The unassuming man with the beanie is none other than Jason Davis, aka Slouch, founder of RecruitingBlogs.com. Jason has been around recruiting social media for quite some time now and he arrived here justifiably. Jason's mom has been a recruiter as far back as he can remember. Not one to leave her work at the office, she would often arrive home in the evening to make dinner and then disappear upstairs with a stack of cards where she would make calls. "Sometimes we'd hear her screaming up there..., and you know, there are two kinds of screaming in recruitment. She'd scream if she made a placement or scream if a candidate dropped out."

So, it can be derived that Jason really didn't have a choice, not only was recruiting in his blood but also in his wallet... Mom would give Jason and his sisters $10 every time she made a placement. He learned early on that making a placement pays. Problem solved. Which is, interestingly enough, why a company hires a recruiter. "They have a problem to solve. They wouldn't hire a recruiter if they didn't have a problem to solve."

Jason's first recruiting gig consisted of a stack of 3 x 5 cards and a lot of listening. He would sit in the middle of the office and listen to all the conversations going on around him. The learning curve? "I would just listen and get used to job titles and what they meant, become familiar with company names. It was a very slow, planned process based on all of this experience. And I expected it to be exactly what it was." He goes on, "What I didn't realize was how entrepreneurial you can be as a recruiter. I didn't recognize that until I sat and listened. So many opportunities to figure out what I could do to make it better. " This is not surprising, in the least.

Jason was taught his craft by highly skilled professionals. "My first boss, who happened to be my uncle, was the best there ever was at this job. What I did a lot of times is, sit back, put my feet up and ask, 'What would he do?' " His own perspective became clear and he ventured off on his own, starting his own business, with "A $35,000 bank roll and two other recruiters." Working very hard to make that money last as long as possible, Davis Search achieved success. At its peak, his firm was making a placement a day with 22 recruiters on staff placing design engineers in the semiconductor industry.


Jason was teased by an article about domain names in the Fordyce Letter in 1997. He bit and it bit back hard, he now had the "domain name bug" along with a great collection of recruiting-related domain names. He acquired the domain name, Recruiting.com in 2002 and started his venture into blogging. Jason along with Michael Keleman, Anthony Meany and Jim Durbin turned Recruitng.com into one of the first recruiting-related group blogs. They all provided site content and that content was noticed..., by many including Jobster. In 2006, Jobster bought the domain name and the content - the blog. As contracted, Jason worked at Jobster for a year.

As of this month, Jobster has officially changed its name to Recruiting.com.

In 2007, while reading TechCrunch, Jason learned about Ning, an online platform used to create individual social networks. And that, as they say, was just the beginning...


Read Part 2


by rayannethorn