Our founder, Christian Malpeli, was recently interviewed by Recruiter.com on the past, present and future of recruitment technology.
Christian Malpeli is the founder of JobBoard.io, a job board software that gives employers the ability to create their own branded job boards in 30 seconds flat. Sound too good to be true? Trust us: It isn’t.
To learn more about JobBoard.io’s striking approach to the recruiting tech industry, as well as Malpeli’s personal entrepreneurial journey, we connected with Malpeli for a Q&A session. What follows is a transcript of that session, minimally edited for style and clarity.
Recruiter.com: Let’s talk about your company, JobBoard.io. Can you give us a quick overview?:
Christian Malpeli: JobBoard.io is a white label job board solution. We provide everything a job board owner needs to operate a fully functional job board, including eCommerce, search, job alerts, and so on.
We operate on a software as a service (SaaS) model, meaning we completely manage the hosting, worry about all the technical headaches, and continually provide updates and enhancements to the product while our clients simply pay us a subscription fee.
RC: What drove you to start the company?
CM: I actually owned and operated a few niche job boards many years ago. I was unhappy with the provider I was using, and I began looking around. I felt there was a gap in the market for a provider that was built on modern systems, was mobile friendly, had a high emphasis on conversion rates, and was reasonably priced.
RC: What’s your background? How did that background help you as you set out on JobBoard.io?
CM: My background is software engineering. I’ve also held senior technical leadership roles at large media companies and have always had a love for quality product design. I think the combination of the engineering skills and product-mindedness is critical if you want to deliver value to your users at a fast pace.
RC: Are the any problems in the recruiting tech industry that you think about a lot? What do you think the future might hold for job boards?
CM: Leveraging the advances in big data tooling is one. There is so much computing power now available at a scale never seen before. How can that be leveraged on top of all the job, candidate, and applicant data owned by the job board to create better experiences for jobs seekers and employers?
Mobile is another area that continues to provide challenges. We built JobBoard.io from the ground up to be mobile responsive, and almost 50 percent of our client traffic is now mobile. How do we continue to improve, in particular, the candidate experience – i.e. making it easier to apply to a job from your phone? These are some of the things we are excited to tackle!
RC: When JobBoard.io was starting out, what were some of your initial successes? How did you know when you were gaining traction?
CM: Getting our first paying customers! In all seriousness, I think when we started seeing people migrate over from existing off-the-shelf vendors or homegrown solutions was when we really knew we were on to something. Watching as those folks then saw significant revenue uptick was icing on the cake!
RC: Where do you see JobBoard.io going? What’s the big picture plan for your software and company?
CM: We feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of where we want to take the platform. There are a ton of enhancements we have planned. Some are improvements on classic job board capabilities, while others will be breaking some new ground.
We are also beginning to open the platform up via our API – so we see a lot of integrations in the future. Regardless of where we go, we’ll continue to focus on driving value for our clients.
RC: Any suggestions for entrepreneurs who want to get into the recruiting tech business?
CM: Put your customers (and their customers) first. Spend as much time as possible speaking to your potential customers. Find out what their pain points are and try to solve those – the money will follow.
I’m a huge believer in using the MVP (minimum viable product) method to find product/market fit. Validate your idea/concept with as many target customers as possible before writing code. Can you get them to commit to paying for your product if you deliver it?