Recruiter Moonlights on HR Jobs Marketplace

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

After navigating the waters of freelancing for five years, an HR and recruitment consultant launches a platform for fellow freelancers and employers to connect. His goal is to build the HR version of Upwork, and he wants to do it on his own while he's still working elsewhere and without investor money. I respect the hustle. Hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. Every day I'm bringing you stories, questions, and answers, topics, tips, strategies, all designed to help you navigate the waters of starting a business without quitting your job. That is what it's all about here. There are lots of resources for full-time entrepreneurs, lots of resources for people who want to go all in. But when I started this project 1,291 days ago, I had a feeling that there were a lot of other people out there who were like, hey, I don't necessarily want to be a full-time entrepreneur, or at least not yet.

If I want to do that, I need to build a bridge to it. I can't quit my job. I have responsibilities, family bills, mortgages, et cetera. So that is what this program and our community is all about. I'm very grateful for you listening.

Thank you for being part of it. The story is called Recruiter Moonlights on HR Jobs Marketplace. That story's coming up after this shout-out to our sponsor. [Music]

It was five years ago when Chris Russell lost his job as a director of digital recruiting. Having his income instantly halted was tough, but Chris still possessed all the skills that made him a valuable employee, even though he no longer was one.

His ability to find good candidates and place them in the right jobs with minimal headache was a skill lots of businesses needed. So instead of diving in and looking for another nine to five, Chris decided to try his hand at freelancing. And for the next few years, he made a living doing just that. He would hustle, find some temporary work somewhere among the large network he'd built up during his career, and then move on to the next gig. It was a flexible, but not always lucrative arrangement.

Chris was always on the lookout for that next gig. He often had periods where he wasn't sure if the next one would even come. In an effort to find something different, Chris investigated the website Upwork, the world's largest marketplace for freelancers. He found some postings for HR experts, but since Upwork skews much more toward tech projects, they were few and far between. Also, Upwork takes a large commission from each job, sometimes making it prohibitively expensive to use.

Chris felt like there had to be another way. If there wasn't, he was starting to think he was as good a person as any to make one. His time on Upwork showed a need for a cheaper niche version of the site aimed specifically at the HR industry. In his vision, just like Upwork, employers could post jobs on the site and freelancers could submit proposals to complete that work. While it seemed simple enough, Chris knew that building something like that could be complicated and expensive.

He didn't want to hire someone to help him make a hiring platform. So instead of doing that, Chris scoured the web looking for an out-of-the-box solution, a pre-made kind of software that he could simply purchase as is. And you can find these for a lot of different sites. They allow you to pay to effectively create a clone of an existing site's functions using your own branding. This is especially popular for things like forums.

It's a lot of work to custom program your own forum, but a lot of people have already done that. So you can just go and purchase this little template and add your branding and go from there. So after researching, Chris found a suitable solution that he could try for $299 a month. Now, in some ways, 300 bucks a month isn't cheap, but compared to building a custom solution, it was. It came with a built-in content management system, so he'd be able to add new pages and write blog posts.

The program also integrated with Stripe, a popular payment processor. That meant he'd be able to start collecting money right away after launch. Best of all was that he was able to install and configure it himself. The next step was to generate interest, and that landed him on LinkedIn, the world's most popular website for business networking. From his lengthy career in HR, Chris already had several thousand LinkedIn connections.

Connections are similar to friends on Facebook. And for the next few weeks, he made a concerted effort to continue adding people who listed themselves as HR consultants. At the same time, he identified a dozen people he thought would be a good fit and contacted them directly. He let them know his new service would be a place that had regular gigs for freelance HR consultants. And almost immediately, someone committed to a yearly subscription for $89.

That's when Chris knew he was onto something. He hadn't even officially launched, and yet someone still believed in the concept so much that they were willing to put real money down. It motivated him to work faster. He finished a working version of the site, and once that was done, made use of his vast LinkedIn network. By now, he had 6,000 connections he knew he could leverage.

In addition, he also joined several Facebook groups, where the community seemed highly engaged. Specifically, he looked for groups where people shared career advice and job leads. With both his LinkedIn and Facebook strategies ready, Chris turned both taps on at once. He officially launched what he now called HRLancers.com in January 2020. He posted about it to all of his connections and mentioned it in those groups he was part of.

So, what happened? Well, in the first 30 days, HR Lancers received 5,000 website visitors and hundreds of HR experts who signed up to the service. Most of them on the free version that he offered, but some for the paid service, which offered featured placement on posts. Companies were posting gigs and freelancers were applying. Meanwhile, Chris began to take in his first revenue.

Over the next few months, two big things happened. Chris continued to market the site, and the coronavirus pandemic impacted his growth plans. Freelancers kept joining, but not as quickly as he hoped. Even so, his revenue managed to surpass $500 a month within the first few months of operation. 80% of that came via subscriptions from freelancers and the remaining 20% from individual job postings from employers.

The coronavirus slowdown isn't stopping Chris. He's continuing to network and attract more interest in the site. It's nowhere near a full-time gig yet, so he still relies heavily on his own freelancing to make a living. But he's hoping that one day, HRLancers.com will turn into the big promotion he always wanted and aid in securing his financial future. [Music]

Well, Upwork is the largest freelance marketplace in the world.

Currently, it has 12 million registered freelancers and five million registered employers. So no shortage of projects and people there. But as I mentioned briefly in the story, it's cues toward tech-related projects, which means there can be room for others to stand out in different categories, or perhaps to start their own thing, the way Chris is doing. Now, it will be an uphill battle to go against something like Upwork. But Chris does have that background.

He's hustling, he's got that big network and such, and people are posting, so you never know. Now, my thought from looking at the website, two quick things. The website could benefit from some attention to make it look a bit more professional. It might be worth an investment in graphic design just because you do want this to look really good and feel like something bigger than it is currently. And then also, you've got some ads on a few places on the site, which I don't quite understand because for something like this, you want visitors to stay on the site.

You want them to browse the listings. You don't want to necessarily send them somewhere else, even though you might ultimately make a commission for selling something on that external link. So just my thought about that. Just build out the site, focus on the site, do everything you can to provide a great experience for users. So hopefully, we can send some people to check it out.

It's hrlancers.com. Of course, I'm gonna link that up on the show notes page. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. That notes page is sidehustleschool.com/1291. Thank you so much for listening.

Do come back tomorrow. Be sure you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

- From the Onward Project.