Dear WSO Members - I wanted to ask for your advice. The primary question is, should WSO build out a search arm (Oasis Search Partners?) to help place junior finance talent around the globe?
Pros:
We have incredible access to amazing talent given that WSO is the largest online community focused on careers in finance (over 2 million visits/month, ~1.5 million uniques)
It's a natural extension for WSO since we are already experts in the recruiting and interview prep process
Cons:
Would require a significant investment of time and capital to build out the team - would also likely mean abandoning the WSO job board
We have no in-house recruiting expertise and the economics and potential of the business are murky to me
Questions for Professionals that Decide What Recruiters to Use
Does your firm use recruiting firms to find junior talent? Interns, analysts and associates? If so, what makes you go with one firm vs another? Would you ever use a search firm to help you find great interns?
Are these exclusive mandates? 10-20% of 1st-year salary for each successful placement?
Is there price sensitivity or do you just care that you are sent the best candidates with as little pain as possible? Provide the tool to screen or send you the list of candidates already pre-screened?
Who makes this decision in your organization?
Questions for Professionals that Use Recruiters to Try and Land a Job
What are your biggest annoyances/pain points?
What do you wish recruiting firms did more of? did less of?
ANY/ALL FEEDBACK WELCOME!
Thanks guys, Patrick
Pretty much been covered already. But I generally think you're thinking about it incorrectly and that there aren't really many natural synergies. What WSO has is a huge community of, mostly, pre-professionals trying to break into the industry. And in our industry the scarce resource is the jobs, not the candidates. Especially not pre-professional or inexperienced candidates. It can be hard to find junior laterals with good experience, but it doesn't strike me that WSO network is big with current professionals in the industry. And the way to make real money in the business is to have great relationships with job makers and to place senior people, which certainly isn't the target market here.
It's an interesting business idea with your backgrounds, just not sure the synergies are there to a big extent. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, I just wouldn't expect a ton of crossover.
Also, you'd have both problems of probably having to start censoring some content on the website If you wanted to become a preferred partner for larger organizations. The extent of the race/sex/political trolling on here would likely make an HR department think about wanting to use the recruiting service. And then you also have privacy issues of candidates who say dumb things on here and wanting to make sure they don't get docked, though that's a more easily solved problem.