OneWire Overview: OneWire.com is a new job placement website specializing in finance. It claims to take a different approach than most of its more established competitors, and to be of more value to typical job seekers and hiring firms alike. This is the complete text (with minor grammatical corrections) of an interview conducted via e-mail with its chairman, F.S. "Skiddy" von Stade, during August and September of 2009.
QUESTION: I've taken a look at OneWire.com and it's not at all apparent what advantages it offers over competing sites, such as Monster or CareerBuilder. What are they?
ANSWER: OneWire offers several advantages over sites like Monster and CareerBuilder:
No Job Posting. Old-fashioned job sites rely on broad keyword searches and job posts to connect job seekers with companies. It is labor-intensive and costly. Job seekers have to weed through pages and pages of job postings looking for one that might be relevant and hiring companies get inundated with upwards of hundreds of resumes, none of which may actually yield a good match. With OneWire, job seekers create a detailed profile - essentially, their career fingerprint - and they're done. Hiring firms run search queries against structured data from these profiles and quickly choose which candidates they'd like to learn more about. The result is extremely precise matching.
Finance Focused. OneWire is tailored specifically to finance and has deep expertise and knowledge about the specific needs of hiring firms and job seekers in that industry.
Precise. OneWire helps job seekers and hiring firms make a precise match. This is done by enabling hiring firms to enter extremely detailed job description search parameters that are matched against comprehensive job seeker profiles (almost a fingerprint of who they are).
Profiles, Not Resumes. OneWire is a place where finance professionals can manage their careers for life. Job seekers build extremely detailed profiles about their experience, education and career aspirations. Hiring firms enter specific job criteria (e.g. West coast-based asset manager from an Ivy League school who speaks Mandarin, has been more than 50% focused on commodities and wants to move to NYC) and immediately see a list of potential candidates and how they rank against the search parameters. This profile is constantly updated by the job seeker so hiring firms see updated/comprehensive info versus an old resume with partial info.
Confidential. Job seekers' profiles remain anonymous until they choose to reveal their identity to an interested firm.
Control & Visibility. OneWire gives hiring firms applicant tracking tools that help them efficiently and effectively manage the entire lifecycle of recruiting.
QUESTION: I see your basic marketing pitch talking about special algorithms, etc., but that, frankly, tells me nothing. I'd like a succinct, direct, plain-English, no-jargon explanation.
ANSWER: Bottom line is that OneWire is designed to precisely match job seekers and hiring firms in the finance field. Hiring firms enter search parameters based on structured data and immediately receive a list of qualified candidates ranked against how closely they match the search. OneWire helps hiring firms quickly and cost-effectively find a perfect fit, while reducing time, costs and unnecessary interviews.
QUESTION: Can you offer stats on how many companies post openings on OneWire, what industries they represent, how many job openings are available on it, and what categories of jobs are listed?
ANSWER: Right now, we're not publicly breaking out this information in detail. But I can tell you that hundreds of companies are using OneWire to find candidates, including 90% of the industry's top firms. These companies are filling roles across all job categories, from back office to senior management.
QUESTION: How does OneWire make money? Are companies charged to post jobs on it? Are they charged when someone is hired through it? Are job seekers charged anything?
ANSWER: OneWire is free for job seekers. Hiring firms pay a flat $15k annual fee for one license that offers unlimited access. Larger firms with bigger HR staffs may buy more than one license for concurrent access.
QUESTION: What do you think about the future of financial headhunting?
ANSWER: After almost two decades of experience in finance executive search, I firmly believe that sites like OneWire and existing/emerging social networks will change the traditional headhunter business dramatically. There will still be a need for this service, but to a lesser degree than you see now, as the role shifts to working as screening agents for senior-level hires. Also, we'll start to see associated fees begin to compress over time. That's not to say that the space will die away completely - but there will be a significant shift, for certain.
This goes for finance as well as any other industry as it's a simple matter of time and cost. When compared with traditional executive search, OneWire can significantly reduce the amount of time and money it takes to find the right candidate. As it becomes standard practice to manage your career online through various social networks or job sites, the right person for the job will be easier and cheaper to find with technology than with a headhunter.
QUESTION: Finally, what is the relationship between OneWire and fsvs.com? The latter has a link to the former, but I do not see any disclosures that these entities are related, yet they clearly are, since you head both.
ANSWER: For all intents and purposes, the two companies are not linked. I am in the process of phasing out FSvS as I move to focus 100% of my time on OneWire. I've had tremendous success with FSvS and realize that technology is going to have a disruptive impact on traditional search moving forward. I see a much bigger opportunity in developing an application where people will manage their careers for life, and hiring firms/job seekers can connect precisely, quickly and cost-effectively.
