OPINION: Google Hire departing the market somewhat abruptly has left a lot of customers looking for a replacement ATS service.

“We’ve made the difficult decision to sunset Hire by Google on September 1, 2020.” Google Announcement.

There’s a lot of competition in the US for HR and Recruitment software. Google Hire departing the market unexpectedly suggests that best of breed software requires continual investment – something Google didn’t seem willing to provide.   

Google Hire integrates into clients’ G Suite (Gmail, Calendar, Docs etc) to simplify and streamline the recruitment process for Hiring Agencies and small/medium organizations. It launched quietly (without an official announcement from Google) to invited organisations for Beta testing and it certainly is a cost-effective ATS that is well received in the market. The sudden announcement to close it down left many Google Hire customers disappointed and searching for another affordable ATS system. Google has provided a grace period until September 2020 for organizations to find a new provider however it’s still frustrated a lot of people.  Why did such a global giant with multiple resources and funds depart from the recruitment software marketplace?

There are several possibilities:

In 2018 Google Cloud earnt $4 billion which doubled in 2019 to more than $8 billion in revenue. Their plan for 2019 was to triple their salesforce. However, the budget for Google Hire was fairly low, their pricing averaged $200-500 USD and it targeted the small to medium enterprise market which provided a lower profit overall.

Google acquired BeBop in 2015 for approx. $380 million from Diane Greene – Founder of BeBop and VMWare. Two years later they launched Google Hire utilizing aspects of BeBop within its platform and error messages even prompted users to contact the Bebop team.  It has been suggested that Google acquired BeBop to bring in Diane Greene as CEO of Google’s Cloud Division, she certainly proved her worth during her tenure. So some people in the business sector believe that her departure from Google in 2019 precipitated the end of Google Hire.

“They still had to show stakeholders that they didn’t waste the acquisition…but never really did anything with it.” Holger Mueller, Vice President and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research.

Other potential factors for Google’s decision to sunset Hire:

• Like other enterprises that acquires new businesses, Google has discarded it’s fair share of Apps, Services and Hardware.
• Increased customer support was required for bugs and other issues with the platform.
• The effort, time and cost required for building infrastructure for a global partner network.
• Complaints about the Job Search App to the EU Competition Commission and ongoing investigations.
• Google Hire was too much of an effort for what it could generate for Google.

Google Hire never found it customer base and any profits in this sector were minimal. Also if you factor in the competition from other enterprises looking to team up such as Facebook and SAP and Microsoft purchasing LinkedIn perhaps the market was already oversaturated.

If your organization has been caught out by Google Hire shutting down you are probably aware that you have until September 2020 to find another cost effective ATS provider. You can do a Bing or Google Search (the irony) and become overwhelmed by all the adverts from Google Hire’s competitors. Or you can do your own lengthy research on how each provider would suit your individual requirements while avoiding the software cowboys in the Cloud’s Wild West.

How about just relying on a trusted business such as HR Tech Outlook who have already done all the hard work for you. They have just announced their 2020 Top Ten Recruitment Software Providers and we’re proud to announce that QJumpers is on this prestigious list. Our Founder Simon Oldham is even on the cover because they are so impressed with our HR and Hiring software.  Or check out Capterra with the raving reviews – customer responses are often the best way to measure a product.

Christine Luttrell, VP Operations of QJumpers Inc and her team in Dallas, Texas are more than happy to provide a demo to explore our HR Software and AI technology to source hard to find talent. We invest continually in our product and are growing exponentially in America. You can trust that we’ll remain here in the States working with you for years to come – there’s no sunset in QJumpers’ future!

Contact us today for further information.