We
have heard the terms over and over, almost to the point
of becoming cliché -
"Let's create a win-win"
"Let's join forces"
"Let's trade links"
"Alliances are key to our success"
Yet,
at no other time in the last ten years have strategic relationships
been more important to a company's success. This is especially
true in the growing online recruiting sector. It seems that
to get anywhere in this sector, one must create partnerships.
Every recruiting tool is linked to the next recruiting tool
somewhere on the "recruiting stream". You have
heard it many times before - "We are here on the stream,
where are you and how can we connect?" Even if your
products are on opposite ends of the stream, you still try
to find some way to create a partnership. At the very least
you set up a reciprocal link relationship on each other's
web site.
Obviously,
the most successful partnerships occur when the 2 products
complement each other in a way that presents an immediate
benefit to the client. This is what you might call a "natural
fit" and represents the most common partnership. One
example of this kind of partnership exists between the JAD
(Job Ad Distributor) and the ATS (Applicant Tracking System).
The ATS has spent countless hours creating and perfecting
what they see as the ideal product to solve the recruiter's
nightmare of organizing incoming resumes from candidates.
This is a critical role, but the ATS needs another critical
partner to deliver the product the recruiting industry really
needs. The other critical partner is the JAD. This in turn
opens up a nice little niche for JADs to become established
and to grow. One way for JADs to grow is through strategic
partnerships with the 100+ ATSs out there. In fact, there
is an ongoing race occurring among the JADs right now. Each
JAD is out there trying to hook up with as many ATSs as
it can. WhoToChoose.com, for example, has partnered with
25 ATSs to date and is averaging 1-2 new partnerships per
month.
In
addition to this area of the space, we are seeing partnerships
cropping up in many other areas as well. We see job boards
partnering with job boards -- BostonWorks and Dice. We see
niche job boards banding together to fight off the monsters
of the world - NicheBoards.com. We see employers joining
together to fight against the growing influence of the job
boards - DirectEmployers.com. We see the recruitment ad
agencies making an effort to keep up with the online changes
by becoming resellers of ATS products. It's remarkable to
see all of these different types of partnerships existing
in one sector of the market. It has even gotten to the point
that if you don't have partners, you are doing something
wrong. In this new electronic age, you must have partners
to keep up with the competition and to keep your company
on the cutting edge of the changes occurring.
It's
a new world out there, and if you're in the online marketplace,
keeping to your own business just doesn't work anymore.
As technology brings the world closer together, it becomes
almost impossible to look the other way. You are now forced
to look around, to see who your new neighbors are and to
determine how to approach them. In effect, everywhere we
look in the online recruiting space today, we see change
occurring. With that change, we see the role of the partnership
becoming more and more important to the success of the space
and the companies that reside in that space. In the end,
partnerships will create better products for the people
in the space.
by
Tyler Toby
Marketing Director
WhoToChoose.com
tyler@whotochoose.com
781-398-0155 x238
