Will Moss attended Hampton University in Virginia after not knowing what a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) was but graduated with a passion for creating community amongst the students and alumni of the 100+ HBCUs. As a software engineer, he was able to build one of the first online communities at a time when Monster and Careerbuilder dominated the job board world and added a job board feature after repeated requests from employers who wanted a better way to reach, engage, and ultimately hire members of the HBCU Connect community.
In this episode, you'll roll your eyes probably more than once at some of the jokes co-hosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter throw back-and-forth, but mostly you'll walk away better informed about how building a thriving community first and then adding a job board component later can pay massive dividends for both sides of the double-sided marketplace: the candidates and the employers.
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[00:00:09] Welcome to the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast. I'm Stephen Rothberg, the founder of College of Crudder Job Search Site. At College of Crudder we believe that every student and recent grad deserves a great career.
[00:00:23] And I'm Peter Zolman, founding principal of the aim group, the leading global business intelligence service for marketplaces and classified advertising companies. We consult with recruitment marketplaces companies and publish aim group recruitment intelligence and a free weekly digest. We also host the annual global recbos conference.
[00:00:44] This is the podcast for you to learn more about how to create, manage and work with general, niche and aggregator job boards and recruitment marketplaces.
[00:00:56] Hey Peter, it is great to be with you again today. Welcome to the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast. Could we have picked a longer title for that?
[00:01:05] Yeah, we could have but then they wouldn't have been able to fit it on that square box that they use as the cover art for the podcast. We just, you want to job boards I wanted recruitment marketplaces because there's a difference.
[00:01:20] And so we settled for the ridiculous title. Yeah, it's kind of like what they say when you get a committee designing an animal it becomes a camel right it's just a little bit of this and a little bit of that something like that.
[00:01:33] So it feels like it's been a week since we last got together which is very strange. It always when when when you and I get together it always seems like a much longer time for me than it does for you.
[00:01:50] And to me it goes like an instant it goes like an instant I'm so glad to be back right you. Oh, it's just a bunch of such pleasure.
[00:02:00] So hey what I hear through an unnamed source whose name has spelled exactly the same as yours that in group has an exciting announcement to deal doing something to do with with with my birth month April. Yeah, we are doing recbuzz in Berlin in April.
[00:02:21] We've done a couple of conferences in Berlin. It's a fascinating city to me. I love going to Berlin standing there looking at where their Berlin wall was.
[00:02:39] And realizing that it just fell not very long ago and I was having a conversation about a guy with a guy who grew up in Berlin divided. And how he could never go around a lake and once the wall fell.
[00:02:59] He swam across the lake and didn't get shot at. It was the lake was on the dividing line. So it's a wonderful city as you know, wreckbuzz is just a fabulous conference CEO's sea level executives from.
[00:03:18] Recruitment marketplaces and job boards from all around the world we already told will that if he's a real rock star on this podcast. We might have to invite him to speak there.
[00:03:31] But it's just well, you know, I don't need to pitch it because you've been known to say good things about it once or twice before.
[00:03:40] Yeah, absolutely anybody has any questions about what it's like to attend an in-aim group event and I don't you know work for aim group. I don't get paid for this or anything like that just like just a happy attendee.
[00:03:52] I was fortunate to go to the Barcelona one and then also the one in Amsterdam or in September of 2022. And both just phenomenal great vibe you don't feel like you're getting pitched to.
[00:04:09] There is definitely an opportunity to meet with vendors but it's it's much more of a collegial learning and the thing that I think really distinguishes your events from a lot of the other.
[00:04:20] And the other events from a lot of the other ones is just how truly global they are you're going to be sitting there and on one side of you is going to be somebody from Denmark.
[00:04:27] And on the other side of you, there's going to be somebody from Nigeria and their business models are going to be different and you're going to learn from them and they're going to learn from you just it's really fantastic.
[00:04:37] And we're not pitching but I will say super early bird registration last for another few weeks at least. And you can find out all about it at rec, pause conference, REC, BU, ZZ conference.com and I'll see you there in April, Mr. Rothberg.
[00:04:58] And if I'm lucky, maybe Mr. Moss too and that's your cue Steven to introduce will and we've been talking about behind is back in front of him so to say. He's got to be wondering, am I ever going to get to chime in here?
[00:05:13] So, wheels that he's the CEO of HBCU Connect for those of the listeners who don't know what that acronym is historically black colleges and universities in the US.
[00:05:25] And it is a longstanding, very important group of schools that have overcome adversity and educated millions and millions of some of the best contributors to society.
[00:05:42] And I'm going to let wheel kind of describe a little bit more about that but we'll want to tell the listeners like a little bit about you, little bit about will and a little bit about HBCU Connect.
[00:05:53] First of all, thank you all for having me appreciate the opportunity to be here. A little bit about myself. Of course, yes, I'm a CEO of HBCU Connect, the founder of the company, my background by trade on the software engineer.
[00:06:11] So, you know, the whole conversation about, you know, having HBCU Connect and HBCU Connect having a job board. You know, I broke most of the code for the job board because at the time that I want to decide and launch the job board with the site.
[00:06:31] There were not a lot of examples out there, you know, white label solutions or anything like that. So I had to kind of run my sleeves and get involved.
[00:06:39] I'm a software engineer by trade, but HBCU Connect was a passion project for me having gone to one of the HBCUs. I went to Hampton University in Virginia.
[00:06:49] Didn't know what HBCUs were, you know, before I went to school, but once I was there, you know, part of your, you know, indoctrination and you know, as a freshman. As you take the university, one on one class and they explained the history of the school.
[00:07:03] They explained, you know, Hampton University is an HBCU one of roughly 105 HBCUs out there. I say, oh, that's interesting. When the passion came because I was picked up as a scholarship recipient by AT&T Bell Labs as a part of their diversity recruitment strategy.
[00:07:24] And they paid for me to go to school starting halfway through my junior year in college. So that's where the idea came from for HBCU Connect was like, I came out and started working in a workboard. I wanted to give back.
[00:07:39] And so my way of giving back with creating the website. That seems like a fabulous approach. When I was in Louisiana, we always were very impressed with grambling, which of course had a goal.
[00:07:53] Of course had a great football team and the marching 100 band, which turned out to be about 400 people. But nevertheless it was stellar. More important though, HBCUs are often the only place people who need an education are able to get one.
[00:08:19] And afford it and get support they need came from a rough background or a difficult background, not everybody of course. But HBCUs are known for their remarkable support of the students at the schools they attend.
[00:08:37] I'm going to switch to the job board and recruitment side of the house for a minute. The D.I. is this incredibly important topic in the recruitment world these days, right up there with worker shortages layoffs and quiet quitting. Give us your view of D.I.
[00:08:58] And how you guys play a role in it. Sure, some of you on D.I. so first of all, just my background as a software engineer.
[00:09:09] I didn't come from the HR space or really the D.I. space except for the fact that I was a benefactor of it, right?
[00:09:18] So that created a passion, you know, that became a passion thing for me because of how I felt, you know, AT&T's program changed my life.
[00:09:27] But from what I experienced and, you know, and now being sort of a pioneer in the space, you know, we got, we kind of got involved at least in the online and job board.
[00:09:38] You know, domain. Got involved very early. So I think the thing is there's two ways, you know, you can look at it, right?
[00:09:48] There's D.I. from the perspective of, you know, the government being involved in saying certain industries need to consider diversity and they need to recruit from diverse populations and have a diverse workforce.
[00:10:04] But then more recently, there's smart companies and organizations that are hiring and they're realizing that the more diverse their workforce is. The more they are better able to serve their customers who are likely going to be diverse.
[00:10:24] So now, you know, the conversation around diversity, you know, equity and inclusion is more around it being a business strategy and a business imperative that, you know, the workforce and their employee base mimics their customer base. So that they can come up with solutions.
[00:10:45] That meet the needs of their customers, but then also that diversity of thought diversity of background. You know, helps to produce solutions and products that that give them a competitive advantage. Really back right after this break.
[00:11:07] Do you love news about LinkedIn indeed Google and just about every other recruitment tech company out there? Hell yeah, I'm Chad. I'm cheese.
[00:11:16] Where the Chad and G's podcast all the latest recruiting news and insights are on our show dripping in snark and attitude subscribe today wherever you listen to your podcasts we out. Welcome back to the inside job boards and recruitment market places podcast.
[00:11:41] I've heard customer after customer of ours at college recruiter talk about how just the same way you did will where it's not only sort of the right thing to do and years ago it was more about compliance for some of these organizations.
[00:11:58] But it makes business sense that they find that the more diverse their work forces, the more productive that workforce is and HPC you connect is is definitely an avenue that you can see.
[00:12:07] That they should be pursuing so if I can, I'd like to dig into a little bit of the past of of HPC you connect because I think the listeners who are running their own job boards are recruitment marketplaces will find it to be instructive and also interesting.
[00:12:28] When I look at the site.
[00:12:31] I think it's a traditional job board like a college recruiter you come and there's like you know keyword search in the home page and locations and you see a list of jobs and you click and you'll apply to them what I see is much more of a community.
[00:12:45] Site that happens to have that job board component is did it start out that way was that part of the plan was it just an accident how did you get there so as you can then start out initially as a social network we didn't even have a job board as a part of our platform.
[00:13:04] But you know interestingly and interesting enough you know like I said earlier I was a software engineer built out the website so I still have my day job 95 at AT&T and I started getting these interesting phone calls from some savvy recruiters that said hey.
[00:13:22] We noticed that you have this site you got all these students on the site you got all these graduates on the site.
[00:13:28] You know we go off to the universities and and you know we can only reach five of them and we know there's over 100 can we post our jobs on your website.
[00:13:37] Can we can we recruit can you collect resumes from your members and so originally it was one phone call then was you know a few weeks later there was another phone call and as the internet got more and more.
[00:13:52] Or you know the users of the internet got got more and more savvy about online recruitment the more I started to get these phone calls so until you know finally I took my Christmas break.
[00:14:02] And then I looked at the leaders in the space at the time which were like monster and career builder and I said you know what oh you're dating yourself.
[00:14:12] So we lost our job board in 2002 so I mean yeah we were definitely kind of like pioneers in the space and so to your point.
[00:14:27] We have a community so you can kind of think of us as sort of like a LinkedIn right where we have a community of.
[00:14:33] Users that come to our site for different reasons, but as a part of them staying connected to to us and to each other like through our site.
[00:14:43] We want to be an opportunity engine for them so whether that opportunity is an internship when they're in college right or a scholarship when they're in college or when they're getting ready to graduate and they need a job we want to have opportunities for them and then when they're out there in the workforce and they're thinking about changing their.
[00:15:01] You know career or looking for a better opportunity we want to be there for them to provide opportunities but the way we got into into the space was completely organic completely that's fantastic and.
[00:15:16] It's worth noting that we have we at the end group have often said if you're just a job board you're going to be done you have to be a community and do so much more.
[00:15:29] How do you build community you've got a great base of people who attended historically black colleges and universities. Do they come back year after year are there things for them that make them want to come in addition to the job board obviously there are.
[00:15:48] Tell us a little bit more about building community back in the early days it was easy right you could you could come you could create. You need content you could create unique functionality through the website that you know what what keep folks coming back so for example.
[00:16:06] The ability to post a picture and a profile was a new concept when we when we started our website so I always used to say hey you know when you're building community.
[00:16:18] Let the community be the content you know where whereas you know lots of sites come out and they say we've got to come up with content. And they're thinking about articles and content that people will be interested in but for us we've tried to let our community.
[00:16:35] You know this is a concept of user generated content right we let we tried to let our community. Be part of the content and create the content for so for example. Every time we we do a magazine twice a year for students and twice a year for alumni.
[00:16:52] And we ask for the members of our site to highlight themselves to be featured in the magazine and part of that is uploading their resume building out their profile you know putting it on their picture up.
[00:17:05] And basically you know highlighting or showing off their accomplishments to the community.
[00:17:12] So it's a matter of chance of the question I think it's been a matter of allowing our members to participate in you know that content development and generation of content and sharing their accomplishments with each other through our site.
[00:17:28] There are a lot of diversity job boards out there. How do companies work with HBCU connect is it a paper application is it a monthly is it a individual job postings what's your job board.
[00:17:46] Business model because those are evolving but what's the job board business model you use now. Sure great question so we started off with the basics right job postings resume database access and a company profile on our site.
[00:18:03] And all of the typical online recruitment activities then we kind of and there's there were sort of all of our then we kind of gradually got into.
[00:18:15] You know companies saying hey can we just do an annual package with you right where we have access to post all of our job don't you just hate it when that happens.
[00:18:25] We want to spend money with you for the long term don't bother us with this this small stuff just take a lot of our money all at once please. Those checks with all those zeroes it's so annoying.
[00:18:38] Yes, though we know we and I guess that we organically got into this and that's what happened we started getting these requests for.
[00:18:45] And we're talking about how we can do you know pack and we started looking around at the last game and a lot of this was new you know.
[00:18:51] There were a couple of really big job boards out there but there weren't that many small job boards out there like like ourselves as a niche job board.
[00:18:59] But so we got into you know doing some packages and you know my advice to the other job board owners out there is that you let your customers.
[00:19:11] You know you can support with them and they'll give you they'll ask you for what they need so you know we had a really big partner of ours that was using all of our online recruitment. Um, activity and they got us in doing virtually events.
[00:19:25] You know they said hey this is a challenge we're having right. You're sending us diverse candidates and we want to make sure it's a priority but when they're channeled through you know the job postings were afraid they're going to get lost.
[00:19:39] You know you guys saw the problem and so we kind of said okay how can we make sure and they say we want you know your candidates to meet our hiring managers and our recruiters.
[00:19:47] And so we said we'll do just that and we'll just we'll instead of funneling them into a job post and we'll funnel them into a. Support them into a new.
[00:19:57] And we've just started looking at the post, they're not even part of the frustration list for an event and we started doing virtually events and that's been like a huge huge Um revenue stream for us and business opportunity.
[00:20:07] Uh beyond just the job postings and the resume database and that kind of thing so it's just an example of. Of listening to our clients and and coming up with solutions. That we think will help me to need or the challenges that they have. customers.
[00:20:23] Yeah, I think we have time for one more quick question well if you don't mind and at. And just sort of building off of the listening to customers, are you getting requests for programmatic feeds, cost per click or your customer still really happy with save
[00:20:44] a traditional duration based advertising? I think from a customer standpoint, they've been happy with the traditional, they lean on us in our recommendation. But then there's a lot of partners out there that we work with and organizations that have proposed that we do.
[00:21:08] There's a lot of agencies that have proposed like the cost per click or cost per application and that kind of thing. But for us in our model and because of our niche and the fact that we're not dealing with
[00:21:21] millions and millions of applicants, we have kind of kept our model a little bit flexible in more traditional around packages of pricing for access. Well, well thank you so much for joining us today. This was fun even though Peter was part of it.
[00:21:43] For listeners who want to learn more about you personally or HBCU Connect, how should they do that? Sure sir. So to learn a little bit more about HBCU Connect, feel free to jump on our website, which is hBCUconnect.com.
[00:21:58] And for me personally, probably the easiest thing will be to just link up with me on the LinkedIn wheel moth. Well thank you so much Peter and he's closing words. Just enjoy it immensely and I look forward to meeting you.
[00:22:14] Likewise, likewise, because we've met virtually now we got to do it in person. Likewise appreciate the opportunity. Thank you both for what you do. Awesome. Thank you. Inside job boards and recruitment marketplace is a co-production of Evergreen podcast, College Recruiter and the Ame Group.
[00:22:32] Please subscribe for free on your favorite app. Review it. Five stars are always nice. And recommended to a couple of people you know who want to learn more about job boards and recruitment marketplaces. Special thanks to our producer and engineer Ian Douglas.
[00:22:48] I'm your host, Peter's Olman of the Ame Group, the leading global consultancy in the field of marketplaces and classified advertising. Find out more about our reports on recruitment marketplaces, job boards and classifieds, including our new recruitment marketplace as annual at AmeRoop.com slash reports.
[00:23:09] I'm your host, Stephen Rothberg of Job Search Site College Recruiter. Each year we help more than 12 million candidates find great new jobs. Our customers are primarily Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, and other employers who hire at scale and advertise their jobs with us.
[00:23:28] You can reach me at StephenAtColage Recruiter.com. Hi, my name is Sara and I want to tell you about my podcast called, Can I offer you some feedback? I'm a business consultant and executive coach with over 20 years experience in change
[00:23:57] management, leadership development and naturally providing feedback to high performers. My podcast is for those of you who have a complicated relationship with feedback, whether giving, receiving, avoiding or seeking. Feedback is essential for our development. In each episode you'll hear from real people across industries with their ideas, perspectives
[00:24:16] and best practices on feedback. I'll also be sharing business fights with you. Simple explanations of organizational tools, management techniques, and leadership philosophies that will help you and your businesses thrive. You can listen to, can I offer you some feedback on your favorite podcast app or learn more at
[00:24:32] evergreenpodcasts.com.