Interview with JobCoin CEO Keith Schacht

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Some time ago Diana Tan??published a post??about JobCoin – a great job board tool for bloggers to get additional revenue by posting jobs at their blogs. Today I am continuing our series of interviews with CEOs of Web 2.0 startups with an interview with JobCoin CEO Keith Schacht.

So first of all will you please introduce yourself and describe for us your previous experience and how you have come up with the idea of JobCoin.

Sure, my name is Keith Schacht. I’m the CEO of JobCoin, a start-up based in Chicago that helps communities better connect with one another by providing them a niche job board to post and browse job opportunities.

On my background, over the past 10 years I have started and run a few different companies.?? The idea for JobCoin came out of my own difficulties trying to hire people.?? When I have tried to hire, I found there are great ways to reach millions of random strangers with my job opportunities, but rarely has this helped much.?? More often than not, there is a great candidate who is a friend of a friend, or another member of an association I’m a part of. It’s suprising that there is not a better way to reach out to your more immediate circle of aquaintances, just a couple of degrees away from yourself.

The idea of providing communities with a simple job board platform that the participants could use, came from watching what has worked already for trade associations and blogs.?? We haven’t reinvented the idea of job boards, we’re just making it easy for community leaders to start one and to manage it.

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JobCoin was only launched about a month ago. How many users do you already have? Can you name some well-known blogs that already use JobCoin?

I don’t disclose specific numbers, but sure, I can give a few examples.
Most of the blogs and websites are well known within the particular communities they serve, but not necessarily outside them. For example, among Ruby on Rails computer programmers, the Pragmatic Studio is a well known and respected organization. They provide a job board for Ruby on Rails job opportunities that is powered by JobCoin.?? And within Chicago, the Illinois Technology Association (ITA) supports all the major technology companies in town. The job board they provide for the community is powered by JobCoin.?? There are numerous other examples like these, which are not well known outside of their community, but provide great value to the communities they serve.

Are you ever asked about why would bloggers want to use JobCoin when they can invite employers directly, post their vacancies and not pay any commission to you? What’s so special about JobCoin for them to lose those 30%?

Our customers use JobCoin because we make it easy to start and manage a job board. We allow them to focus on building and supporting their community, while we focus on creating a simple software that offers everything they need.

Is JobCoin your only job now?

Yes, I’m devoting all of my time (and then some!) to JobCoin.

What do you think, which job boards will dominate online employment market in future: giants like Craigslist or Monster or niche boards you propose your users to create?

I think there is clearly room for both.?? The number I’ve heard is that there are approximately 5,000 total job boards out there. Even with all these job boards, most people get jobs through referrals. If there is one medium that dominates now, and into the future, it is human relationships.

And that’s about everything for now. I invite everyone who already uses JobCoin or is currently thinking about enhancing a blog with a job board to share your comments and opinions here.