Why PropTech Needs a Job Board
And how we built it
I’m always encouraged when I attend events in our industry. Seeing the attendees at this Fall’s Blueprint and OPTECH events has confirmed what I think most of us suspected - our industry is growing.
And while that is certainly a net positive, it also creates challenges that need new solutions.
5 or 10 years ago, all of us knew each other, knew our companies, LPs, customers, etc. Word of mouth and a single email would connect you with most people. Now, there are an embarrassing number of startups, investors, and customers that I have never heard of.
So how do we track all the new people coming into our space?
Or where do we send them once they decide they want to join our little part of the world?
Historically, we would send them to a VC and their job board -
“Maybe you can work at one of these portfolio companies?”
Or we would put them on one of the newsletters in our space that highlights open roles -
“Check out this newsletter. It has jobs at the bottom.”
The problem with that approach is it always ended up being too narrow for most people. You’d have to hope that a VC happened to have a role in a company that fits your expertise. Or maybe, MAYBE run across one of the 5 roles at the end of a newsletter.
Not a great way to help most people.
FIRE thought we could help with that.
We exist to serve the industry. We want to catalyze stewardship and sustainable innovation in real estate and construction tech.
In this case, that means we build a job board that serves the ENTIRE industry.
Not just a single fund.
Not just a single startup.
All funds and all startups. Everywhere.
Hopefully, we just did that. (Or started to . . .)
As of this writing, there are almost 4,000 open jobs on the job board!
If that’s all you need to know, check it out here. If you need the URL, it is ProptechTalent.org and you can also see it on the FIRE website at Careers.InnovateRE.org.
If you want to hear more about how it works and how we plan to grow it, read on . . .
How It Works
Getro has been on my radar for a while as a company who builds job boards. That’s all they do and several VCs use them to populate their own job boards.
They basically scrape websites for open jobs every day so that you get the most up-to-date openings possible.
Since we know many (most?) of the hiring companies in this space, we are able to point the scrapers towards the most relevant companies. To start, we have about 200 companies currently listed on the board and will be adding more over time.
Now, one of unique things about PropTech us it’s bigger and more siloed than you think it is.
ConTech people don’t really overlap much with ResiTech people.
So we added custom filters:
First, you can filter by sub-industry - CRETech, ConTech, or ResiTech.
Second, you can filter by property type - Residential, Office, Retail, Multifamily, Hotel, Industrial, Other, or None of the Above.
(Side Note - These are my interpretation of who these guys sell to. I probably messed some of them up so feel free to send me a note and we can adjust labels and filters)
There is also a section exclusively for talent and job-seekers.
You can input your details and links into this part of the site so that you are “findable” to employers who are looking. It takes under 3 minutes and you can sign up here.
Future
We have all kinds of ideas and plans for the future of this program. We have concepts around video resumes, AI-assisted placement, salary transparency, and plenty of other things.
For now, we just need people to use it.
Once people use it, we can boost the budget with paid postings and THEN we can start building new features.
So, my ask of you is - go check it out. Sign up. Use it and give me feedback.
We’ll make it better over time. As it grows, we’ll make more income and then we can build more features.
I’m looking forward to hearing what you guys think.
To learn more about the idea and why we partnered with LMRE, the preeminent recruiting firm in the industry, listen to this brief podcast I had with Louisa Dickens.
