JOBS! You many not looking for one but you sure have seen this word flashing on the news banners of CNN or Bloomberg over and over! With unemployment rates steadily high in the US, a larger pool of job seekers continues to roam the online job boards.  Hiring companies as a result have access to more talented professionals and ZipRecruiter wants to help them choose the best of breed.

In short, ZipRecruiter slick dashboard simplifies a company’s search for the ideal candidates by allowing them to post jobs on more than 20 major job boards like Craiglist, Ebay Classifieds and to run smart filters on the matching candidates.

Several recruiters in the same company can share Ziprecruiter's dashboard

In our first version of Entrepreneurs Talk, we sat with ZipRecruiter Founder and CEO Ian Siegel to learn more about the award winning service that was launched in March 2010 and here’s the chat we had:

StartHup: Tell us briefly about ZipRecruiter. How did the idea come up?

Ian: I was working for a technology company where we were logging into three different job boards one by one to post the same ad, and then printing the candidate resumes to create a consolidated list of responses. I was staring at a three-inch stack of these resumes and to avoid reading them, I started doodling out how a website would work that could simplify everything. The rest, as they say, is history.

You hear a lot of entrepreneurs say this, but we built something we thought would be useful without doing a lot of research and literally from the day we launched, the response has been overwhelming.

StartHup: There are some specialized job boards on the internet like one specialized for finance or IT. How are these catered for?

Ian:  We started by hooking into the biggest, highest trafficked general job boards on the web, and have now moved our focus into adding niche job boards for specific industries. In general, if you put an ad on 20+ general job boards, no matter what the category, you’re getting a healthy response. If you don’t, it’s likely got more to do with the ad than the job boards.

StartHup: Will companies be able to post to specific job boards instead of all?

Ian: We launched with the ability for employers to pick and choose the job boards they posted to, but quickly determined the feature was never used. (Note that on ZipRecruiter you pay one monthly subscription fee to post to all job boards — you don’t pay a fee per job board.) We like to practice minimalist design. If a feature isn’t getting used, it gets taken out.

The job boards that Ziprecruiter posts to

StartHup: Posting to multiple job boards might attract a huge number of applicants, how will clients filter these and will ZipRecruiter provide advisory services?

Ian: The first feature we launched on ZipRecruiter is the ability to add a short, mandatory interview to the application process. Employers love this feature so much that we actually show them the candidate questions and answers before we show them the resume. It’s proven to be an incredibly powerful screening tool. Essentially it allows you to ask traditional phone screening questions of every applicant. In most cases an employer only needs to read a handful of resumes.

StartHup: Is there a company identity validation process to avoid scams?

Ian: We had no idea how many spammers and scammers would target our service when we launched. We have literally spent months building algorithms to detect fraudulent or undesirable ads. Our “sheriff” software has now become so sophisticated that we’ve actually considered productizing it for other companies in the jobs space. We pride ourselves on being a safe place for job seekers.

StartHup: Can you name a few of your most active client accounts?

Ian: Currently, we are actively used by thousands of businesses to post their job ads. Those companies range from a nationwide restaurant chain with 1,100 locations and constant hiring needs to mom and pop businesses looking to hire only a single person. I could rattle off big name clients, but we like the fact that companies of all sizes are getting value on ZipRecruiter. We’ve been told we’re like Craigslist on steroids.

StartHup: What differentiates you from some competitors who are offering a similar service at a cheaper plan?

Ian: The strangest thing about what we’ve built is that there really aren’t competitors. There are job boards who we work with in a synergistic fashion, and there are applicant tracking systems which are really more focused on helping you manage candidates that come in versus bring them in the door. At least so far, there have been no major competitors.

StartHup: Any plans for expanding your services to the job search side?

Ian: We do offer a job board where all of the jobs posted via ZipRecruiter can be found. We also offer job alerts for candidates, to which we currently have more than 500,000 subscribers.

StartHup: You currently offer your services in the US and Canada. Any plans to expand to Europe and other international markets? What are the challenges in doing so?

Ian: Internationalization is at the top of our priority list. We have had requests for our service in literally more than a dozen countries. The primary challenges, aside from the obvious ones like currency conversion and customer support hours, have to do with our insistence on excellence for the service.

Not all the job boards we work with are international and there seems to be a different set of job boards we need to feed to by country. Like all problems, time and effort will get it licked. We expect to be international next year.

Starthup: You have founded other companies before starting ZipRecruiter. What are the lessons you have learned from these previous experiences as entrepreneurs?

Ian: I have been an early team member at multiple internet startups, but ZipRecruiter was the first one I founded.

I think the number one thing to remember about building a business is people like to deal with a human being versus some kind of “business entity.” Respect the customer, listen well, and, most importantly, be honest. Did they request a feature you don’t plan to build? Tell them why. Screw something up? Be forthright and apologize.

The second piece of advice would be to think small at first. How can I make this feature better vs. how many new features can I launch. Many companies talk about the lean startup method, and what they almost universally mean is launch a crappy product. My advice would be to pick the most limited feature set you can think of, but launch it flawlessly. Set the expectation of quality from the beginning. Customers will see where you’re going and stay with you.

Starthup: What’s next for ZipRecruiter and where do you see the company going?

Ian: We’re still thinking small. We’re a quantitative team and increasingly we have the data we need to make sure your ads do better posted through ZipRecruiter than any other site on the web. We are fixated on getting you quality candidates.