While at the HR Tech show last week I came across a bit of surprising news. A big applicant tracking vendor bought a job board company.
Cornerstone acquired Santa Monica based Workpop for an undisclosed amount and plans to roll it up into a new product line called ‘Cornerstone Frontline’. To be fair, Workpop is more than just a job board. It’s a job distribution tool built specifically for the service industry but they also own RestaurantJobs.com. They say they deliver a better candidate experience for users by offering a “place to grow and learn“.
We offer tools that help candidates find better jobs. Our platform is designed to give back to candidates, whether it’s peer resume feedback or application analytics. Workpop communicates your likelihood of hearing back from an employer before applying to the job, and ensures that you get an answer on every application.
They launched in 2014 and in 2015 Cornerstone actually invested in them through their innovation fund.
I must admit that I knew very little about Workpop and was surprised to hear this news. It is rare for an ATS vendor to buy a jobs service, especially one that only caters to one industry in the SoCal market. There are plenty of vendors that already help you distribute jobs online so why not partner with them? I guess the team at Workpop had something different to offer.
Recruiting expert Gerry Crispin tells me that Workpop is doing great things. “I had no idea”, I told him as we walked through the expo hall. I had not even heard their name mentioned in the industry since those early days. Just goes to prove that if you build something different and focus on delivering, good things will happen.
