WANTED: Those happy with jobs
By Stephen Pounds
Thursday, May 24, 2007
WEST PALM BEACH — The best employee candidates already have jobs.
That's the philosophy behind Jason Gorham's company, CareerMetaSearch.com, a Web-based firm in West Palm Beach that helps other companies snare the best prospects.
Gorham, 36, started CareerMetaSearch in 2003 after working in the job-recruiting business for 11 years. He had been trying to tap the large job-posting Web sites such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com but found them frustrating.
"With mass marketing, you get mass results," he said. "I was getting hundreds of unqualified candidates. It was making my job harder."
When he launched his job-listing Web site in 2004, he offered it only to employers. Four months later, he realized that by using pay-per-click job advertising, he would need more listings to get more eyeballs looking at the site. So, he added recruiting-firm postings.
"We knew we didn't have the money that Monster had. We needed to add value to the site to get the best job-seekers," Gorham said.
Gorham and partner Robert Di Marco hit upon the idea of using search-engine optimization to find the best candidates: the ones who have jobs and aren't looking.
"It's all about the key words," Di Marco said.
CareerMetaSearch pushes job postings to the top of a Google list of search results based on the likely words that unknowing candidates might use in searching the Web for work or pleasure.
For example, when Home Depot was struggling last year to find workers in the Washington, D.C., area, Gorham used not only "Home Depot" and "D.C." as possible search terms but also "Lowe's," Home Depot's big rival, among the search words. That helped job postings valut to the top of Web site lists Googled by prospective job candidates.
If they're interested and click on the job posting, they're actually viewing it on Gorham's Web site.
"Everything is based on the passive candidate," Di Marco said. "They're stable. They're doing well in their job. They already have the skill sets in place."
The company's customer base is made up of companies from the high-tech, finance and health-care industries. In addition to Home Depot, CareerMetaSearch counts Microsoft, Sunbelt Rentals, Bank of America, Freescale Semiconductors, Commerce Bank and the Boca Raton-based software firm Eclipsys as customers.
CareerMetaSearch has 10 employees and posted sales of $125,000 in 2006. The privately held company projects $400,000 in sales this year, plowing profit back into the Web site. It charges an average $700 for a job posting, higher than Monster's $400. But because it frames the search narrowly, it lures better candidates to the site, Gorham said.
Andy Pittaluga, co-owner of job-recruiter Empower Resources LLC in Boca Raton, recently tapped CareerMetaSearch to fill two software-engineering positions.
"We used their service to reach a candidate pool we were have troubling reaching: Java developers," he said, referring to the programming language. "They pushed the posting out where these guys are visiting, say they're searching for a book on Java development."
Jane Teague, executive director of the Enterprise Development Corp. of South Florida, worked with Gorham on his business plan when the company first started in the technology business incubator at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Teague likes the company's chances because of customers it's already attracted.
"It's the kind of company that could easily be acquired down the road by somebody who buys up technology ... and doesn't want to develop the technology themselves," she said.