Monster.com announced this morning it has acquired the San Francisco-based startup Jobr, which had been developing a job-finding app the company described as a Tinder for jobs, thanks to its use of swipe-based gestures. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Jobr had raised $2 million in seed funding in 2014. The app is not being shut down, but will rather be integrated with Monster’s platform further, though it already featured Monster.com job listings prior to this deal.
Jobr was not the only company with the idea to pursue a Tinder-like job hunting app. Others, including a direct competitor Switch, were focused on similar concepts.
The idea with Jobr was to make the often painful process of job hunting easier and quicker. Users would connect their LinkedIn account to the app to create a profile, then swipe through jobs as you would swipe through prospective dates on Tinder. (LinkedIn later locked down its API, and Jobr now offers Facebook login and resume uploads from cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox and others.)
Each position had a profile page that provided information about the company, the job requirements, your matching skills, and it would who you knew there, from your contacts.
Jobr also offered tools for recruiters that let them manage and interact with applicants.
At the time of the deal, Jobr claims it had “millions” of job seekers and thousands of recruiters on its platform. It says job seekers swiped on jobs more than 100 million times.
The iOS app was well-ranked in its category as currently the #15 Business app (free) in the App Store. Monster’s own app, meanwhile, was #33. The other job-finding apps that are higher in ranking are Indeed (#1), LinkedIn Jobs (#5), Glassdoor (#10), and Snagajob (#11). Grabbing Jobr gets Monster a better and more visible position in the App Store, which is critical in today’s mobile-centric world.
Going forward, Monster will immediately begin integrating its own global talent platform with Jobr, integrating features like single-sign on and developing Monster membership workflows, it says. It’s also aiming to extend the Jobr app to other markets in early 2017. Currently, Monster.com’s job search features over 5 million jobs, aggregated from multiple sources, and these will continue to be available through Jobr.
In addition, Monster says its interest in Jobr goes beyond just the one app. It wants to use the team’s resources to build more mobile solutions in the future, as well. This will include the development of mobile components for Monster’s own recruiting platform.
According to Monster President and COO Mark Stoever, the deal is about both tech and talent.
“The Jobr app has been tremendously successful and we’re thrilled to add it to our talent platform while integrating key features into the Jobr app,” he says. “The Jobr team is equally as capable and innovative and we will be unleashing their talent on opportunities to develop mobile solutions across the Monster platform, to improve things like the job discovery and application process, candidate search and outreach -for recruiters – and the software solutions we provide to manage the recruiting process.”
The entire Jobr team will join Monster, but will remain based in San Francisco.
Monster, over the years, has acquired companies as the need arose, having previously bought up TalentBin and Gozaik to develop its recruiting and job advertising solutions. Similarly, Stoever says that buying Jobr was about being able to move more quickly, especially in key areas such as social and mobile.
“The Jobr team has done an exceptional job – their app quickly emerged as an industry leader and gained significant traction with key audiences we want to provide greater value to, such as with Millennials….we saw this acquisition as an opportunity to move even faster in the space,” he adds.
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