SalesProfile.com: A New Sales Job Board Startup in D.C.

As some of my readers know, my last corporate job was as VP of Sales Operations at Monster.com, so I know quite a bit about the online recruitment market, the job board competition and the current trends.

So, when I heard about a feisty start-up, called SalesProfile.com, trying to enter the job  board market in the midst of our current economic conditions, I was curious to find out more. And, since they are serving my blog audience- Sales Professionals – I thought this would be the perfect topic for a blog post.

Jason Dumois

I got a chance to interview (grill!) the CEO of Sales Profile, Jason Dumois, to find out more about his new business.

1) Jason, what is SalesProfile.com in a few sentences?

It is an innovative niche job website for sales professionals driven by web 2.0 technologies. It is largely driven by a multimedia profile-based framework. Job seekers can effectively showcase their true talents online by creating a short 30-second “elevator pitch” video (audio coming soon).

2) What is uniquely “salesy” about your site versus a Monster or Careerbuilder? Prior to this interview, I went to both those sites and they had many thousand sales jobs posted and they have the majority of the job board market share.

SalesProfile is a “niche” site focused on connecting sales professionals. In addition to finding just sales job openings on our site, we offer sales related content such as helpful resources, articles and have plans to include much more value-added sales specific content. We believe it is important to add quality content and with my strong background in the eLearning industry, we plan on adding a lot of free interactive and engaging web-based sales training lessons down the road.  (FYI, Cheezhead, which is one of the most popular blogs in the online recruitment space recently published a blog titled “Ten reasons why niche sites will survive“.)

3) There are some people who feel that the job board concept is evolving with the popularity of social networking and sites like LinkedIn. Why did you decide to start a job board now?

I love professional sales and believe it truly drives the American economic engine. The current state of our economy motivated me to enter the market now, especially as a multimedia web 2.0 driven niche site. We are currently working on leveraging LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter as part of our web 2.0 strategy.

4) What is your plan (sales/marketing) to entice Hiring Managers and Recruiters to come to the website? What is your prediction for the future?

Being a web 2.0 driven niche site is a huge selling point. Why just review a traditional resume when you can also review a “short” 30-second video or audio clip of the candidate? The key here is short and sweet. Employers and recruiters don’t have a lot of time to review long videos, which is why we automatically cut off the clips at 30 seconds max. As for the future, we are looking at giving employers the option to list a few specific interview questions on their job postings where candidates can answer via audio or video when applying for a job. Overall, we believe multimedia is the future for online recruiting and we’re ready to help lead the way.

We also plan on marketing our site at university career fairs across the nation as we believe the college demographic is important because many business majors work in sales right after college, plus universities are starting to offer valuable sales classes and even sales majors. We recently sponsored a career fair event at a large university and had a huge success! Some professors even expressed interest in having their students create their sales profile for a class project or extra credit.

5) What is your value proposition versus SalesJobs.com, which has been around since 1997? I.E. If I were either a Job Seeker or a Hiring Manager…. Why come to your site instead of SalesJobs?

SalesJobs is one of our “worthy competitors” and they do a good job. However, we are positioning our site as a web 2.0 driven niche site with multimedia based profiles instead of just traditional resumes. We’re also working on partnering with a large employment assessment provider that offers pre-employment assessments and are considering integrating it within our system. For example, a lot of employers get a swarm of resumes from many candidates that aren’t a good match, so this system will help filter in the best quality matches for the job position.

6) What are the costs associated with Sales Profile- for a Job Seeker. For a Hiring Manager/Recruiter?

Since we just launched less than 3 months ago, we are primarily a free site. Once our pre-employment assessment system is in place, employers will pay to see the assessment results of the job applicants. Candidates can also pay to see a “basic” results report after they complete the assessment. Once we have tens and thousands of job postings and have built up a solid reputation, we will go from free to pay. We plan on only charging employers to post jobs and are considering leaving the profile search free. We do not plan on charging the job seeker.

7) As you mentioned earlier, you will be including videos as part of your job seeker profile…I have read mixed reviews about video. Specifically, that hiring managers or recruiters may use video to screen people out versus hire them. Why do you feel it’s the right thing for your website?

Video is the future. It truly gives the job seeker an opportunity to showcase their talents, which we believe is even more important for a sales role. The video is just one piece of the puzzle and is not a major deciding factor whether or not to interview or hire someone. Again, we believe it is an important fit for our site because salespeople work directly with people and give sales pitches and presentations. Why not sell yourself to your future employer in 30-seconds or less?

What else should we know about Sales Profile?

Our goal is to always conduct business with integrity and we strive to be “trusted advisors” to our clients and truly want to help businesses and job seekers succeed. We also believe in listening to our clients and love feedback/suggestions. Feel free to drop us a line: info@salesprofile.com

There are a lot of enhancements coming, so stay tuned.

Note: The Sales Operations Blog does not work with or endorse SalesProfile.com. This is simply information provided for the Sales Operations Blog readers.