Warren Bare, founder and CEO of Jobkabob, a startup employment search engine, likes building networks. In the mid-90s, he started an employment site that eventually merged with another company to become the largest online job search site in the United States today. Still, he sees room for improvement in the industry.

“It’s not about a niche site, and it’s not about the highest dollar per sale,” he said. “It’s about having a giant network where you change an industry by getting millions of people together to do something.”

Jobkabob was recently accepted as a member company in Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a nationally-recognized science and technology incubator that helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful companies. According to Bare, Jobkabob is an employment search engine that bases its search results on real job requirements and qualifications rather than just keywords, something no one else in the industry is currently able to do.

Jobkabob’s patent-pending technology allows job seekers to quickly and easily build a profile with a standard set of functions and skills. These functions and skills become a “common language” between employers and job seekers. Standardizing that language was the most difficult part of the process, according to Bare, and a major hurdle at other job search companies.

Jobkabob also allows job seekers to quantify the amount of experience they have with different skills or functions. This takes the guesswork out of selecting the most qualified candidates.

“Resumes typically have lists of skills and a recruiter always has to call to ask how much experience the job seeker really has with a given skill,” observed Bare. “Our system allows us to put the most experienced candidates on top of the list, and it saves recruiters from making lots of phone calls to unqualified candidates.”

When collecting detailed job seeker information, the single most important success factor is usability. Jobkabob addresses this by anticipating what the user wants as they type and is constantly suggesting the skills and functions that are most statistically likely to appear on their profile. For instance, if a user begins typing “nu” into a job title field, the menu suggests – with statistical relevance – the most probable job title desired, which is nursing assistant. After the user selects a job title, Jobkabob suggests additional functions and skills which may not be listed in the user’s resume, but are probably skills the person has and are desired within the industry. Of those who begin filling out a profile, a “stunning” 82 percent complete the process.

As more and more users complete profiles, the Jobkabob system builds new patterns and constantly anticipates, suggests, adapts and learns. The standard language currently contains 800 functions and 4,000 skills.

“The more data we get, the more effective the system becomes in terms of presenting information. When we don’t know a title, we learn and collect the data so the computer is doing the work for us,” Bare noted. “It’s that level of granularity that allows us to be as effective as the niche site but as big as an industry-leading job board.”

Within this $6 billion market of employment search engines, the largest sites currently account for only 30 percent of the revenue, and while large site revenue is growing, they are losing market share as the industry becomes more fragmented. Niche sites with more effective searches are gaining share. Currently Jobkabob has 11,000 recruiters posting 29,000 active jobs and more than 90,000 profiles posted by job seekers. The site gets more than 250,000 visits each month and has grown from less than 50,000 visits per month earlier this year.

“We have the opportunity to fundamentally change a broken industry. Our goal is not to niche-ify, it’s to provide the accuracy of niche sites on a large-scale,” said Bare. “To be successful, we have to think like a recruiter, not like a computer.”

Jobkabob’s revenue model is based on resume database subscriptions, and job listing upgrades. A basic resume database search is free, but does not include contact information, thereby allowing recruiters to “try before they buy.” A basic job posting is also free, which Jobkabob will distribute to nine million job seekers through its network of distribution partners. Employers choosing to upgrade the job listing will have the job highlighted and given preferential positioning on Jobkabob and several of the distribution partner Web sites.

In four years, Bare projects that Jobkabob will have revenue in excess of $50 million. He expects to utilize the resources and expertise associated with the ATDC to reach that goal.

“We’re going to get from A to Z and it doesn’t matter if we have to push mountains over and fill in the valleys,” he said. “It’s a lot more effective, however, to get from A to Z with the help of good business partners, which is where I think the ATDC can help a lot. Already, we are getting help with the three most important resources our company has: human capital, intellectual capital and financial capital.”
 
About the ATDC: The Advanced Technology Development Center is a nationally-recognized science and technology incubator that helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful companies. ATDC provides strategic business advice and connects its member companies to the people and resources they need to succeed.

More than 110 companies have emerged from the ATDC, including publicly-traded firms such as MindSpring Enterprises – now part of EarthLink. Headquartered at Technology Square on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, ATDC has been recognized by both BusinessWeek and Inc. magazines as among the nation’s top nonprofit incubators. Since 1999, ATDC companies have attracted more than a billion dollars in venture capital funding.

ATDC was formed in 1980 to stimulate growth in Georgia’s technology business base and now has locations in Atlanta, Savannah and Warner Robins. ATDC is part of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. For more information, please visit (www.atdc.org).

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Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986); E-mail: (john.toon@innovate.gatech.edu) or Nancy Fullbright (404-526-6235); E-mail: (nancy.fullbright@innovate.gatech.edu).
 
Writer: Nancy Fullbright