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RealMatch: A Job Board Where You Can Afford To Be Picky

Posted by Gayle Kesten Tuesday, Mar 10, 2009, 04:13 PM ET

An ultra-selective friend of mine can thank online matching technology for pairing her with her long-distance boyfriend. Now I have a job-matching Web site to tell her about so she can find employment when she moves to his town.

The service I’m referring to is called RealMatch.com, based out of Ramsey, N.J. What makes RealMatch different from other job boards, like CareerBuilder and Monster, is its pay-for-performance pricing model. That means businesses that need to hire or contract (despite the ever-present grim economic news, some companies are really and truly adding to their payrolls) aren't required to pay an up-front fee to post. That's especially good music to a microbusiness' ears. Instead, you post your open positions, let RealMatch's matching technology go to work -- comparing your job description to skill sets across a common taxonomy -- and then receive information about qualified candidates, ranked by how well they fit your criteria *but* minus their contact information. If you see possibilities among the batch of applicants you receive, then that's when you pay a flat fee of $125, which gives you access to an unlimited number of names and their means of contact. That fee also includes the ability to know who is applying for your job proactively, i.e., as a result of your job posting. (Of note, the fee per position decreases when you post in bulk.)

"Employers are tired of forking over money using a pricing model that provides them no guarantees of deliverables," says RealMatch.com VP Rafael Cosentino. "Imagine going to a clothes store with the windows taped over, and they won't let you see inside. They say you could have anything you want, but you have to pay before you ever walk in. Then when you do, there's nothing on the shelf that interests you."

But think of RealMatch as a mall, not a single store; it's a portal that connects some 1,200 separate job boards across myriad verticals, housing what Cosentino calls 217,000-plus "active job listings" and 1 million "active job seekers" per month. The company came to life four years ago as RedMatch, a back-end provider of the technology that powered mainly newspaper sites and their job boards.

"About a year ago we realized we have access to more profiles and jobs than do most job boards, so we decided to launch a centralized Web site that gives employers access to all of the profiles posted across these different sites, and give job seekers access to all these jobs posted across this site," Cosentino says. In doing so, the company also expanded well beyond its newspaper niche.

In addition to its pricing model, RealMatch's employer-employee matching technology is another factor that Cosentino says set its service apart. "Keyword searching is among the largest complaints for both employers and job seekers. If you're an employer and have to weed through 500 resumes, it's frustrating," he says. "Our matching technology takes the ambiguity and guesswork so you can concentrate on the best candidates."

That technology also opens the field to candidates or positions you might not have typically considered. "With RealMatch, you don't have to know what you're looking for; you just have to know what you are," Cosentino adds. "We have many stories about candidates saying they found jobs they wouldn't have considered, but it was a great match based on their set of skills. Employers say they're finding candidates with backgrounds they wouldn't have thought about either. "

Sounds like hopeful news for my marketer-turned-math-teacher friend.

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