facebook or myspace are nothing more than extremely efficent communication mediums. I like to say that you can build professional relationships on BountyJobs in months, that used to take years to develop.

   I cringe at the thought of being called a transactional platform. Those who take advantage of the fundamental communication advantages that we offer will reap great reward, be it finding talent or generating revenue.

   Jeremy Lappin
   CEO BountyJobs

4. Jeremy Goldstein Says:
   December 3rd, 2007 at 4:29 pm

   Bounty Jobs is basically a rip-off and poorly done rip of TalentHire.com

5. Jeremy copycloneburger Says:
   December 3rd, 2007 at 5:25 pm

   I find the cowboy theme offensive!

   I find the video posted to be full of exaggeration and outright lies.

   I find the basic concept of BountyJobs.com to be a total rip off of we know who and a poorly
   done rip job to boot.

   BountyJobs is all smoke an mirrors. Just look at the website done by like a cartoonist and probably
   all stolen artwork to boot!!!

   Nice JOB!!!!!!

6. Cliff Johnson Says:
   December 5th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

   I was a member of talenthire and left for bountyjobs after I was referred by a friend. It seems to me that Bountyjobs posts more positions in a week than talenthire has on their entire site. My firm has made 6 placements so far in just about 4 months time. It is a fantastic supplement to my business. We have very little trouble getting in touch with employers and I really don’t mind giving Bountyjobs their take because of how efficient it has made our team.

   You folks either work for talenthire or are seeing something that I am missing…I’ll take Bountyjobs and the 100K we have made so far using their service.

7. Robert Weller Says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 8:42 am

   I’ll tell ya what I think Cliff, that your firm isn’t doing enough client development to move inventory and probably looks more like a resume mill than a recruiting firm.

8. Samantha Heller Says:
   December 11th, 2007 at 12:07 am

   I think both sides are missing the point. Regardless of whether BountyJobs is a rip-off of Talenthire (it is), the key is the that part does not matter. Some of the great companies of our time have been simply been tweeks of other’s businesses. So what if it’s a knock-off. The fact that Bounty Jobs has 10X more positions that Talenthire (about 1,000 to about 100) and the fact that Talenthire has the gall to charge $79/$129/month plus their transation fee still…that part’s a joke. I have ceased using both actually because I do my own business development. I log into BountyJobs every now and then ‘just in case’ I do stumble across something I like and know I can fill. What I don’t get is why does Talenthire charge companies a fee to view their postings? I don’t get it. They have only 15-20 companies posting fees, period! All I can say is that both companies must be very well backed (financially) because from what I know of these types of companies, I don’t see how either could make money unless they have very significant volume.

9. Sue B. Says:
   February 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

   I have to weigh in here because I’ve been using the service since September, though rather intermittently. The communication between employers and headhunters is, at best terrible, but it’s not the fault of Bounty Jobs, or, at least, I don’t see it that way. Bounty Jobs does have some accountability for other problems though.

   Case in point: I recently presented a PhD candidate for a very high level, very precise, techncial and business development position for a PhD to fill, most preferably. This candidate has been in my database for years, very passive sort. I presented the position to him before Christmas and, since he hadn’t updated his resume in the last 3 years since he had been with his current company, he needed time to do this.

   I did the necessary preliminary presentation to “get engaged.” Engagement was accepted promptly, and it probably would have been even without my detailed description of what the candidate had to offer, since the Bounty stats showed the HR rep handling the input had received 83 resumes thus far! (remember, that’s from Bounty Jobs only)

   Too much time had elapsed after the holidays, and upon repeated attemtps to reach my candidate, I assumed he wasn’t interested. I thought maybe I should do a follow-up email to the HR rep and let him know that it appeared my candidate was not interested in the position, but that I would remain engaged and search a bit more, though I didn’t think I would find a candidate as qualified, to which he shot back that he didn’t know about whom I was referring.

   I didn’t reply to that. A few days later, my candidate called me filled with apologies and a nicely updated resume along with two white papers filled with pertinent information. I decided to submit the candidate with no mention of our previous email since it appeared that it might only serve to further confuse this HR rep.

   Since the white papers contained info about R&D he had done on related products for this position, and his resume showed how he had been instrumental in bringing them to market, I thought it necessary to also submit them. Bounty Jobs, however, offers no interface for any attachments other than the candidate’s resume, so I had to submit the white papers as if they were two separate candidates. Because of this, my stats now show that I have submitted 2 more candidates than I actually have. I notified Bounty to see if this could be rectified, but they assured me it wouldn’t make any difference. Well, maybe it doesn’t make a difference to them, but being a recruiter with one of the best submission to placement ratios I’ve seen or heard of in this industry over the last ten years, it makes a HUGE difference to me.

   Back to the placement…I submitted the white papers and resume on a Sunday night or a Monday morning and got a response from the HR rep the next day filled with exclamation points on how he LOVED the way the resume read!!! He planned to submit it to “the board” the FOLLOWING Wendesday. (*Sue gets down on her knees and thanks the Lord that this is a PASSIVE candidate*) The last line of the email asked me if I had any more candidates like that because he would like to see their resumes too. (*Sue wonders what she can do, short of cutting them off, to hold her fingers back from the keyboard with a snide response to the effect that she’ll see what she can pick off the nearest tree.*)

   I cooled down and sent him a nice reply stating that in view of all the resumes he had reviewed, surely he realized that this type of candidate would be rare and that I didn’t have any more to present, however, seeing that he had other positions open, if he would kindly prioritize by most to least imminently necessary to fill, I would be happy to work on something else and send equally as qualified people. No response from the HR manager.

   The week goes by and when I didn’t hear any word on how the board decided, I sent him an email on Thursday, the day after the meeting. Apparently, the board did not UNANIMOUSLY approve him and he did not have the leadership experience they were seeking. Now this candidate has had more leadership experience than most of the candidates running for President, so that’s just plain bull. I also have no idea who comprised this board, nor do I know how many were on it. I shot back that he had leadership experience in almost every position he has held, except at the very beginning of his career. No response.

   To date, no fill and up to 92 resumes and counting! Because these positions, and this is not the first I’ve encountered that has, take so much time to fill, I think that, in the very least, the contract with the company needs to state that submissions by headhunters belong exclusively to that headhunter for a period of 12 months, not the current 6 month obligation.

10. Samantha Heller Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 2:50 am

    Valid post Sue. And again, another reason any of these sites SHOULD NOT be the sole way to do business development…but rather just a tool. Interesting…stats on these two sites:

    Talenthire – 125 posting, Bountyjobs – 1078 jobs. Hm.

11. Samantha Heller Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    Noticed that Bountyjobs is over 1400 jobs and Talenthire stuck at 125 (oh of which half are older than 90 days mind you). Still not sold on Bountyjobs, but atleast they’re getting volume.

12. Bobby K Says:
    August 14th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Bounty Jobs is to recruiters what kryptonite is to Superman. Giving up 25% of the fee and having to wait 60 days to get paid is a load of crap! If for some reason the employess quits within 60 days, the recruiter never gets paid and doesn’t have a chance to make a replacement to recoop the time spent on the first placement. I have been talking to many other CEO’s of staffing firms and they as well as I forbid any of our recruiters to use bounty jobs. The recruiters have all the “skin in the game” while bounty plays off as the pimp of the recruiting industry, screwing the hard working recruiter out of their hard earned money.

13. Vix Says:
    December 16th, 2008 at 8:20 am

    Thansk Sue for the elaborate write-up as it gives the opportunity to really “Feel” the product.

    My prelimnary feedback…
    1. Perhaps a better thing to do was to append the R&D pages to the resume (instead of putting them as separate submissions).
    2. It seems that you are unhappy because the employer did not finally hire the candidate, but hey, the final call always remains with them, right?

    I would be very eager to know if a candidate WAS infact hired and they never reported it or even denied it. Whats the mechanism that Bountyjobs claims to have to counter such issues of non-disclosure of status of candidate or denial even after hiring one? How will the recruiter’s fee be secured in such a case? Anyone been through that path yet?

14. Supply Chain Recruiter Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    I have been a recruiter for several months with BountyJobs. I work for a very reputable firm and was dissappointed with their services. They advertised to interview all recruiters before giving access to the site and we had several recruiters who initialy signed up and not 1 was interviewed before given access. I can’t imagine what calibur of recruiters would actually be using this site. We also felt they did some unethical things and were not comfortable working through them. We tried to make the relationship work, but their customer service reps came across very rude and we always felt suspicious of their activity.
    I do think the idea could be useful and beneficial to our industry if the right people were running it. Unfortunately, I would not recommend it to anyone and those of my clients who have tried it, have only tried it for “Always Consider” positions, which are not urgent needs.

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