How was IAEWS?

7 Comments

Comment by Ted Daywalt on November 27, 2007 at 11:05am

Chris,

I was in attendance and found the meeting to be very worthwhile. All the topics were on point, there was a great deal of networking and sharing of best practices, and the panel of the "founders" was interesting. I did note that Bill Warren and Jeff Taylor politely did not mention their law suit that followed the OCC/Monster merger. But it was good to hear what some of the major players at the start of this industry were thinking.

This was my third IAEWS Congress. I would STRONGLY recommend every job board join as it gives us a unified voice to the public, our customers and equally important in Congress and DOL.

Regards,

Ted Daywalt
President

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Comment by Niall Kelly - Dublin Ireland on November 27, 2007 at 11:09am

Ted,

What I would be most interested in is did they suggest a standard method of how to value a job board. what is it buyers look at most, (type of clients/sales team, market share) and is the simple rule of thumb 3 times turnover or is it higher in the USA than europe??.

Comment by Art Koff on November 27, 2007 at 11:19am

Chris,

The session was not "selling your job board" but rather information on valuing your job board. (exit strategies, etc) It was an interesting session but probably not worth the $595 cost. Those that attended will have to wait to see what the final research report includes to see the true value. The preliminary report, I felt, was not worth much.

Jeff Taylor was there for part of the time and had, as usual, some interesting comments including that Eons was for sale.

I was particularly interested in trying to get information on the value of my site RetiredBrains.com, but did not come away with any better idea of value than I had prior to the session.

I'd be interested to hear if others who attended feel differently.

Art Koff
Founder/CEO RetiredBrains.com

artkoff@rcn.com
312 787-6611

Comment by jobboardguy on November 27, 2007 at 11:46am

NationJob was again a sponsor at the conference. I brought my "trusty" Flip Video Camera and taped the job board founders session with the intention of posting it online. The good news is that it came out fine on the camera-the bad news is that it will not download (or upload) properly.
The session itself was very good (IMHO).
The participants reminisced about the olden/golden days and shared many a great story.
For those of us that have been in the industry for awhile, it was very entertaining hearing the stories of OCC, CareerPath, HeadHunter.net, Career Mosaic, etc. and all the shenanigans that happened behind the scenes.
The SuperBowl scenario was priceless.
The session on buying/selling of job boards was a little disapointing (again, IMHO). The speaker was not exactly familiar with our industry. I also think it was more focused on selling than buying (even though I know they go hand in hand).
All in all, the conference (including the Kennedy2007 Expo) was a huge success for us.
Peter Weddle is a great facilitator and I am looking forward to future events.
I will continue to try and get the video uploaded and will post to this site when (and if?) this happens.

Comment by Jason Whitman on November 27, 2007 at 10:35pm

Chris:

I was there and I thought it was a great event, with a much better turnout than the San Francisco meeting. It's always great for me to get the job boards' perspective on what's happening in the industry.

Brian Jensen from McGraw-Hill provided some great feedback and insight from the client side, and the "founders" panel was quite entertaining, especially the competitive banter between Jeff Taylor and Richard Johnson.

Among many other things, Peter also announced that I am now heading up the IAEWS tracking taskforce, which is "tasked" with developing a candidate source tracking standard. I received a lot of great feedback from the membership at the congress - if anyone is interested in connecting on this topic, please just let me know. Thanks,

Jason

Jason Whitman
Director of Client Services
Indeed - one search. all jobs.
jason@indeed.com
203-564-2420
www.indeed.com

Comment by Dave Opton on November 28, 2007 at 9:37am

Chris,

I also attended the meeting although I did not stay for the valuation session so can't comment on that. I did think that Pete, as usual, did an outstanding job in creating an agenda of interest. I too enjoyed the "founders" panel, but felt the round-robin sessions to be both interesting and well facilitated.

I also enjoyed meeting a number of folks whose names I knew but had not had the chance to meet face to face before.

Comment by Brent Skinner on December 14, 2007 at 5:09pm

As research director for the Recruiting Group at Kennedy Information, I authored the bulk of "M&A Dynamics for Employment Web Sites," the report that people in this comment string are talking about.

We're developing the report in collaboration with the IAEWS. Attendees at last month's IAEWS meeting previewed the document's draft version. We're working on developing and publishing the final version of this report -- the goal is in January.

To our knowledge, nobody has produced a research report such as this one to look specifically at your industry. Yes, the report in its draft form is largely bereft of the kind of data that people want to see (e.g., "actuals," etc.). This is largely because, as we compiled it, we came to the realization that this type of information for your industry is indeed in scarcity and hard to come by; in fact, before asking our own in-house M&A expert to join us in Orlando to discuss M&A activity in an adjacent industry, we reached out to the private equity community for data on actual transactions in your market space. None surfaced. Since, we've made inroads with a few folks who might be able to provide this kind of information, but it is also clear that M&A is in its nascence in your industry -- although activity is also possibly on the verge of exploding.

Most importantly, with this report we hope to establish a baseline from which more research might follow. And we want to keep the conversation going. What kind of multiples have YOU seen? How have buyers been valuating YOUR firm (or vice versa)? Anyone is welcome to comment. If you'd like to contribute to this process, please feel free to e-mail your thoughts to me (bskinner@kennedyinfo.com). I'll also check back here occasionally.

Thanks!
-Brent

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