One of the nuclear-launch-codes-level super-secret Montreal startup operations has finally launched this week. Standout Jobs is a career-search site that focuses more on building mini sites for each company than providing a big boring job-search database.
Unfortunately, despite all the emphasis from local startups, including Standout Jobs, on the local technology scene, the company launched itself not here but in California. Its website design also looks like the kind of cookie-cutter rounded-corners Web 2.0 template that’s been on every other website that’s launched in the past year. (And as Heri points out, the company portal pages are just a bunch of widgets and could be simplified, especially since the only reason you’re going to go there is to see what jobs they have available and what kind of company it is to work for.)
It remains to be seen how successful the company will be. That will come down to whether they can find enough companies willing to pay $149 a month for a recruiting site that they could mostly duplicate on Facebook or recreate on their own.
UPDATE (Jan. 31): Yoskoblog has video of the demo. The tools to post to job boards and keep track of candidates automatically are pretty cool, and underpresented on the StandoutJobs.com site.
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Hi there – thanks for your thoughts, they’re appreciated.
I think it’s fair to say that we’re quite active in the Montreal startup community – but the fact is that our customer base is primarily in the United States. The market is much bigger, by virtue of the size of the population. Being involved in Montreal is great, but every single startup should explore any and all opportunities beyond their home base otherwise they won’t grow and scale.
I must admit, I love rounded corners. (Just ask the team members.)
I also agree that a good measure of our success will be determined by whether we can get people to pay, since making money is definitely a significant part of any business. But I don’t really agree that companies can duplicate what we’re doing in Facebook or on their own. Facebook doesn’t provide the right atmosphere for building relationships based on recruiting. It wasn’t designed for that. And most companies are busy doing what they do, not building out great career sites + a candidate tracking tool + a sourcing tool + a job marketing/distribution tool. The front end (the career site) is just one component of what we’re doing, albeit a significant portion of it.
Thanks again for the comments…hope you’ll stick around to see where we go next!
I personally think that standout jobs did the right thing by launching it in California. Being a local startup is hard to get the visibility where the market is and the best way to do it is to present the product there. Everyone in Montreal knows about them anyway so yes Ben, you did the right thing.
Cheers,
Vas