CareerBeacon Acquires Ruutly with Yves Boudreau and Ryan Porter

CareerBeacon, the leading online recruitment and talent acquisition site in Atlantic Canada, announced yesterday its acquisition of the employer branding platform, Ruutly.

Ruutly powers 13,000+ job postings and 4000+ social share images and is currently active in 35+ countries and 12+ languages. Ruutly's visual job posting transformations have improved its clients' quarterly job posting view rates by up to 54% and apply click rates by as much as 152%.

CareerBeacon’s acquisition of Ruutly will enable more companies to highlight their employer brand with ease and where it matters most: the job posting

Yves Boudreau, CareerBeacon founder and CEO says the acquisition of Ruutly's technology and hire of the company's Founder and CEO, Ryan Porter, is a core part of its investment in continuing to push the need forward in recruitment with visual, contextualized job postings that are proven to make better connections with job seekers.

Listen to this conversation Bill Banham had with Ryan and Yves a few days before the big announcement. Hear firsthand what they have to say about the acquisition and what it means for today’s HR and recruitment space.

About CareerBeacon

CareerBeacon is one of Canada's leading recruitment and talent acquisition sites dedicated to supporting employers in finding and managing fresh new talent and helping job seekers find great career opportunities. For more information, please visit careerbeacon.com.

About Ruutly

Ruutly is an employer branding platform for talent acquisition and recruitment teams looking to align their job postings with the consumer expectations of candidates. Ruutly empowers employers to create meaningful candidate experiences in every one of their job postings. For more information, please visit ruutly.com.

 

We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.   

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the HR Chat podcast, bringing the best of the HR talent and leadership communities to you. For more episodes and the latest articles covering what's new in the world of work, visit hr gazette.com. Subscribe and follow us on social media.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat podcast. I'm your host today, Bill Banham, and in today's vendor profile special, I welcome back two of my favorite movers and shakers in the HR and recruitment tech space. To talk about some big breaking news, career beacon, the leading online recruitment and talent acquisition site in Atlantic Canada announced yesterday its acquisition of the employer branding platform. Rootly Rootly powers over 13,000 job postings and over 4,000 social share images, and it's currently active in more than 35 countries. And in more than 12 languages, without extra work by recruiters, Rootly automatically transforms static text job postings into interactive, delightful candidate experiences. Whenever a new job is added to a company's ATS and has been helping brands such as Indigo, Halon, gsk, Siemens, and co job bring their job postings to life group Beacon's, acquisition of rootly will enable more companies to highlight their employment brand with ease and where it matters the most. The job posting Eve Boudreau, Career Beacon, founder and CEO, says that the acquisition of root release technology and the higher of the company's founder and ceo, Ryan Porter, is a core part of its investment in continuing to push the needle forward in recruitment with visual contextualized job postings that are proven to make better connections with job seekers. I got a chance to sit down with Eve and with Ryan a few days before the big announcement. Here's what they had to say about the acquisition, what it means for today's HR and recruitment space. Plus they share some plan for 2023, including a bit of an exclusive announcement. Now, I really had a great time catching up with even Ryan, and I hope that you enjoy this conversation too. Lovely to have you back on the show today. Welcome.

Speaker 3: 2:12

Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks so much for having us on this.

Speaker 2: 2:15

So, listeners, uh, you may be familiar with, uh, even Ryan, who'd been on the show before, uh, in, in Eve's case, it wasn't that long ago. It was around about a year ago in Brian's case. Haven't heard from him for, for a bit. So it, it's nice to get these guys back on and chit chatting, and we've got some big news for you today. But before we get into that, let's start with the basics. Um, how about you guys? Take a minute or so each and reintroduce yourselves to our listeners. Ryan, why don't you go first followed by.

Speaker 3: 2:44

Sure. Yeah. So it's Ryan. Uh, I am the CEO and founder of rootly, uh, former CEO and founder of rootly. And, uh, you know, we'll get to what my current role is right now, I'm guessing at some point during the, the, the podcast, but hopefully that'll be a be a little bit of a teaser of, uh, some of the things that'll be coming up. Um, I'm from Toronto, you know, born and raised just outside of Toronto a few years ago. Moved out here to the beautiful East coast to a small town called Grand Bear, Schwa, uh, where, uh, there's probably more deer than people. Uh, we wanted to escape the, uh, the, the city for a little while. And, uh, yeah, so we jumped out here to the East Coast and actually, uh, in two weeks we will be moving to another part of the world. Uh, we'll be heading out to Okinawa, Japan, uh, as our next destination for, uh, for a couple of years. Um, but I've been in the space, the HR space, uh, specifically talent acquisition, uh, recruitment marketing, employer branding, all that fun stuff for the past eight or nine years. Um, live and breathe job postings, employer branding and, and candidate experience. Um, as you know, Bill, you know, we've, we've chatted, we've been at a lot of the same events in Toronto, um, but just super stoked to be back on the show.

Speaker 2: 3:51

And, uh, I just wanna add to that, uh, Ryan's actually spoken at one of the events I've produced, um, under the brand of Innovate work. He was fantastic, very engaging and has the best hair in the world of hr, in my opinion.

Speaker 3: 4:05

Oh, thank you for that.

Speaker 2: 4:07

<laugh> enough of Ryan Eve, tell our listeners all about yourself.

Speaker 4: 4:11

That should be your still frame. Uh, for if you want to get a lot more listeners to the podcast, just put Ryan's hair on there,<laugh>.

Speaker 3: 4:18

So,

Speaker 4: 4:19

Um, yeah, so my name is Eve Woodrow. Uh, I am the co-founder and CEO of Alongside, uh, alongside, started off as a, as an applicant tracking system, uh, for small businesses. Um, we've had some, some success with it over the years, similar to Ryan. I've been in the space for close to 10 years now as far as, uh, uh, as far as just doing a deep dive and, and trying to understand the challenges that the space, the, and the opportunities of the space. Um, and then, and then as you, um, as you alluded to, I was on the podcast, uh, a few months ago, uh, to announce the acquisition of Career Beacon. Uh, and so since December of last year, I've been also the CEO of, of Career began, and, uh, and we've ever since been, uh, growing the team and then trying to, uh, to merge all of these, uh, these great, um, products and, and technologies together into, uh, a singular experience. Um, yeah, and I'm a big metal head and I love cats and dogs and cats. Now. I kind of switched. I used to be Cats first, Dog Seconds, now it's kind of Dogs first.

Speaker 2: 5:25

Yeah, I'm kind of a dog's first to kind of guide myself actually. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I gonna say. Okay. So the purpose of today's conversation is to share a big announcement with the world of HR talent and leadership. Ryan, I'm gonna give you the opportunity here to sort of tell listeners a little bit about what this acquisition looks like before Eve then, uh, goes into more detail. But, um, as part of, as part of your answer now, why don't you just start by explaining how you guys met, and then on the back of that, how this acquisition came about.

Speaker 3: 6:02

So, um, actually as I moved out here from Toronto, I moved out here with like, no existing network. Um, we just knew we wanted a breath of fresh air, like, quite literally. So we moved out to nature. And, uh, as I got out here and, and got settled, uh, I found that there was an innovation, uh, center, uh, that was recommended to me by the good people at Mars in Toronto, um, to connect with when I, when I got boots on the ground out here, uh, and I connected with them. They're called Vin, ve Innovation. And, uh, you know, they, they said that the first person that I need to talk to in this space, uh, was Eve. And so, like, literally, I think it was like week number three of me being on the East coast, knowing nobody, um, where I've shot Eve an email saying, Hey, I think we're in the same space. Uh, I've been told to reach out to you. Do you wanna go and grab a coffee or a beer and have a chat? And so that's kind of like, honestly how it started. It started me reaching out, just being like, Hey, we're in the same space. Let's go chop it up for a little bit. Um, just, just learn, Right? Uh, I was keen on expanding my network out here, I guess not expanding, starting a network out here. Uh, and it just so happened that the first person that, uh, I met was ye

Speaker 4: 7:13

So, and the first thing I responded to Ryan was like, Get out of my space.

Speaker 3: 7:18

<laugh><laugh>.

Speaker 4: 7:20

No, I, uh, I was excited actually to have someone, um, uh, it, it's funny enough, but Moncton actually has like, uh, a few HR companies here, um, and one of them sold recently. Um, there's also Vic Recruiter that some of your listeners would probably be familiar with. So there's actually kind of a bit of a HR tech nucleus here for whatever reason. We all just love people so much. So I think that's the reason. But, um, no, we, uh, when, uh, when I got introduced to Ryan, um, yeah, we, it was pretty informal. I think we, uh, we just went out for, for beer and a bite to eat, and it became really apparent that, um, that Ryan had like such a passion for the industry, which honestly is kind of sometimes rare to find, like people who really care about the industry, the way that I felt. I cared about the industry and the way that, um, and Ryan was one of the few people that ex exuded that excitement and just, uh, and you could tell it was someone who was really, um, had spent many, many, many hours trying to understand, you know, what makes a great candidate experience and, and why it's important. And, uh, and from that point on, like I knew right away, like, Okay, this is someone I wanna work with in the future, um, when the time is right. And that was the only question was around when is going to be the right time? Uh, because we both had our respective companies at different stages of, of, of their life cycles. So it was like trying to find the overlap to make that work was, was kind of where we left Off.

Speaker 5: 8:47

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Speaker 2: 9:18

Okay. Eve, now talk to us a bit about the acquisition, what's the fit? And then as part of that answer as well, perhaps you can, you can suggest what the acquisition means for Career Beacon and its future.

Speaker 4: 9:29

Yes, absolutely. Um, so, so the first thing, um, as soon as, uh, as you know, I was on this podcast before the C Begin acquisition, uh, less than a year ago. And, uh, and as I alluded to just earlier, is we, Ryan and I, were just trying to find what is the right moment for us to, to work together. And as soon as, as soon as it was obvious that we were able, we were gonna be able to acquire Career Begin, Ryan was the first person that I reached out to, um, as far as wanting to have him part of our team, and also, uh, to look at Ruth Lee as far as how it fits into, uh, our overall goals for career. Because for us, like Career Beacon was the first step of many steps, um, to create a much better experience, uh, for our employers and job seekers and, and the way that employers, uh, show up as well as the experience that job seekers get on the, on our platform. So, um, so Ruth Lee, from a technology standpoint, checks a lot of those boxes. Um, but more importantly for me was, was it was bringing in the passion and the energy that Ryan has for our industry, which is not always easy to find. Uh, but Ryan, absolutely, every fiber of his core is focused on, on creating a better, uh, a better job seeker experience. And, and the passion that he has is just infectious. And, and so, so for us, I was like, Okay, well, let's do this acquisition. But I was a little bit burnt out from having negotiated with the, for the Caribbean acquisition, which took about nine months to get done and had the pretty deep due diligence process. Um, and so for Ryan, we, you know, uh, we agreed to like, let's, let's move forward on having you join our team. Uh, and then let's, let's start the process. Let's wait a few months just so I can, we can breed because we also have to do the, the transition of career beaconing and, and, and merge those things together. And there's so much work to do. So we're just like, let's agree that we're gonna get it done, which is always a great sign of being able to have trust between two parties when they can just agree, like on a handshake that, hey, this is gonna happen. Uh, but then we started the legal process in March. Uh, it took a couple of months to do the due diligence, um, and finalize the process a few weeks ago and, and, uh, and, and signed a deal. Uh, and now, and now Ryan is, is our head of product today, which I couldn't be more excited about.

Speaker 2: 11:47

Hey, Ryan. Uh, as, as the new head of products, not Hair products, just product, you must be excited about the future of Career Beacon and, and what Root Leads technology can do. Can you give us some hints on what you expect in, in the product roadmap?

Speaker 3: 12:03

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So like, just take a half a step back here and, you know, if you've heard me speak about this kind of stuff at any given point in time since like 2016 onwards, I've been talking a lot about how like the only, the only group of people who refer to job seekers as job seekers and as candidates, and you know, this candidate experience, they're people that are in the industry, right? And the reason that's important to call out is because job seekers are consumers, right? Their consumers, they don't go into a candidate experience saying, Well, now I'm going into a candidate experience. Let me lower all of my expectations and, uh, and just submit to this, you know, subpart experience that I've been primed for as a can, uh, as a consumer for decades. And so what I'm really excited about is the opportunity to be part of this marketplace where we can start to align the candidate and job seeker experience with consumer expectations. Like that's the whole reason that Rootly existed in the first place. It was to carry over some of those consumer experiences and deposit them in the most, like the most critical and basic component of the candidate journey, which was the job posting, right? It's the reason that companies like GSK and Halon and Siemens and, uh, Indigo and Coach Hub were using rootly. It was to add, um, that, that that wonderful consumer centric candidate experience to their job postings. Um, and so what I'm most excited about is now having this marketplace to be a part of where we have a great core of customers who are advertising jobs on Career Beacon and who are quite frankly looking for more and looking for different ways to tell their employer brand story and communicate their employer value proposition in new and interesting ways. And so that's what I'm most excited about, is being able to take a little bit of what I've learned, uh, at Rootly and aligning those consumer expectations with candid experience, and now being able to have a little bit of a larger sandbox to play in.

Speaker 2: 14:02

Wonderful. Thank you very much. Eve Career Beacon alongside, and now with Rootly that you guys are growing very, very quickly. Um, how, how can leaders in your experience, how, how can leaders maintain a sense of company culture and the collective purpose when an organization is scaling so quickly?

Speaker 4: 14:24

That's a great question, Bill. Um, this is something that I've always, uh, it's always been important. Um, and, and I don't know that I, I, I intentionally do anything differently about how I lead the team and how other people lead the team in the organization. Um, I think it's just, it, it just, I just remain who I am. Like I don't compromise who I am as an individual. And that means like, uh, you know, transparency, it sounds cliche, but honestly it's just being authentic, uh, transparency and, and, uh, and just a lot of empathy. And, um, I think if you check those three boxes, like as a leader and, and you make sure that your other leaders in India organization always have that as part of their, uh, their motto, like it needs to be, um, it'll, the culture will, will just propagate itself. Like it will continue to, um, it will continue to, to spread at, regardless of how, how your organization grows. So we went from four employees to now 21, which isn't like, there's obviously companies that scaling even faster than that. But as a, as a, as those being foundational employees that build up everything else that we're gonna do in the future, like those are, are key critical, uh, pieces on the team. And so I shouldn't even say pieces on the team cause that's not great for culture, but those are, you know, key individuals that, that essentially forge, uh, our company culture for the future. Um, so for me it's always been about, it goes back to just being transparent, being authentic, uh, and being empathetic to everyone on a team, and understanding that everyone has different challenges and, and being supportive on how I can help them elevate their games, right? Um, because when people grow and when people learn new things, like, it's just exciting to see that growth within those individuals to see like where they were when they first joined the organization and seeing them a year later. That's the most exciting part for me.

Speaker 2: 16:17

And and why is that? I mean, yeah, you're, you're a genuine guy. I, I, I've gotten to know you a little bit and I, and I, I can sense that, but did you have, did you have mentors earlier in your career? Did you have leaders earlier in your career that, that treated you in that kind of fashion and inspired you to treat others in the same way?

Speaker 4: 16:35

Yeah, I definitely did. Um, I would say like, I mean, even getting into this industry and, and, you know, raising money and, and, uh, traveling to San Francisco for a few months to, uh, to learn about how to, uh, scale companies and acquiring companies, Those are the things I've, I didn't, I mean, I went in to college in multimedia, so I didn't, I didn't know how to do those things. So I've had people along the way that have just, I've, I've always been extremely generous with their time, um, and, and caring. And even though that they've had millions of things on their plates, like always, you know, very available. Um, and so for me, like I try to, uh, I try to carry myself with a lot of those same qualities. Um, so, so yeah, I, I, I tend to, I tend to pick a lot of the good things about the people that I meet. And when I see something in terms of how they, how they run their own organizations and the things that they do, then I'm like, Okay, what can I learn from that? And what can I apply to, to our own, our own business? Um, but at the end of the day, it's just being a good human is what it comes down to.

Speaker 2: 17:38

I fully respect that. Okay, Ryan, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw a couple questions at you now, but, um, I'm gonna switch things up as I sometimes do on this show, and I'm gonna challenge you, sir, to answer each of these, these questions in 60 seconds or less. What, Bill, that's not fair.

Speaker 3: 17:54

<laugh>,

Speaker 2: 17:55

We can try. Okay. So first one, Ryan, it, it, it's hard to attract talent at the moment. Of course. What's working with job postings in 2022? And what are your predictions for next year?

Speaker 3: 18:07

Yep. So 60 seconds less, I can probably do a lot less on that, and I'll spend most of the time just talking about how quick I can do it, because what's working with job postings, like literally what's working with job postings at the moment, empathy, like, that's it, right? Like, I think that's lost so often, and we forget that like, this isn't just part of the process for the people who are on the other end of that, They're real individuals is you're human beings. They're people that, um, you're asking to make a life change and you're throwing a bunch of bullet points and a wall of text at them. Like, let's just show a little bit of empathy in what they're experiencing on the other end of that job posting.

Speaker 2: 18:42

This guy's such a pro, Not only does he have beautiful hair, but he is got all the answers as well.<laugh>. Okay. Let's try<laugh>, let's try a bigger question then. See if you can answer this one. Is 60 seconds or less, Ryan, uh, what, what do you see as the biggest challenge we face in HR tech and recruiting right now?

Speaker 3: 18:59

Yeah, so I think a lot of people want me to talk about economy, quiet, quitting, whatever buzzwords are going on right now. Unfortunately, though, Bill, I'm gonna go the boring route. And I will say it's actually the same answer as number seven. It's empathy. Empathy is the biggest challenge that we face in HR tech and recruiting, because again, we're forgetting on the other end of this as human beings, every other industry where people are making a life choice, like buying a house, finding a life partner, raising a child, uh, buying a car, they have these wonderful, thoughtful, empathetic experiences that support people as they're going through those decisions. But for some reason, the life choice of switching careers or entering the workforce or reentering the workforce is not given the same level of respect and empathy that these other industries get. And so I think that it's, it's the biggest challenge. It's just remembering that, like, I know it's so cliche, but like the first word in human resources is human. And without showing empathy to the people that are on the other end of that, we're gonna miss the mark again and again,

Speaker 4: 20:02

There's your snippet,

Speaker 2: 20:05

<laugh>, there's your snippet. Okay. Uh, thank you very much. So that was a great snippet. Now I am determined to get some kind of an exclusive from you guys. Okay. Before we wrap up this interview today. Um, so this interview is going live the day after the announcement. Um, so that's not quite an exclusive, so I need something, Eve you mentioned to me, uh, before we hit record today that you guys have got some, some other big news. You've got an amazing event happening May 25th, 2023 in Beautiful Halifax. Please, sir, will you share as an exclusive with our listeners a little bit about that event?

Speaker 4: 20:42

Yes. So you are correct. We do have an event on, on May 25th at, uh, Pier 21 in Halifax. And, uh, if you haven't been, it's, it's beautiful. It's right on the water, and it's, it's probably one of the, my favorite venues in, uh, in Atlanta, Canada. So, um, yeah, we, we wanted to, uh, we wanted to an opportunity, uh, we want, as soon as we did the acquisition for Career Beacon, we just went straight to work and the operational side of things and just getting everything, you know, running as best as we could with, uh, and scaling our team. Um, but we wanted an opportunity to reintroduce, uh, ourselves to, to our community and to, and to, you know, the, the different, um, the different industry, um, uh, folks that we have here and, and, and show career, beginning with a different light show that, you know, it's now run by a team who actually cares about the industry that we're in and cares about our customers and cares about creating, uh, great experience for job seekers. And, um, and so we wanted to create this event, which is, uh, the event is not a at all in money generation event for us. Um, any, any type of proceeds that we, we make from the event, we're actually going to, uh, use them for, uh, for, uh, bursaries, uh, school bursaries. So, um, so that'll be announced once we have a better idea of like what, uh, what that finality is gonna look like. But for us, the event is about giving back to the community. So we're gonna bring some really great speakers. Uh, we've confirmed Tim Socket as the keynote, but we're also going to have additional, uh, speakers that'll be announced in the coming weeks. Uh, and, and, and we'll be there as well. And we'll, we'll be there to basically show how career Beacons going to be evolving, uh, with this acquisition of Ruth Lee, with the team that we're putting together, and how, uh, how they can expect a different version of us in the future.

Speaker 2: 22:25

Excellent. I love an exclusive and, uh, uh, you should totally attend that guys if you can, because Tim Sackett is a wonderful speaker. He was involved with me and a guy called Chris Bailey in, uh, relaunching Disrupt HR London earlier this year and in July, 2022. He is very entertaining, very engaging. Before we wrap up for today, how, how can, how can our listeners connect with each of you? Uh, so is that through email, LinkedIn, maybe? Really cool, and you're all over TikTok, et cetera. Ryan, why don't you go first?

Speaker 3: 22:54

Yeah, Simply email career beacon ryan career beacon.com. Um, ryan rootly.com is still there, so you can email me there and then, you know, I respond to every single message that I receive on LinkedIn. So send me a message, connect, let me know how I can be helpful, call me out, uh, ask me questions, whatever I can do to, to join the conversation and lend a hand or lend a voice.

Speaker 4: 23:14

Yeah, the easiest place to reach me is on I cq

Speaker 2: 23:18

<laugh>.

Speaker 4: 23:20

No, LinkedIn is probably where I'm most responsive as well. So I typically tend to, uh, unless they're paid message, paid InMail messages, I typically respond to anyone who reaches out to me on, on LinkedIn. So, uh, so that, that's what I would suggest as the, the best approach.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Perfect. And of course, as always, there will be links in the show notes and the associated post on the hr, so you can, you can check out those and connect with Ryan and Eve

Speaker 4: 23:46

There, and a photo of, and a photo of Ryan's hair for everyone to be able to reference, uh, how I

Speaker 3: 23:52

Should've wore a hat today. I should've wore a hat. 100%. I should've been wearing a hat today.

Speaker 2: 23:56

So I think, I think that needs to be the profile picture for this interview. Just Ryan's hair, nothing else. Let's do that. Um, I agree. Ryan, Ryan Eve, that just leads me to say for today, guys, thank you very much for being my guests on this special episode of the HR Chat Show.

Speaker 4: 24:12

Thanks for having us, Bill. It was awesome.

Speaker 3: 24:14

Thanks, Bill. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 24:17

And listeners, as always, until next time, happy working.

Speaker 1: 24:22

Thanks for listening to this episode of vh our chat podcast. There are hundreds of conversations with business experts available for free on the h or Gazette website, Apple, Spotify, and all the main platforms. And remember to like, subscribe and follow us on social media.