Adobe uses Behance to target employment and staffing
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Adobe uses Behance to target employment and staffing

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by Jennifer Smith
Adobe uses Behance to target employment and staffing

Adobe Systems is looking to profit from the millions of members that have stored their design portfolios on the Behance site that they purchased. Adobe claims that more than 4 million individuals have posted 7 million portfolio projects on Behance. With this many users and projects, Adobe believes it can provide a service for employers and staffing agencies to locate candidates on Behance. To locate job candidates on their site using advanced search tools and to also post jobs Adobe is charging $399 for a single job post, or $1,500 per month to post an unlimited number of jobs. The job candidates don’t pay to post their profiles or information. Both in-house staffing departments and creative staffing agencies are the target audience. For this to be effective for staffing professionals, they will need to pay Adobe $18,000 per year to post all their jobs, and possibly more for group-level access to the site.

To increase the size of the pool of job candidates, Adobe is promoting the Behance site as a place for artists to showcase their portfolios. With the large number of portfolios Adobe profits by charging companies to  access the site to search for job candidates. The Behance site appears to be shifting into a job site, and possible competitor to LinkedIn. As individuals have become comfortable posting their professional information on LinkedIn, they may expand this to Behance, and Adobe appears willing to charge a premium for access to a pool of qualified creative professionals.

When posting projects to a Behance portfolio, Adobe asks users to indicate the role they had in its completion. Adobe then lets prospective employers search for those who have specific skills. The project-based search function is in addition to standard search filters like those available on LinkedIn, such as schools, companies, and award, Adobe is also mixing some analytics into the job search functions as well, using a Creative Index based upon how users’ content has been curated by other users, and a Creative Graph that recommends possible job candidates based upon hiring preferences. Employers who pay Adobe to post jobs on the site also are able to save prospective candidates for a job, and Adobe uses analytics to create a list of similar candidates.

After receiving Adobe training and learning to use their tools individuals can post their completed work to Adobe’s portfolios. Once only a software company, Adobe is now seeking to become a full part of the careers for creative and design professionals.

About the author

Christopher Smith is president of American Graphics Institute. He is the co-author of Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies and more than 10 other books on design and digital publishing. He served as publisher and editor of the Digital Classroom book series, which has sold more than one million books on topics relating to InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro and other Creative Cloud apps. At American Graphics Institute, he provides strategic technology consulting to marketing professionals, publishers designers, and large technology companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft, and HP. An expert on web analytics and digital marketing, he also delivers Google Analytics classes along with workshops on digital marketing topics. Christopher did his undergraduate studies the at the University of Minnesota, and then worked for Quark, Inc. prior to joining American Graphics Institute where he has worked for more than 20 years.