Standoutjobs relaunches with full pricing (7)
Standoutjobs which first launched at DEMO last year has announced last week they have launched “version two” of their product.
They stay true to the original vision, which is to provide companies a full array of tools highlighting the company’s best traits, making thus the company more appealing to prospective candidates. Job seekers will see in a single page videos, blog posts, pictures, and of course job listings. They do however bring in new features such as chatting, full design customization of pages and integration with other HR products. Apart from product features, one of the most notable difference though is pricing. Previously, the product was named RECEPTION and was available for free for any company. Now, they’ve streamlined it (the reception name has been dropped) and instead there’s a 45-day free trial, plus a “CALL US” pricing. Overall, I also noticed an emphasis on sales on the standoutjobs website, whereas it was all about the “product” previously.
This comes amidst the call for web startups to get revenues and get profitable as soon as possible; if it didn’t triggered the decision, it looks certainly it hastened the move. Standoutjobs has been getting clients, partners and users for more than a year and they had to introduce pricing at one point, in one way or another.
One unanswered question now is wether the new introductory pricing will frighten prospective customers or even existing customers, who registered since it was free. It’s hard to make people pay for something that was free previously, since they have to change their mental model of the product. This is a key question; as you know, the job market is tightening, with more companies laying off staff and more job seekers, there won’t be a huge number of successful HR software products in the market.
Congrats to the team, and good luck!
The fact that the job market is tightening means companies will be getting a lot more bad resumes to filter through. The best candidates will still be hard to find and recruit.
Those HR solutions providing good filtering of resumes and tools to pursue top-tier candidate will do well. Although the pricing seems high to me too, it is still a fraction of what a head hunter will cost you for a single hire per year.
Rather than pricing or job market conditions what I would look at is the speed at which their strategic partnerships pay off. Ben’s written about why he thinks it’s the correct strategy. Hopefully they start making lots of sales in the near future and avoid this current cash crunch.
Standoutjobs is taking a bold move and I commend them. They have a solid product and there is no shame is asking a reasonable price. For the price of a macbook pro a company can find the matching developer ;-).
Soon it will be time for SOJ to cut back on engineering and focus on sales, which is a nice milestone to reach for any struggling startup.
I haven’t seen pricing on the standoutjobs website??? do you have inside info that they don’t disclose publicly??
(I also agree on the partnerships and the channels btw)
peterba, i was also about to write that line “cut back on engineering and focus on sales” but I saw they hired a new Rails coder (Martin M.)
Daniel – the pricing paid to the recruiter is for a placement for a perfectly matched (Crème de la Crème) candidate with guarantee to replace if he or she does not work out. We work only on results, meaning that we are there from the beginning to the end – and if it does not work out, you pay us $0.
In any case, I wish Standoutjobs all the success and prosperity – it would be great for filling entry-level positions in the entertainment / media industry.
Pricing is a tricky game. There’s no exact science for it; I think that’s one of the reasons so many startups leave their offerings for free – they can’t figure out what to charge (but that’s a debate for another time.)
We based our pricing on a few things including customers, research, competitive pricing, partnership discussions, etc.
For some our pricing seems expensive, for others it seems very inexpensive. Depends on who you talk to. Startups will probably find it expensive – but then again startups find *everything* expensive. And in as much as we’ve had a lot of success with startups, they’re not our target market. Startups make a bad target market; they don’t like to pay for *anything*.
The economy affects everyone, including us. It affects HR too – but even as we see more and more layoffs, we see a lot of those companies still hiring. The left hand giveth, the right hand taketh away (or something like that). I would argue that in some cases, layoffs now are convenient for removing your worst performers, but you may still be hiring in other key areas of your business.
And companies need to prepare for better times – and have their recruitment strategies in place. We offer long-term value, whereas other recruitment options are much more transactional in nature.
Finally, I don’t think we replace recruiters. Although some companies may find they can rely less on recruiters, which is attractive due to the cost, for certain positions. But in general there are too many variables in the HR / recruitment process to say flat out that we replace one thing or another in its entirety.
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