Evan Sohn became CEO of Recruiter.com at the most challenging of times: in June 2020, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies were adjusting to a whole new world.
Listen to the complete interview of Evan Sohn with Adam Torres of Mission Matters Business Podcast.
What mission matters to you?
In stepping into the top role at Recruiter.com, Sohn says he wanted to make a difference in the wake of the pandemic. “‘How can I help the economy get back up and running?’ That was my impetus,” he explains. “Who better than Recruiter.com to help millions of people get back to work, (to help) companies rehire? That's what excites me.”
How did you get started?
In 1989, Sohn started his first company—a mobile computing brand—at the young age of 21. It grew over the next decade and was eventually acquired by Dun and Bradstreet. Next, he joined another venture-backed company, which grew to the point of acquisition by MessageLabs and, later, Symantec. He returned to his roots in mobile computing and stayed for a few years, then joined a Silicon Valley company which had been acquired by Godaddy.
"In the fall of 2018, I was approached by one of the investors of Recruiter.com to get involved,” he explains. “I first came on as chairman of the board in March of 2019, and later as CEO in June of 2020, at the height of the pandemic."
The current job landscape
On the topic of the changing world of work, Sohn says he believes we’ve entered the era of the job hopper economy, where perceptions of loyalty, commitment, and “rising through the ranks” are changing rapidly. While the notion of job hopping used to have something of a negative connotation, Sohn says it’s simply a reality for many people today. He points to an August 2021 survey which indicated 4.3 million people had left their most recent jobs and reported 60% of millennials saying leaving a job within the first year isn’t out of the question.
Given the recent rise in work-from-anywhere options, Sohn says, the idea of a “geographically undesirable job” is now a thing of the past. Companies are no longer bound to hire locally, and likewise, job seekers can search well outside of the cities where they live. Fully remote work enables companies to hire people from anywhere around the globe, which Sohn notes is a tremendous shift from traditional employment practices of yesteryear.
With a host of shifting variables in employment, from the lowering of geographic barriers to the balance (or imbalance) of supply and demand in the workforce, Sohn says there’s less of a stigma around quitting a job than there used to be. And for hiring companies, today’s fast-moving jobseekers may be considering multiple offers at a time, meaning that for every 50 new job offers a company makes, it may need up to 100 more candidates in the pipeline for backup, should those offers be refused in favor of other opportunities.
Recruiter.com’s competitive edge
To help employers keep up with the changing tide, Sohn says, Recruiter.com helps companies hire talent faster—and better—by augmenting talent acquisition teams with on-demand recruiters. From small startups to large, sophisticated Fortune 100 companies, if a brand needs recruiters with specific amounts or types of experience, Recruiter.com can provide them immediately.
"We have our own AI software that helps us build a candidate pipeline,” Sohn explains. “The client is either looking for candidates, more recruiters, or both, and we provide both.” He says that approach has been in action for about a year and a half, and it’s working.
"We give recruiters access to our AI source sourcing tools to make sure they're doing great jobs,” Sohn continues. “I think there's a really good value proposition: if you go to jobs.recruiter.com, there are over 1,000 companies… looking for recruiters. We're the source of jobs and recruiters for them. We add value on both sides of the equation."
Tips for employers
"For recruiters, our clients include some of the best names,” Sohn says. “These are clients that an independent recruiter can work for, hire them, we've taken all the pain out of it, we take only a small percentage of the actual fee that's going to provide just great service."
Recruiter.com offers software subscriptions for around $2,500 per job per month, or $5,000 a month for a fractional recruiter to help handle scheduling. The fastest way to hire talent is to find the right talent acquisition professional at the right time with the tools to build a candidate pipeline quickly, and then pay that talent acquisition professional for their time, Sohn says.
"For companies where core competence is not hiring, why not allow a third party to outsource your tradition, and bring on people that actually know what they're doing on an on-demand basis?” he asks.
The road ahead
Sohn says companies of all sizes need to rethink the way they address their most precious asset: their people. Ideally, they’ll increase their evergreen roles, increase the number of pipelines they keep open, and maintain a continuous flow of candidates to fill roles as needed and ensure continuous growth.
“We are excited to be part of that experience,” he enthuses. “It’s a giant industry; we've been growing (financially) 25% quarter over quarter. We're going to continue to grow and do great stuff. We want to continue to be that asset and partner.”
To learn more, visit recruiter.com.
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