Crowdsourcing Recruiting App Renren: Everyone Can be A Headhunter

Renren Headhunting, a crowdsourcing recruiting mobile app, just announced its A-round funding of RMB 20 million. Two investors are involved in this deal, and names are still confidential. (in Chinese)

The business model of this app is obvious, as the name has explained by itself. Everyone can be a headhunter (renren= everyone in Chinese) on this platform — it seems to have nothing to do with Renren the SNS.

Launched in September 2012, the company claimed that its monthly revenue as of March has already hit over millions.  Users, employees, company recruiters, or even members of the public, are encouraged to post jobs and partake in recruiting process with rewards . Once your referral gets hired, you can get the reward, and sometimes the amount could be very big.

This open crowdsourcing recruiting idea first came up to Wang Yuhao, the founder when he saw a recruitment ad from a big tech company saying that successful internal introduction of talents to the company will receive a good number of money as reward. Wang realized that the even though there were so many companies eager for acquiring talents, the expensive fees headhunters charge could keep some employers away. So the solution is why not turn the whole public into headhunters by crowdsourcing, which is totally feasible and effective at the same time.

Currently in the local recruitment market, the cost of employment through headhunting companies could be very high. A successful case could cost a company three months’ salaries of that employed talent, which is difficult for most SMEs to afford.

On Renren Headhunting, the reward the company needs to pay most of the time equals the referral’s monthly salary. What’s more, a failed case will never charge any money from any parties unlike some job search sites where enterprises and employees have to prepay.

Actually this is not the first time that Wang has ever started up companies targeting the job market. He once started an app called Pengpeng, a service for collecting networking business cards. People can exchange their cards by bumping their phones. After some years of trying, the app still hasn’t found any perfect business model until another idea bumped into Wang’s mind. However the good thing is the experience of Pengpeng accumulates Wang big amount of user data, which serves good base for Renren Headhunting’s platform.