After the whirl­wind of the HR Tech Expo Hall and last week’s flood of indus­try news, the Job Board Doc­tor team thought it’d be a good time for a “back to basics” post—valuable not just for aspir­ing and up-and-com­ing job board oper­a­tors but also for the job board SaaS ven­dors and crit­i­cal part­ners (and their sales teams) who pow­er our job board solu­tions.

In my first post as the New Job Board Doc­tor, I promised war sto­ries as I grew the world’s largest job board for the incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed com­mu­ni­ty of job seek­ers with dis­abil­i­ties.

Well today, we jump in head­first to the most har­row­ing bat­tle of all – Choos­ing the right job board SaaS part­ner and ven­dor.

Build­ing a niche board for a com­mu­ni­ty that expe­ri­ences dra­mat­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion and neglect in every com­mu­ni­ty and con­ver­sa­tion pro­vides a set of obsta­cles which made our jour­ney even more chal­leng­ing. How­ev­er, a lot of the mis­takes I made in choos­ing a job board ven­dor are not unique to work­ing with an under­served com­mu­ni­ty – albeit they may have been enhanced by that fact.

Our Why

I’m a huge fan of Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why.” It guid­ed the cre­ation of Dis­abil­i­ty Solu­tions. So, when we start­ed dis­cussing adding a job board (which we call a career cen­ter) to our solu­tion, it had to align with our “why.” Why do we exist? To change minds and to change lives by remov­ing bar­ri­ers to employ­ment for 25% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion and 1 bil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly.

Once we con­firmed a job board offer­ing fit our WHY and HOW, we had to fig­ure out WHAT it would look like for our busi­ness and com­mu­ni­ty.

For us, the build vs. buy deci­sion was­n’t even a question—buying was the only option.

Although I made numer­ous mis­takes, I’ve nar­rowed it down to three main fore­head smack­ing mis­steps for now, which we can explore in detail in future posts (or over cock­tails).

Mis­take #1: Under­es­ti­mat­ing Our Needs

Here’s what we iden­ti­fied as our needs when start­ing our ven­dor search:

– An afford­able plat­form that could scale with us.

– Bet­ter track­ing of job seek­er behav­ior as they applied through our client com­pa­nies’ ATS to dri­ve our val­ue propo­si­tion

– A means in which to cre­ate “foun­da­tion­al rev­enue” (don’t ask where the hell I came up with that term) with a solu­tion employ­ers were already famil­iar with as we fought a two-front bat­tle to sell both a com­mu­ni­ty’s val­ue and a solu­tion.

– A plat­form that could offer mul­ti­ple mon­e­ti­za­tion options, includ­ing pro­gram­mat­ic adver­tis­ing.

– A solu­tion acces­si­ble to users with var­i­ous dis­abil­i­ties.

These were the right needs, but the real­i­ty of how they would be achieved was much more com­plex than expect­ed.

Mis­take #2: Falling for a Sales Pitch With­out Prop­er Due Dili­gence

Then came the snake oil sales­men (you know who you are). Don’t @ me, I know not all sales­peo­ple are bad—after all, I mar­ried the best one the gods ever cre­at­ed. But hand to god, I dealt with some shady ones.

Here’s where you all roll your eyes at me: Julie, you did­n’t do your due dili­gence. You can’t blame a sales­per­son for sell­ing you some­thing dif­fer­ent than what you need­ed.

Fair enough, I was a shady sales­per­son­’s dream. I was inex­pe­ri­enced and naïve. I asked the right ques­tions and trust­ed all the answers.

What did I fall for?

– High­ly cus­tomized prod­uct demos – If you have the bud­get for cus­tomiza­tion, great! We did­n’t, and most peo­ple I talk to don’t either. That’s OK. Have the sales­per­son show you the bare-bones site and make a spe­cif­ic list of must-haves and nice-to-haves.

– Job lim­its – Most, if not all, job board SaaS mod­els lim­it the num­ber of jobs based on a tiered fee mod­el. That makes sense. At first, 100k jobs seemed like SO many jobs. But depend­ing on your niche and mon­e­ti­za­tion strat­e­gy, it might not be. For us, it cer­tain­ly was­n’t, quick­ly. I under­es­ti­mat­ed the vol­ume of jobs we need­ed to grow a sol­id foot­print and mon­e­tize with per­for­mance-based adver­tis­ing. This mis­take delayed our suc­cess by three years.

– Rev­enue share mod­els – This is like­ly unique to Dis­abil­i­ty Solu­tions, but I share it because it impact­ed our buy­ing deci­sion. Of the two ven­dors who promised easy mon­ey through rev­enue shar­ing, nei­ther ever sold a sin­gle post for us. They did­n’t under­stand our com­mu­ni­ty and thus could­n’t com­mu­ni­cate our val­ue propo­si­tion to per­spec­tive buy­ers. Make sure you get the esti­mates of rev­enue poten­tial based on your niche or indus­try.

Mis­take #3: Com­mit­ting to Long-Term Con­tracts With­out a Tri­al Peri­od

My bad deci­sions caused a three-year delay in launch­ing a mean­ing­ful (and prof­itable) job board. Why? I got locked into not one, but two long-term con­tracts with ven­dors I real­ized with­in weeks could­n’t deliv­er on their promis­es.

After some tears, I called the OG Job Board Doc­tor (thanks, Jeff) and said, “I don’t know what I don’t know, and this isn’t work­ing.” That’s when we began a six month tri­al (paid month to month) with the ven­dor and part­ner that final­ly met our needs, offered the cus­tomiza­tion we need­ed, and had pric­ing that worked for us.

Their long-game approach paid off, we start­ed by spend­ing $800 a month for 100k jobs and grew to 3 mil­lion jobs and $50k annu­al­ly in our ven­dor’s (and friends) pock­et. Fast for­ward, start­ing our fourth year with the right ven­dor and we have had YoY sales increase of 85% and a sub­scrip­tion reten­tion rate of over 80%.

Morale of the Sto­ry: Look for a ven­dor who wants to win with you—not just for you to sign on the dot­ted line.

So, my friends, we came out bet­ter for the bat­tle – a lit­tle less naïve and a lit­tle bruised. Today, we cel­e­brate get­ting near­ly 10,000 peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties to work with a solu­tion (and a job board part­ner) that proves our val­ue as a tal­ent pool and a prof­itable solu­tion.

I am not sure if that team under­stands how many minds and lives they have changed, but if they are read­ing today. You have and it means more than you will ever know.

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