Online employment upstart seeks to revolutionize industry
Fort Myers' WorkGiant taking on the big boys
BY EVAN WILLAIMS Florida Weekly Correspondent

PHOTO EVAN WILLIAMS Kevin Romney, left, and his partner, Chris Whitaker, started the Fort Myers-based, national performance based recruiting company, WorkGiant.

As the CEO of a young Fort Myersbased company, WorkGiant, Kevin Romney, the nephew of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said he will "revolutionize" the $14-billion-peryear online employment-service industry.

He called his idea, around which the company revolves, "Performance Based Recruiting." His system allows employers to post available jobs online at no initial cost.

Romney's major competitors are CareerBuilder.com, HotJobs.com and Monster.com.

Monster.com is located in Massachusetts, where Romney's uncle served as governor, balancing the state's books, and reducing unemployment during his four-year term - in part by relying on companies like Monster.com to provide steady jobs.

Romney told his uncle of his business plans last year, he said, at the candidate's 15,000-square-foot "log cabin" in Park City, Utah, a ski resort.

"Mitt had brought the whole family there and apologized up front for any grief (his presidential campaign) would cause the family. Afterwards, I pulled him aside to tell him about WorkGiant. I told him, 'I'm building a company and I plan to take down your Boston-based Monster. com.' I don't know if he was listening when I told him that, but I intend to yank the carpet out from under them. I intend to make good on that promise."

WorkGiant's offices on McGregor Boulevard buzz with a focused, relaxed energy and Romney glides through them casually as if on the way to the ninth-hole on the green.

His partner, Chris Whitaker - a University of Kansas alumnus, an owner in Blu Sushi and several other restaurants and a former CEO of a hurricane shutter manufacturing company - resembles a fit, 52-year-old, high-energy artist. And the team of young software engineers who work full time, coding all the company's software by hand, appear to have stepped from the frames of a film about a glory-bound bunch of geeks who figure out how to be happy and rich at the same time.

Visitors to Romney's office can't miss an industrial-strength pogo stick he picked up while campaigning for his uncle in Iowa not long ago; the thing can leap eight feet or more in the air, which is the metaphorical equivalent of what Romney intends to do with his company, he said. And above his head in his office, he keeps dolls of Superman and James Brown, who can sing on command, "I Feel Good..." Romney himself appears to feel good - he loves competition.

"I want to win," he said. "It's the only thing I really want to do."

Unlike the big boys based in Boston, New York, or Chicago, WorkGiant charges no fee for a company to post its available jobs. Companies pay WorkGiant only upon a successful hire: 1 percent of that hire's annual salary. Those job postings may remain on the site as long as necessary, at no charge.

In contrast, WorkGiant's competitors charge companies up front whether the positions end up being filled or not. Those fees range between $200 and $600 and must be paid on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to keep the posts online.

"These companies are paying for a service often not rendered," Romney said. "There's more than $10 billion wasted dollars every year of employers paying to advertise jobs that never get filled."

There is also a large cross section of jobs - as many as 70 percent of jobs the companies offer, he said - which are never posted online, because the companies don't want to pay the high costs of advertising jobs that may never get filled.

He calls the business model of his competitors, "Pay and Pray."

Other innovations at WorkGiant include benefits for job seekers: if you refer someone to the site who is eventually hired successfully you receive bonuses of $50 to $200.

"Word will spread like wildfire," Romney said.

Also, job seekers have the ability to post resumes anonymously and notify a prospective boss of their personal contact information only when they see fit.

He said his business model will open up the market, allowing both employees and job seekers to find everything they need, all in one place.

"We want the entire country to post jobs on WorkGiant," he said. "We feel that we're the Google of the online employment industry."

WorkGiant is an upstart company in its second year of business. Start-up money, Romney said, comes from investors and other companies who "see the benefit of our business model right out of the gate - even without any track record. And we're still encouraging investors to come aboard."

He and his partner have been on the road to promote the company - places such as St. Louis, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Orlando and Miami Beach. The reactions have been positive, they said.

They are also waiting for $5 to $10 million in funding from Wall Street (something that should happen in the next 60 to 90 days, Romney said).

"I think what I'm building here is huge," he said. "I think what we're building here is really going to help the country."

"We all have a hunch that if you look into the future, this is the model [for the online employment industry]," added Whitaker.

Romney has 14 years of experience in the employee recruitment business, prior to WorkGiant. He recruited computer technicians and engineers for the automotive industry in Detroit, his hometown, then worked there with his former company, AmericanJobs.com, using the "Pay and Pray" business model that he abandoned, and now competes against.

"I actually listened to my clients over the past 10 years and what I hear is, they are really unhappy with the powers that be - paying money up front to big companies to post jobs online for 30 or 60 days."

Romney, 43, is the oldest in a family of five. His father is a corporate lawyer in Detroit and his mother Ronna, ran for the U.S. Senate in the 1996. She lost the election and got out of politics and has just finished building a home on Longboat Key.

"My dad would always leave his corporate contracts around the house and I'd buzz through them," he said. "...I told my mom, 'I feel like this company [WorkGiant] has taken five years off my life' and she told me 'You're gonna get it back. You're going to be very successful.'"

As for the possibility of his uncle being President, he said he was asked by the campaign not to express any political views.

But he added, "I hope I don't have to pay $500 to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom (in the White House). Isn't that what Clinton charged?" ¦