Community-as-a-Service, on-demand, global, hiring ecosystem

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[00:00:42] Welcome to Episode 93 of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast. I am one of your two co-hosts. I'm Stephen Rothberg. I am the founder of College Recruiter Job Search Site, where we believe that every student and recent graduate deserves a great career, and that it should be easy and inexpensive for employers to hire them. I am joined here today, as almost always, by my illustrious co-host. I had to throw that word in there. Peter Zolman. Peter, good to see you.

[00:01:13] I don't even know what illustrious means, but I thank you for that. I hope it was not a put-down. And if it was... It's a compliment. Oh, good. Because if it was a put-down, I wouldn't be surprised. Sorry I missed you last time. I was stuck in a snow nightmare getting to New Orleans, a blizzard that hit New Orleans like never before. But... And with us today...

[00:01:42] Oh, I'm with the AIM Group. We provide a business intelligence consulting and conferences for job boards and recruitment marketplaces. Got to introduce myself, right? And now introducing Sunkanmi Ola. He's the co-founder and CEO of Propel, which is a community of tech job seekers and tech employees and tech employers.

[00:02:11] Sunkanmi, welcome. You had a long flight yesterday, we understand. Oh, yes. But today you're in Berlin, yesterday Nairobi, today in Berlin. Tell us about Propel. That's the easy softball. Yeah, that's the easy softball. Thank you for having me here. And yes, straight into it. So the first thing I would actually like to point out is Propel is an ecosystem of tech talent communities.

[00:02:37] So we stumbled upon a very key insight when it comes to the tech recruitment vertical, that these people congregate naturally within communities. And the way the job market has changed recently means you need to go find these people where they are rather than expecting them to come to you. So what did we do? We decided to map out the entire ecosystem of tech talent communities, starting with the view of emerging markets.

[00:03:04] Pull all of these together and find a way to be able to pull out the needles from the haystacks. That's essentially how it is. So in summary, Propel is building the distribution layer for the tech talent economy. And we're doing this with the building blocks of existing tech talent communities, for which we have over 250 different independent communities right now across multiple verticals. And on the other side of this equation are the employers, the companies, the global workforce

[00:03:32] that need access to these people with a very, very coordinated and curated way to find them. So give us an example of just one of the communities. What's a community within Propel? Yeah. So we had to sort of make our own standard definition or standardize what a community means. So the different parameters we look at, first of all, it has to be a close group of people, meaning people have to consciously opt in. That's the first part.

[00:04:02] Secondly, it doesn't have to be a standardized organization, but it usually is a structure. So you have a founder or a convener or a convening body. This could be a corporate. This could be, you know, an individual group of people. And then you have the moderators or admins, meaning there are people that work in the growth administration or moderation of this community. And then you have the members. And this usually works like a pyramid, you know, on the fewer people at the top and the members are the huge people at the bottom. Awesome.

[00:04:28] And what you then have in this sense is this community could focus really on anything. We focus on tech talent communities, meaning the shared career interests of people in tech. So it could be a community focused on, you know, let's say a particular framework. So JavaScript developers in Nairobi, for example. So it could be that niche or it could be just generally broad, maybe driving women into STEM. So you could have women who code Accra in this case. And many of them are at the same time could also be corporate-backed communities.

[00:04:58] So you have tens of chapters of Google developer groups. And naturally, that means these are communities with enthusiasts for adopting Google framework and technologies or friends of Figma or it goes literally in every direction. But as long as it meets those parameters, align career interests or, you know, people have to opt in. People are in there to grow. People are in there to gain access to opportunity or upscaling. And then you have the moderators who are like the gatekeepers of these communities. Then these communities fit into the framework of the ecosystem we are mapping out.

[00:05:28] Interesting. So I'm kind of envisioning like a Reddit type of community structure where you've got organically where the members say, you know, hey, this is the community that I want to be a part of. I'm going to join an existing one. Oh, there isn't already a community for that. You know, JavaScript developers in Nairobi. I'm going to create that. Is that what happens?

[00:05:55] Or does your team create the communities and then hire or bring on moderators who then build the groups? Like how do they come into being, the community? Yeah. So very, very amazing question. And the thing is, we are essentially tapping into an already existing organic framework. So what we noticed, particularly for emerging markets, is that people tend to band together to be able to gain access to more opportunity. And the community structure is literally the way people grow.

[00:06:25] Now, if I could go a little bit outside of the scope of the question, the way the job market has evolved for tech recently in the past, you know, five years is moving at such a pace that is so far ahead of the workforce itself and far ahead of the educational system itself. The only way people can learn these new skills and, you know, frameworks is by joining groups. Some of them are peer-to-peer groups. So these things exist naturally. But what happens is you then have all these little communities in different pockets, all scattered across in fragmented ways.

[00:06:55] And there is no real distribution layer that can say this is the entire map of the community landscape for tech in general, and then be able to connect this to the global workforce. So we serve as that sort of layer through which the global workforce can pass through and be able to find curated talent that exists in these communities. And we administer all of this, like you said, then, through a platform where a community then has a home on the platform. So I'm a member of a community. I've joined naturally.

[00:07:24] It could even be an offline community. Some of them exist in physical hubs. But just because I am part of this community, and now this community is part of Propel's ecosystem, there is a place I can go to, which is my community's dashboard or my community's homepage or wherever, hosted on Propel, where they then get access to curated jobs that fit the descriptions of the community. So a data science community then sees data science jobs. So we aggregate on a volume-based play. So we do the distribution level play. We're able to talk to big job boards.

[00:07:53] Companies get hundreds of jobs and then filter them and navigate them according to the communities that need them. And because communities are not designed to complete the last mile, they're designed more for nurturing, bringing people together, upskilling, and all of that. So we play a role towards the end of the process, of the supply chain, if you could call it that. Hey, everybody. I'm Lori Rudiman. What are you doing? Working? Nah. You're listening to a podcast about work, and that barely counts.

[00:08:19] So while you're at it, check out my show, Punk Rock HR, now on the Work Defined Network. We chat with smart people about work, power, politics, and money. Are we succeeding? Are we fixing work? Eh, probably not. Work still sucks. But tune in for some fun, a little nonsense, and a fresh take on how to fix work once and for all.

[00:09:12] So just like a follow-up. So if I'm in tech and I'm in Lisbon or wherever, and I want to be a part of a community powered at propel.community, can I create the community? Or do I basically go to propel.community? And if I see a community that I want to be a part of, great. I can join it. And if not, too bad. Like, if there's not already a community, can I create one?

[00:09:42] Yeah, exactly. So the way it works is the primary people we work with in First Contact are the community moderators. So you need to have a community sometimes, no matter how small, really. You know, 50 people, 100 people. And then you say, okay, I have a few people. It's a little group. And then you can create your own dashboard from the get-go. Now, you could also come. So you're either, the admins are usually different from the talent themselves. You know, the admins work at the communities. It's the talent at the members of the communities.

[00:10:10] So you come on the web app or the platform itself, and you see a list of communities. And then you can actually pick what you feel applies to you. So it's also a growth engine for these communities where people can come and discover, oh, now I'm interested in, you know, DevOps. And I can see DevOps in my little city. Or there is a community. I join in right there and then. And then I also become an active member of that community. And it could also be that from there, you become like a more physical member of the community. And it goes both ways. Sounds good.

[00:10:41] And it's helpful to know that, I mean, we believe the community is essential to job boards slash recruitment marketplaces. It's not just about listings. I'm going to throw two, three, four rapid fire questions at you if I can. But first, Stephen mentioned it twice. I'm going to mention it one more time. It's propel.community. So that if people go to propel.com, they're going to get confused. Propel.community. How many employees?

[00:11:11] How many people working for the company? So a few numbers. Right now, the team is about 30 people. It's a distributed team. We're headquartered in Berlin. But we have operations across Portugal and a few cities across Africa, which is where the host of the talent base is. Yeah. And there are about 250 communities on the platform. The total ecosystem is about almost 800,000 people right now. Oh, wow. And many active members.

[00:11:38] Because these communities already exist, and we're just simply bringing them together and giving them a home where they can access opportunities and growth. Love it. And how long has it been around? Officially been around since 2020. Since 2020. So it's four and a half, five years old. Yeah. And profitable yet or not yet? Well, we are a VC-backed company. So we're still heavily in the growth stage. So we've raised a couple of rounds. And this is the part where you still put a lot of things for growth. But we are financially healthy.

[00:12:07] We've been in revenue from day one because this is recruitment as well. You have customers who pay for the value you offer. And we're on that growth path. And do you have any revenue streams other than recruitment advertising? Or do people pay to be members? Or do they get services from you? Or how does that work? Yeah. So the overall model for Propel is quite interesting. We have two sides of the equation.

[00:12:35] We have the supply side, which is the people who work and the communities and the demand side, the companies. So we actually offer this on two value stacks. The first is access to work, which is all we're talking about. And access to work monetizes the demand side because companies pay either for community engagement or for placements directly. And they pay us to facilitate this entire flow from top to bottom. But the good thing here is the communities also get a fraction of the revenue we make.

[00:13:02] So we've actually created revenue streams for these communities to be able to keep on going. Because if you are doing the work of finding people and bringing them together and upscaling them and all of that, managing the growth of your community, if people get placed from there, this is the value you've created. So it's almost a closed loop where just by being part of the ecosystem, there are people who can gain access to the global workforce and the communities can make revenue, which wasn't available to them before. So that's the first part.

[00:13:29] The second part is actually very product-driven and very supply-side focused. And this is also access to finance. So because we've brought all these communities together, apart from needing access to work, they also need to grow. And we are able to connect financial infrastructure from third-party financial partners who, through the platform, can extend credit for growth, education, access to tools, devices to these members. So simply put, you being part of a community, all of a sudden your community can now be a

[00:13:57] job provider to you and also a financial services provider to you. We are tapping into the existing relationship that exists between members and their communities. And you can just go to your dashboard, apply for a job, or apply for a cash loan to get maybe a laptop, or to get work tools, or to get a training course, and all of that. So those are the two layers on which we actually generate revenue. Fascinating. I think we have time for one more question, and I'm going to throw that to Stephen, and then we'll wrap up. Yeah, sure.

[00:14:26] So first of all, I love the idea of revenue sharing with the moderators, the communities themselves. I mean, you're really financially incentivizing those people to stay engaged, to give them a real incentive other than just altruistic, which is an incentive in and of itself. But if somebody can get a check each month too, a lot of the listeners and viewers of this podcast are leaders of job boards.

[00:14:56] People like me, people that Peter and his team interview on a daily basis. If they want to work with Propel, what opportunities are there? Can they send job postings to you and pay you per click or application? Or how does that work? Good question. Job boards. It's a good question, Peter. Did you hear that? Did you hear that I asked a good question? I think I heard that. Sorry, Zuganmi.

[00:15:23] The part of this supply chain that we play in, we see ourselves as the talent pipeline because the job boards do the amazing work of pulling in the listings and being able to pull everything together from what is needed in the workforce. But because of the rate of acceleration of the employment landscape now, the people to find are quite difficult. So we focus on the talent pipeline. So we see ourselves as the backbone that job boards can use to feed their job listings

[00:15:52] to get a better chance of closing out roles. At the moment, we operate on a flexible model. So we have some partnerships with some job boards where we are paid per application. But again, the main thing we focus on is not just the volume of the people, but it's the quality of the people. Our model is designed to find the needles in the haystack because we do a lot of the verification, assessments, quality checks on the people through some models we've also built. And then in some cases, some job boards who have direct relationships with their partners

[00:16:21] can say, upon successful placements, we could also have a placement fee split. Or in some cases, it's going to be per application. So it's flexible based on the kinds of job boards and the size of the job boards as well. Cool. Well, you're going to get a reach out from our new director of publishers, Ben Groves. And so we look forward, College Recruel looks forward to partnering with Propel. Sukami, thank you. This has been really awesome. Peter, good to see you again.

[00:16:50] Thank you very much. Good to be back. And I hope to see both of you at RecBuzz in Vienna in just a couple of months at this point. Sure. Catch you back. Cheers, guys. Bye.