Interview with Jonathan Hedvat, CEO of CreativeJobCentral
Creative Job Central is a job site for creative oriented jobs,
such as artists, writers and photographers. Jobs can be posted for free,
which encourages a much broader and wider range of jobs than other sites which
charge the job poster. The website is www.creativejobscentral.com
Hi Jonathan, great to have you on NYCInterviews. Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?
Back in the day I was a finance major in Rutgers University. I got a fall finance internship at the World Trade Center for the summer. I think it my third day when I got out of the Path and was hit by a strong smell of Gas. Looking up I saw the towers on fire, and narrowly escaped with my life in the ensuing collapse.
I was pretty shook up by that experience and spent the next several months working as a bus boy at a local restaurant. At that time my mother told me how one could import pocketbooks from Italy and sell them locally at a small profit. In the course of that effort, I discovered I could sell select pocketbooks at a deep discount from local department stores and then sell them on EBay at a profit.
About this time, making about 10K a month, my friend went to a bar mitzvah and found himself sitting next to Craig Newmark, creator of CraigsList. Inspired by what he was telling me about his startup (at the time) I decided to do the same. I tried to start a website with a friend but it didn’t work out due to creative differences. Still, I wanted to do a website and as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I created bigapplehead.com, a Craigs List clone focused on New York City.
In running bigapplehead.com, I found the biggest draw was that people could post jobs for free. I tried to monetize this by charging companies, but my volume of postings dropped significantly. I then decided to try charging the job searchers, and had much greater success. With that, I created creativejobscentral.com, focused on artistic and creative types of jobs and I’ve been going strong at it ever since.
How long did it take to get the website up and running?
It didn’t take much time at all to get the website up, as there was nothing incredibly complex about the technology. Maybe two weeks all said and done. I’ve spend a lot more time fine-tuning the website – it’s a constantly evolving organism. It currently gets about 350 new job postings a day and currently lists 20 thousand high quality jobs.
What’s it like being in charge of a site where people can find their dreams?
It’s great being part of a process which has such a huge impact on people’s lives. I certainly learn that everyone has a different passion and dreams through user feedback. As such, I try to create a place to have dreams fulfilled in unique areas of the website.
How about the companies the jobs are from, do you interact with them at all?
We certainly try to see where the greatest need from the job searchers is. We’ll then solicit companies based on that need and ask them to post jobs if they can meet that need.
What’s the biggest challenge you’re currently facing?
People don’t have jobs but don’t want to spend money on the service.
What’s your competitive difference with all the other job sites out there?
We focus a lot more heavily on producing a product the job seeker wants and by offering jobs they are looking for.
Tell us a bit about what it’s like to run a small business. Is it a 9-5 job or are you always on?
You’re your own boss so you can spend as much or as little time as you want on the company. With that said, there are always little fires to deal with, and if you aren’t attentive those can grow into big fires. You also are able to better understand and solve the problems your company is having the more time you spend on it. It could be a 9-5 job, but it certainly won’t prosper as much that way as it could.
I understand you go to a lot of speaker’s series – what’s your favorite speaker?
Martha Stewart, she loves what she does and shared a lot of wisdom both about business and life. She’s a perfect illustration of how important it is to love your job. I also like Mark Cuban because I resonate more with him, he’s very smart but very down to earth and personable.
I’m sure you browse through the jobs – what’s the most interesting job you’ve seen posted so far; one you called your friends up and told them about?
One job in particular caught my eye. It was a job making sure that bar tenders weren’t giving away free drinks to their friends. Effectively, workers would get paid to sit at the bar for a few hours, shoot the breeze, and make sure the bartender was behaving.
What are your future plans with the site – any big features coming down the road?
Recently we added 200 more industry categories. There isn’t much in there yet but we’re looking forward to seeing the interest in those new industries – very exciting. We feel we have a great model, and look forward to it succeeding in other sectors.
A lot of people are struggling to find jobs now – what words of advice would you offer to them?
Only apply to jobs that fit you that make you happy and focus on those rather than wasting your time on jobs you’re not a good fit for. If you have any questions for Jonathan, email jhedvat@creativejobscentral.com
You have one question you can ask me, what is it?
What do you think we should do which could be better?
It would be great you could show the relative supply and demand of jobs in sectors and industry. An example of this would be in jobs for programmers. It would be great to see a bar chart of job listings for those positions, and the applicants for those positions. This would also be very nice information to have when negotiating salary on both sides.
Related to this it would be great to see how many applications there have been for each position. I know I would much rather apply for a position with a few applications, rather than one hundred.
Dave Blake, the interviewer, is a serial
entrepreneur with a long history of helping consult small
companies.
He's had a thriving photography studio for the last several
years called www.daveblakephotography.com. He
currently is working on several new ideas while actively
consulting several startup companies. Dave has a passion
helping business owners realizing their dream of creating their
life's dream. You can read more about his services at http://www.dmbenterpriseconsulting.com
