Rob McGovern, founder and CEO of online job matching site Jobfox (Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth…)
December 19, 2010|By Lorraine Mirabella, The Baltimore Sun
Rob McGovern started the job search website CareerBuilder.com in 1994 when the Internet as we know it today was in its infancy.
Five years later, at the height of the dot-com bubble, McGovern took the company public. It had monthly traffic of about 10 million job seekers at the time, he said. The following year CareerBuilder was sold to Tribune Co. (the parent company of The Baltimore Sun) and Knight Ridder in the first of what would be two transactions and an ultimate price tag of more than $500 million.
Another five years later, McGovern started Jobfox, which he describes as the eHarmony of job hookups. The Tysons Corner, Va.-based company, which uses algorithms to match candidates with jobs, has 2 million users per month and offers jobs listings in 23 metro areas around the country. Maryland ranks among the top five in the number of job listings and job seeker traffic.
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, McGovern, a 49-year-old resident of Potomac, Md., talked about starting the job websites, the challenges facing today's job seekers and ways job candidates can stand out in a tough job market.
Question: What was the idea behind CareerBuilder when you started it?
Answer: The big innovation behind Career Builder was … for the first time, all the jobs that opened up were visible. In the old days, companies didn't advertise all their jobs; they put about 5 percent in the newspaper. To convince companies to advertise every job they had and make it available was a big change.
[Employers] were a little bit nervous that the old way of recruiting — more person-to-person, more referral-based — was going to change into a big meat market. They were right. That's what happened. But what I say to employers is, 'You were right. Now get over it.' It has changed. If companies don't want their jobs out in the open, they'll fall behind other companies.
Q: How is Jobfox different from CareerBuilder?
A: Jobfox is based on sophisticated matching algorithms to match people in jobs. In some ways we're the most successful company people have never heard about. We have 2 million users a month and 7,000 corporations.
Q: Do you have a sense of what the placement rate is?
A: In a study we did, our users were 72 percent more likely to get hired using our service than a traditional job site like a Monster.com. What that's saying is that's the power of the algorithms. We're pointing people to the job they're most qualified for.
Q: People in the job market often complain that they submit dozens of resumes and applications electronically but never get any response. Do you hear that?
A: Employers get from 100 to 300 resumes per job, and so the probabilities are high that you're not going to hear back from the employers. But one of the things job seekers can do is design their resume to be reviewed by a machine. In any large corporation, they're using technology to evaluate resumes, so you want your resume to score well. Key words need to be propagated throughout the resume and higher up in the document.
Q: Why is it important for job seekers to keep up the momentum around the holidays when business often slows or shuts down?
A: It's because the fiscal 2011 budgets get approved in January. And so don't be discouraged if you don't see a lot of jobs in December. But I'd also say be ready for the first of the year. For most companies, it's automated. When the budget is approved, job [openings] are electronically sent to be advertised.
Second thing I tell every job seeker is redo your resume. Most job seekers think a creative resume says, 'Here's what I've done.' That's not what's going to help you. It's what you've accomplished. If you're a salesperson, don't say you're responsible for the Baltimore County territory. It's far better to say you took over Baltimore County and sales grew 31 percent the first year and 47 percent the second year because of the great program [you] did. Employers in this job market are only hiring problem solvers.
Q: What do you tell job seekers about how they can stand out from the competition?
A: One, be prepared to talk about your accomplishments. Two, be prepared to ask very good questions. Most people in interviews do a lousy job on the questions. And go into it with a different set of expectations. Companies that are hiring now are taking risks on people, and you want to be prepared to reward that risk.
Q: How is this job market different from other periods of high unemployment?
A: There are 17 million people out of work, in official unemployment numbers. I think 8 million of those jobs will never come back. Companies are sending those skills offshore. They're automating. They're doing different things. This is going to be a tough couple of years, and you need to go into it prepared.
Q: What in your opinion is the outlook for the job market?
