Jobster

Jobster, launched in 2004 by founder Jason Goldberg, initially positioned itself as a significant player in the online recruitment space, securing substantial venture capital to challenge established platforms like LinkedIn and Monster. The company's platform was designed to leverage social networking principles for job searching and recruiting, allowing users to tap into their professional connections to find opportunities and for recruiters to find candidates through referrals. Goldberg's vision was to create a 'social recruiting' system where employees could refer individuals in their networks for open positions, earning a referral fee in the process. This model aimed to provide employers with higher-quality, pre-vetted candidates compared to traditional job boards.

The business model centered on charging companies for software that managed the employee referral process. Jobster's service enabled companies to post jobs and have them distributed through their employees' social networks, effectively turning their workforce into a recruiting engine. The platform offered tools for tracking these referrals and managing the candidate pipeline, integrating social connectivity into the corporate hiring workflow. Following its sale in 2010 to Recruiting.com, the original Jobster.com domain and its associated platform ceased to operate under its initial model, and the brand has since evolved under new ownership.

Keywords: social recruiting, employee referrals, recruitment software, online recruitment, job board, human resources, talent acquisition, professional networking, hiring platform, candidate sourcing