July 29, 2007

Online Job Site Secures $9 Million to Expand

Richmond Times-Dispatch

BY JEFFREY KELLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Saturday, July 29, 2006

ELSEWHERE

HOME & GARDEN: Good help is hard to find, but try looking on Angie's List. Page E1.

SnagAJob.com Inc. has snagged $9 million in private-equity funding to more than quadruple its work force and build its brand.

Founded in 2000 by former attorney Shawn Boyer, SnagAJob is an online job recruiting company that helps people find hourly or part-time positions in retail, restaurant and other service industries.

Some of the Henrico County firm's clients include Target stores, Jiffy Lube, The Home Depot and Wendy's.

With the new cash infusion, SnagAJob will aggressively hire sales, marketing and tech workers. Boyer, the firm's president and chief executive, expects 76 employees by the year's end and 131 by next September. It currently employs 28.

SnagAJob also will promote itself with TV commercials in several large cities, outdoor and transit ads in Atlanta and Washington, and a sales campaign to lure more small and medium-size companies.

Boyer said yesterday that the company, which has more than 100,000 postings, will invest heavily in technology to handle what he expects will be a jump in monthly visitors to the site. SnagAJob gets about 1.5 million visitors a month; Boyer expects that to hit 9.5 million by 2009.

Among new products it plans to unveil, SnagAJob wants to make it easier for staffing companies to search its Web site for candidates. It also will start posting jobs in Canada.

While SnagAJob competitors such as Monster.com, HotJobs and CareerBuilder.com offer hourly and part-time jobs, the sites primarily are used to hunt for salaried or executive-level positions.

Therefore, SnagAJob doesn't heavily compete in the $3.5 billion online recruiting market with those more well-known job sites, said Gordon Borrell, president of Portsmouth-based media consulting firm Borrell Associates Inc., which has done work with the local company.

Many companies have their own career sites and more will introduce such services and pose competitive threats to SnagAJob, Borrell said. While he believes the local firm has carved a niche, it may also "find competition from the traditional media, like newspapers, who have always felt recruitment and help-wanted advertising are their own."

Boyer said SnagAJob's push into the hourly market has been strong enough to stay profitable since early 2004. It does not disclose financial figures but has seen triple-digit growth in revenue for five years of its six-year history, he said.

"We've been able to run our business in a judicious manner," said Boyer, who turns 35 next month. "We've got a very nice-looking balance sheet, and we're not just going to go out and spend a ton on TV advertising. We're going to go and test market."

SnagAJob now is backed by Atlanta-based Croft & Bender's private-equity arm, along with Adams Street Partners and Baird Venture Partners, both out of Chicago. The deal that closed Monday is SnagAJob's first institutional investment.

SnagAJob offices are in the former Saxon Capital building at 4880 Cox Road.

As for hiring sales, marketing and tech workers? SnagAJob has posted some of its salaried positions on Monster.com.

Contact staff writer Jeffrey Kelley at jkelley@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6348.