JobBook Hits Concordia
Controversial Website Helps Students Find Employment
Concordia student Antoine de Brabant knows you want a job. He also knows you don’t want to pay a website upfront to help find you one. That’s why he and some partners decided to start their own site, one that’s a bit of an update on the classic online recruitment model.
The site, called JobBook, is open to anyone, including students and recent graduates. Registration is simple—job seekers create an online CV and choose jobs they’re interested in, and the site’s filters do the rest.
“The big difference with our site is that job seekers choose the jobs they want from our job dictionary and we match them with openings according to filters,” said de Brabant. “It’s basically like a dating service for employers and job seekers.”
The launch of the site has not been entirely without controversy, however. In February, former Students’ Society of McGill University president Zach Newburgh came under intense criticism for his involvement with the site.
According to The McGill Daily, Newburgh had taken trips to Ivy League schools and England to promote the site, but never revealed his connection to his fellow executives, citing a confidentiality agreement he had signed with the company.
This led eight SSMU councillors, including current President Maggie Knight to vote to impeach him, though the motion ultimately failed.
“Right now he’s actually our Vice President of University Relations,” said de Brabant about Newburgh.
“He’s been a very integral part of our team. There was a big splash that came out when Zach just mentioned that he had talked to us, or that we had talked to him, but half the team was positive about it. We wanted to do something positive. Most people involved at that point were quite happy.
“At that point, the site wasn’t even up or anything, it was all just talk. It just became this huge thing, and the truth is we weren’t even really working with Zach very much until June or August.”
With Newburgh no longer involved in SSMU, the site is looking to promote itself, focusing on the fact that there is no cost to for students to join.
“We have no advertisements, either,” says de Brabant. “Our revenue model is simple; we get paid 5 per cent of the first year’s salary by the employer when a hire is made. All we want to do is match candidates with jobs and get them hired. We’re hoping to get our first hire in the next week or so.”
The JobBook team created their own formula for matching job seekers with employment prospects that sets it apart from similar websites.
“Most job search sites are based on the newspaper classified system. People post jobs and other people look through those jobs,” said de Brabant.
“It kind of creates this situation where people post the most popular job title names, and it kind of limits the actual titles that are out there. It’s an old system, and it works, but we’ve found a better solution.”
A strong likelihood of finding a job isn’t the only benefit of JobBook, said de Brabant. When job seekers get hired, they’re put in a lottery system and have a one in 100 chance of winning a free trip.
With so many apparent incentives to sign up, the creators’ goal of JobBook becoming the top online recruitment website doesn’t seem too far out of reach.
According to de Brabant, some of Canada’s top corporations seem to agree.
“We’re aiming to be the reference online recruitment site,” he said. “We’ve actually been speaking with a lot of Canada’s top corporations that have mentioned that they’d use us as a reference.”
The site, which is still in beta mode, has already gained almost 6,000 users since its launch in late September. De Brabant said they hope to have 20,000 users by the time the full version launches in early 2012.
