ROAST the life out of my idea 🔥🔥
Hello everyone, ahead of time thank you for reading and commenting if you do. Much love for this community.
As the title says, I'd love to have some feedback on my project idea! Any critic, both good and bad are welcome and appreciated :)
Here's the link to my landing page Dev-Dubai
The feedback I'm looking for is concerning the overall viability of the project. Dubai is starting/already a tech hub with many SME's and a massive pool of talent (both from inside the city and outside the country). This project is to create a job board for tech companies in Dubai that are looking to hire software engineers.
This goal of the job board is twofold:
a) Seek to aggregate small and medium tech companies in Dubai to help people from around the world to apply to positions in Dubai.
b) Aims to reduce the overall cost of hiring a new engineers by reducing the need of headhunters.
Now the question: how does the job board differ from all others and how does it reduce the cost of hiring engineers?
I'll expand on the two points listed above:
a) Many job boards charge an upfront fee for posting an application plus a fee for keeping it on the platform, a fee for each applicant received, a fee for each position entered, etc. Our job board will aim for companies that sometimes don't have luxury to afford those fees. We only charge the company once it has made a successful hire through our platform. (We have tactics in place to ensure the company actually notifies us when they've successfully hired someone).
b) Dubai's headhunters/recruiters charge a significant sum to their employers for a successful hire, either a fixed sum or a % of the employees yearly salary. However, our job board aims to do the same as headhunters, that is, connect people with companies at a reduced total cost to the employer.
You might have already seen this business model before. That's because I'm basing it off an already existing and very successful platform that does the same thing but for another location which is what gave me inspo to pursue this.
Thanks for reading this far, you're a real one if you have 💯💯 and please let me know what you think of the idea!!
Hi Tony,
Yes, if you execute well, that should work. Because there is a market and you can offer a cheaper/better alternative than the competition. So it's all down to how well you execute and stay ahead of what others are doing. Because there is nothing that stops them from copying you.
That said, I do see two red flags that would stop me personally from going into that market:
You are building a marketplace. You need companies on one side and people looking for a job on the other side. So you need to market to both sides and they need to be in sync: if you don't have enough jobs, the engineers will not use your site, and if you don't have enough engineers, no company will be persuaded to use your platform.
It's a 'race to the bottom': you will offer the same product as the competition but cheaper. If they offer the same thing at the same price, the only thing you can do is to lower your price.
Again, this is a personal view. YMMV!
Best of luck
Frans
Hey Frans, thanks for the comment! Concerning the two points you brought up:
Hello Tony,
Yes, I am guessing that would be a good idea to bootstrap the idea. Manually scrape some open positions from company websites and post them yourself. I am guessing that that is not strictly legal, but hey, who will complain if their positions get filled?
Yes, most likely you can out-price the headhunters as they have a higher fixed cost, but then, they will claim to sell a more personalized service. I believe you are targeting a different segment of the market. Now I think this race to the bottom can happen over a longer period. And that is maybe long enough for you to establish your brand. I made the remark as I don't like to be in markets where there is too much price competition.
Hopefully, this is helpful.
It is! Thanks a lot :)
Those are things that I'm going to have to consider how to work around or fix but I am not too afraid of since the other product that I am basing this off of has gone through the same issues as you noted above but it is still very successful
Yes, you are right. Knowing that it worked already before is a great way to start and takes away one big risk factor.
Best of luck!
am wondering -- why wouldn't both recruiting companies and candidates use existing job boards?
even if they are not specific to dubai, many post dubai roles in them
many in dubai are from outside dubai, so they are very aware of these existing job boards
Yea good question, so a lot of platforms are expensive just to have job postings on there. They charge for things like per applicant, per position and things like that.
This platform will charge only when the company has made a successful hire. So the target audience is more for smaller/medium sized companies that can't afford those postings.
Another price option that works for high-end candidates. Is they subscribe to a platform and businesses post free. This is the same model as housesitting sites all over the world.
This works when you have great relationships with SMEs. The platform curates the postings to eliminate the noise from a market perspective e.g. eliminates spam postings, fake postings, recruiter postings. The number of fake postings (phishing postings and no real job) has been increasing steadily over the years. The recruiters do these and its darn annoying.
On housesitting sites -- everyone can see the posting tag in search results but the details are hidden until you login. Login for candidate costs the subscription fee. Typically 1month, 3month or 6 month.
If you become known as a trusted source, trusted platform from a candidate perspective, the businesses will value this and seek you out.
That was another price model I was looking at. Most of the traffic for "Software engineer jobs in Dubai" comes from India at a VERY high amount.
Which I'm assuming means the recruiters in Dubai are being overloaded with spams. This would be a good idea to somewhat filter out candidates to only consider those that are serious.
mm I do not believe the issue in this space is primarily price model. Price model impacts but as a secondary or third point. In any mature market, head hunters are used by exception, rather than norm (as you post implies). Yes it is still norm in some of the less mature markets but that will be short-lived as market will natural self-correct.
Sure go after the space from a price point perspective -- if you truelly like hard work with little return. Price point is always a race to the bottom. It is not true value-add.
The biggest issue I see in this space (even in several of the well developed tech locations) is it is a recruiters haven. Currently recruiters have the power rather than candidates. The volume of recruiters has made it very much like used car salesman. Recruiters have effectively monetized people. Its ugly for both smaller to medium business (who have less buffer if their recruitment choice is wrong) and candidate (who are tired of being treated like a widget).
FYI: I personally never apply to a job board listing. It may help me discover who is looking for what. (may). Then I always apply to the job directly on the business. So essentially cutting out any commission the job board would get if it was based on position secured. I actually find the best gigs are thru linked in groups of areas that I work in.