Breaking Down Start-Ups and the World of Recruiting

It seems that 2011 will see a lot of start-ups in the recruiting field pop-up, attacking each step of of the recruiting eco-system. I think a lot of start-ups are trying to solve each step of a traditionally inefficient process, while duplicating what happens offline anyway (referrals, info gathering, etc...)

I did a quick scan of Quora.com (check it out if you have not yet), and came across this question: What are the most interesting startups in the recruiting and hiring space?

From the companies mentioned there, I would break the market down like this:

Problem Trying to Solve: Company

Information: Glassdoor

Networking: Brazencareerist

Matching: Roundpeg

Screening: CBL Exam =-)

Interviewing: Sayhired

Referrals: MatchFWD

Employer branding: KODA.us

Hiring/applicant tracking: Jobvite

It's cool to see an inefficient market be attacked on so many levels - as the distribution of job postings was disaggregated from the newspaper business by Monster, Hotjobs and Careerbuilder (and 100's of other awesome niche websites) in the past - the actual communication of a job's listing and someone indicating interest in that job is basically saturated. These new firms are a kind of job searching 2.0.

As new channels open up (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) there is definite "data exhaust" problem - a job opportunity must be curated, managed and optimized to get the best solution (on both sides). In my opinion there is a challenge here: start-ups that depend on volume of candidates (and postings) to serve corporations must grow in a way that controls for quality with volume- or risk being muddled by players on both sides.