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Worky.com aims to revolutionise jobs market
Sunday, May 03, 2009 By Gavin Daly
The founder of the profitable Hostelworld.com internet business hopes to shake up the recruitment sector with his new venture,Worky.com.

Ray Nolan has been developing the so-called ‘hiring network’ since stepping down as chief executive of Hostel world’s parent, Web Reservations International (WRI), in February last year. Worky is being launched this weekend with a marketing campaign that includes TV and internet advertising.

Nolan has global ambitions. ‘‘This is Google-esque in its potential,” said Nolan. ‘‘The [recruitment] market is worth billions and billions. We’re ambitious and we’re not afraid to go after it. Do we believe we’ll change the world in the same way we did with WRI? Yes.”

Nolan ran WRI for nine years, during which it went from a dotcom start-up to a global business with annual profits of close to €20 million.

He is still a director and major shareholder in the firm, which deferred a €500 million stock market listing last year because of the turbulence in world markets.

He said he wanted to ‘‘spend time building the perfect company from the ground up’’ after leaving his day job at WRI. According to Nolan, about €1 million and ‘‘ten man years of software development’’ have gone into Worky to date.

‘‘That is a drop in the ocean compared to what it might have cost, or what it could cost if it takes off,” he said. Nolan claimed that Worky addressed the shortcomings of existing online recruitment businesses, which he said were costly and ineffective.

‘‘You can use eBay to sell to the other side of the world or a dating site to find a match, but employers can’t find the people they want on job sites. I wanted to get this done, because job websites have been annoying me for 15 years,” he said.

‘‘Job sites aren’t working,” said Nolan, describing them as glorified listings of classified ads. ‘‘Most just begin and end with defining a job and advertising it. Candidates don’t engage with sites; most do a quick search and then the get lost in irrelevant information.”

He said that employers were also frustrated at paying large sums to advertise on sites, often with limited success.

‘‘You can pay €15,000 [to a recruitment website] and, if you hire two people out of it, you’ve done well. Worky is a substantially cheaper way of finding people than anything that exists in the world at the moment,” he said.

‘‘The web is about deconstructing business models and this is a world-changer. It’s a real web business, not some concept of a €15,000 classified ad.” One difference with Worky is that it is aimed at all workers, not just job-seekers, according to Nolan. ‘‘We want Worky to be populated by everyone. If Facebook is for your play time, then Worky is your work time, for stuff you’ve done for work that you’re proud of.”

Users of Worky create a short profile that includes information about their employment and experience, their salary expectations and whether they are currently looking for a job.

Unlike a CV, they do not have to use their full name or list their current employment, so there is no risk of being identified by their existing employer or colleagues.

‘‘We are not saying the CV is dead, but it is certainly less relevant,” said Nolan. ‘‘Maybe I don’t have a CV or I don’t want to risk my boss seeing me on a job site. Now those issues are gone.”

The site also has a location based feature, so users can specify a geographic area in which they would like to work. The Worky technology automatically matches their skills to jobs on offer, listing them in order of relevance based on the information provided.

If a candidate is interested in a position, they can apply directly through Worky. If an employer is interested in what they see, they pay the firm a fee - ranging from about €25 to €40 - to approach a candidate.

‘‘It’s free for candidates and always will be. It’s free for an employer to search and match profiles.

‘‘It’s free to read an application. You only pay to engage with people,” said Nolan. ‘‘In that way, it’s not a jobs site, it’s a hiring network.”

As well asWorky.com, Nolan owns a range of related domain names, including Worky.ie, Worky.co.uk and iWorky.com.

He said that the site had been designed to handle large volumes and was a ‘‘multilingual, multi-currency’’ business.

‘‘The hardest thing is drawing a line under what it does,” he said. ‘‘It will take on a life of its own and where it could go is anyone’s guess. There is no end to what it could do.”

‘‘When we went into hostels (with WRI), we thought the worldwide market was worth €10 billion. I think the recruitment market could be worth €1 trillion, so that’s the size of the market opportunity for Worky,” Nolan said.

Worky has about 16 staff, including technical development and marketing people in Dublin and Krakow, Poland. Nolan’s management team includes Niamh Ni Mhir, who was chief marketing officer of WRI and was heavily involved in building that business.

Nolan said he had brought some other shareholders into the company, including some who were previously involved in WRI. ‘‘I have made some money for some people in the past, so I didn’t have to dance in front of too many people for funding,” he said.

The entrepreneur said he was not concerned about launching Worky at a time when many firms were laying people off. ‘‘If there was a seminal time to launch this, it’s right now,” he said.

‘‘People won’t pay [for listings] and job sites must be hurting. Candidates can use Worky to put themselves directly on the desktop of key employers, and companies can use it to find people for a small amount of money. The simplicity of the model is unsurpassed.”

In any case, Nolan said he was ‘‘pretty bullish’’ about the prospects for an economic recovery in Ireland in the medium term.

‘‘I have never been able to be negative. There are glimmers of hope out there and when it [the economy] comes back, it will come back awfully fast,” he said.

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