The buyer for SimplyHired’s assets will be Recruit Holdings Co., the parent company of Indeed, I have learned through a trusted source. SimplyHired.com will most likely become backfill for Indeed’s listings adding a few more percentage points to their already large market share when it comes to source of hire.
The “chatter” among industry execs was already pointing to them as the buyer. And it make sense considering the following;
- Recruit is on a mission to be number one in HR. It actually says so right on their home page.
- Recruit is currently the most active buyer of HR tech, Staffing firms and other businesses in the space. Just look at their press releases.
- They don’t need the employees of SH. They’re all redundant which is why they will be losing their jobs. Although I imagine some workers such as developers at SH may be given job offers.
- Few others in the online recruiting space could’ve afforded to buy SH. Recruit has tons of cash and they are spending it.
SimplyHired’s sales were in the $20-$25 million dollar range according to a former sales exec I heard from. So I’m pegging the acquisition price to be in the $40-$50 million dollar range. That’s just a guesstimate. One industry insider I spoke with thinks its much less.
The decision to sell apparently came from the SH board. Sounds like the investors wanted their money back (after 10+ years of waiting) and couldn’t resist an offer from the biggest player in the industry. One wonders if other aggregators could be on Recruit’s radar.
I used to think SimplyHired would have been a great purchase for LinkedIn back in the day. It would have helped them counteract Indeed’s lead in the TA space. Both companies grew up in Silicon Valley and LI could have used SH to augment its listings and offer added value to its clients. Alas, that shipped has now sailed.
This reminds me of Monster buying HotJobs. And we saw how that turned out!
How so?
I disagree….I think Indeed is buying them for SEO in one of 2 ways: a. pull a competitor out of SEO results b. use competitors SEO to drive more organic traffic to Indeed.
I think that is the entire value. They have to have nearly 100% customer overlap. Indeed will shut down ALL job board buyers, most staffing buyers and continue to dominate the ecosystem.
Agreed – this is part of the SEO strategy
Perhaps other aggregators should start buying up every job board they can!
Monster did not buy Hotjobs. Yahoo bought Hotjobs. Monster bought onlinceareercenter (occ) at the time, the second largest job board (and ran it as an independent brand for a few years without anyone knowing monster purchased it). Monster also bought flipdog (one of the first job aggregators – they saw it as a threat)
Monster tried to buy HotJobs but the FTC blocked it (based on claims it would eliminate competition in the job board market and give too much pricing power to Monster). Before it went to court, or was settled, Yahoo stepped in to buy HotJobs. So I assume the analogy used here is regarding that.
Correct
Awesome investigative work Chris. Sounds like an interesting rollout, but my guess is that the VC’S needed to close out their funds. It will be interesting to hear the final sales price.
Thanks again.
How do you know this is true? You’ve listed no source for this information.
I have to protect my source. But its someone I trust.
All of this is great, but why are we not discussing the reality that the post & pray model is dead? As far as i’m aware, CareerBuilder is the only company actually watching trends and making acquisitions/changing business model to stay effective for their clients… Does everyone remember that they’re responsible for 1 in every 5 hires made in the U.S. ? #justsayin