Changes at the top for Zubka

After only having had David Sheildhouse talking so passionately about his service (Zubka) a couple of weeks ago it appears he is now "looking at other opportunities".

In their words;

Zubka's management team has evolved. Armando Ruffini, Zubka's Co-founder and
previously COO, has moved into the role of CEO as David Shieldhouse, Zubka's
Co-founder and incumbent CEO, refocuses his energies on new entrepreneurial
ventures. David tells us: "From developing the original idea, through to
launching the business, securing VC backing from Balderton (previously
Benchmark) and building a solid foundation of users, we have been on an
incredible journey. We are all justly proud of what Zubka has achieved so far
and I look forward to seeing the business realise its full potential as a global
player in the recruitment industry."

The article then goes on to describe the backgrounds of the rest of the management team. So I did what everyone can do these days and looked them up on LinkedIn. A quick search under people for the company Zubka and I have my suspicions confirmed. What a great research tool.

My concern here is that there have been many technology based products that aim to dis-intermediate recruiters from the recruitment process. The aim to bring passive candidates (someone who is not actively looking) to the attention of hiring authorities. The issue is and from painful experience getting the name is only a small part of the battle. If I am a talented individual in my vertical, am I going to be motivated to enter into discussions about a future career move on the basis of a job posting, and probably a poorly written one at that.

The management team at Zubka have great, solid experience in some great companies, I dread to think what their payroll is each month! The gap, I feel, is that their does not appear to be any recruitment experience, David had been involved in executive search, I saw that as a huge positive. He says he will still be involved, I hope that is the case.

Third party recruiters have been alienated before by web based plays in the recruitment market, you ignore them at your peril. They simply cannot make this work for them unless they outsource or unbundle part of the process and say get a team of researchers in India trying to make residual income from their recruitment databases. The model is not clear but I will start to take a closer look.

For the general day to day individual, you may find a role that suits you, get a friend to refer you and then hopefully split the fee (a pseudo signing bonus). But, I would hardly call that attracting a passive candidate!