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NYC Startup JIBE Stumbled Into A Brilliant Mobile Business, And Now Walmart Is Paying Big Bucks To Use It
There really isn't a good way to apply to jobs on mobile devices.
There's an "Apply with LinkedIn" button, but that's best for individual listings inside the social network, not entire job boards hosted by large corporations.
JIBE, a New York City startup, is carving out a niche for itself as a mobile recruiting SaaS solution. Eight weeks ago, it signed on Walmart, which has 3,800 job openings and sees one-third of its job board traffic coming from mobile devices. But before JIBE, it had no way to help all of those people easily apply to its openings on the go.
"Most big companies have already built mobile apps and sites," says JIBE founder Joe Essenfeld. "But recruiting is a totally different function."
Now if you visit Walmart's site on a mobile device, it redirects you to JIBE. The experience is very mobile friendly, with large, enticing buttons and an easy signup process. Resumes can be uploaded via Google Docs, LinkedIn, email or Dropbox, and it uses GPS tracking to present users with nearby job opportunities. Even though the site is hosted by JIBE, it's completely branded by Walmart.
Walmart, Accenture and other big companies are willing to pay big bucks for Jibe's mobile and web recruiting SaaS solutions; most of the deals JIBE's sales people sign are six-figures. And for companies like Walmart, JIBE seems to be worth it.
JIBE is seeing strong mobile traffic and high conversion rates. Essenfeld says 250,000 people visit the mobile career sites it hosts every month. A few other big-name clients are in JIBE's pipeline; once they're up and running, Essenfeld expects monthly unique visitors to jump to 2,000,000.
Investors are excited about Jibe's mobile opportunity too. Last year, JIBE raised a $6 million Series A. The 14-person company is currently raising a Series B round of financing. "I have been really impressed with how Fortune 1000 companies are adopting their technology," Polaris Venture Partners' Peter Flint told us of JIBE.
The best part about Jibe's newfound mobile opportunity is that it was completely unplanned.
When JIBE first launched a few years ago, it was a web-based feature that helped job applicants create stronger connections with HR managers. It found mutual friends for people to send along with their resumes, and the feature worked well; JIBE was able to generate about $1 million in its first year.
But after speaking with clients, JIBE realized there was a bigger, mobile opportunity at hand.
"In our first product, we built technology that that added social connections to job applications for large companies," Essenfeld told Business Insider. "We used the foundation of that technology that interacts with large company's job applications to allow them to use the JIBE platform to accept job applications on smartphones and tablets.
"We built this product in 2009 without knowing it," Essenfeld added. "It was totally by accident."
Here are some screenshots from the Walmart's Jibe-hosted mobile career site:
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