Jobpoacher.com: A Recruiters Friend? or Foe?

I wrote about this new service this morning in today's RBC Daily, but for those that might have missed it....

Will it help you poach and attract new candidates?

Is Jobpoacher.com a recruiter’s new best friend? Let's be honest - in the search for great talent, recruiters will often do what they need to do to find the next all-star candidate. A new site called Jobpoacher.com might offer another tool to accomplish that task. It’s a free service for job seekers and recruiters to make connections. Candidates who are currently employed but not completely satisfied can fill out a simple form with their current job title, salary, location and what they think is an ideal working situation.

Jobpoacher.com will create an anonymous listing and post this information as a simple entry to allow recruiters to reach out and make connections. Think Craig’s List for the job market.

It has the potential to become a spam haven, but the creators of the site mention they monitor spam and other suspicious activity. You can learn more about Jobpoacher.com by reading the full article from TechCrunch.

I admit that I messed around with the site a bit this afternoon. Due to the TechCrunch article (as one can imagine) it got flooded by job seekers. My opinion is that it could become tire kicker heaven. Anyone can have a bad day and turn to a site like this and just post about a dream job scenario. I question just how serious these individuals are, and further how they would feel after getting bombarded by 'lazy' recruiters.

What do you think recruiters about the idea of Jobpoacher.com? Is anyone from the RBC out there using it? or trying to poach their next candidate? I'm curious to what others think.

Looks for my next post on sourcing from Pinterest (I kid I kid).

Comment by Amanda Selleck on February 7, 2012 at 5:10pm: I really don't know if this website will make a difference at all. Proactive recruitment is about making relationships with candidates long term (behind the scenes) and when they do realise they are unhappy they will think about giving you a call for a new opportunity. If your a good recruiter you will already have the long term connection and your candidate will not turn to a website. The best candidates will have many recruiters after them, I doubt they will need to fill out a form on a website. I think the impact will be minimal for skilled recruiters.

Comment by Tim Spagnola on February 7, 2012 at 5:18pm: Thanks for your comment Amanda. I tend to agree with you on all the points you raised. I see this as someone having a bad day and wanting to 'test the waters'. From a recruiter perspective it would seem to be low-hanging fruit heaven. I'm not sure about others, but that type of fruit has never gotten me far.

Comment by Amy Ala Miller on February 7, 2012 at 6:34pm: Tim that's exactly what will be next - all these tire kickers are going to get frustrated with 100 crappy recruiters beating down their door and start closing off to the rest of us. Kudos to the developers for creating something that looks good on the surface and is getting a ton of attention- but will ultimately be more headache than it's worth - at least to recruiters.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on February 7, 2012 at 7:09pm: Speed dating in a low rent bar anyone?

Comment by Amanda Selleck on February 7, 2012 at 7:48pm: haha love the comment Sandra.

Comment by Bill Schultz on February 7, 2012 at 8:08pm: @ sandra- sure, will wine be served?

amanda is correct. this website believes that it all of a sudden pops in people's head "hey, i want out!"

it happens, sure. but A players move when they are at the height of their success. An opportunity is offered to

them that catapults them to a new level or exciting company, position, etc. Eggpoacher.com would be better,

because that's hard to do.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on February 7, 2012 at 11:17pm: The interesting thing , taking a quick look at the site, a load of IT types. Anybody want to make any bets as to the visa status of a bunch of those and that the little profiles have been posted by those wonderful H1B vendors.

@schultz at your age and mine that is not speed dating it's a nostalgia shuffle.

Comment by Chris Russell on February 8, 2012 at 10:21am: its not that much different than the jobs wanted section on craigslist

Comment by Scott Pugh on February 8, 2012 at 11:16am: it needs a real search

Comment by Tim Spagnola on February 8, 2012 at 11:24am: @Chris- exactly and operates almost the exact same way.

@Scott - for those that would use, it certainly needs search functionality.

Thanks for comments everyone.