Sourcr hit the panic button
It’s certainly been a busy couple of weeks since Shortlist put the cat among the pigeons with their article ($ subscriber link) on 22 February that pointed to the questionable legality of some functionality available to recruitment agency customers of SEEK-owned, Sourcr.
The following day I covered the story on this blog noting the failure of both SEEK and Sourcr to address Shortlist’s questions about the areas of specific concern with respect to Sourcr’s functionality.
These questions concerned the ability of Sourcr’s customers to add titles and star ratings to third-party reviews they upload to Sourcr when these titles and star ratings are not features of the original review (e.g Linkedin recommendations contain neither a heading nor a star rating).
Despite the public radio silence coming from both Sourcr and their owner SEEK, I was curious as to whether Sourcr was taking the matter seriously enough to make the necessary changes.
In pursuit of the answer, I asked the RossClennett.com research team to do some digging and report back.
Here’s their comprehensive report (as of the morning of 9 March):
2nd March changes
- changed “third-party” disclaimer to “unverified”
3rd March changes
- removed third-party review 5 star ratings from recruiter list view
- removed third-party review 5 star ratings from agency list view
- removed third-party review date from recruiter list view
4th March changes
- removed third-party review 5 star ratings from individual candidate review view
- removed third-party review date from agency list view
- removed third-party review 5 star ratings from individual employer review view
- excluded third-party reviews from total review count on recruiter list view
- excluded third-party reviews from total star ratings on agency list view
- excluded third-party reviews from total review count on recruiter list view
- excluded third-party reviews from total star ratings on agency list view
7th March changes
- removed third-party review 5 star ratings for 4 categories in employer review view
- removed third-party review date from individual candidate review view
- removed third-party review date from individual employer review view
Still to do
- remove third-party review title from individual candidate review view
- remove third-party review titles from recruiter list view
- remove third-party review titles from agency list view
- remove third-party review title from individual employer review view
- add third-party original source URL to review view on recruiter and employer fix meta/widget/API code to 3rd parties (eg Google search results, widgets on websites and SEEK ads) that updates review counts, scores etc)
- fix default sorting of reviews by default as they are still ordered by date added
- remove/update third-party reviews that have incorrect details copied
- issue an apology to clients for Sourcr’s functionality that encouraged clients to (unknowingly in nearly all cases, I suspect) breach consumer protection law, risk a fine along with a public naming and shaming
- Self-report to the ACCC
- Offer to enter an enforceable undertaking with the ACCC
- Promptly pay any fine imposed by the ACCC
On the morning of Thursday 9 March Sourcr released a new design.
Unfortunately, the review counts do not reconcile.
For example, let’s look at Susie Andersons’s Sourcr page (screenshot below)
In the profile summary bar (left): “Based on 25 reviews” yet when we view the metrics bar (top): “65 Reviews (Last 12 Months)”
The “65 reviews” includes third-party reviews where dates are unverified so these cannot credibly be included in any tally of “Reviews (Last 12 months)”.
Other examples of review counts not reconciling;
Darren Compton: In the profile summary bar (left): “Based on 11 reviews”; in the metrics bar (top): “52 Reviews (Last 12 Months)”.
Martha Churchill: In the profile summary bar (left): “Based on 20 reviews”; in the metrics bar (top): “40 Reviews (Last 12 Months)”.
Sourcr is desperately trying to recover from the big hot mess they have got themselves, and potentially their customers, into through their ignorance (and/or arrogance – I mean they are now owned by SEEK).
Let’s hope Sourcr does the right thing by ‘fessing up to (and apologising for) their screw up.
They owe the recruitment industry at least that much.
Related blogs
SEEK’s Sourcr under ACCC scrutiny for recruiter reviews
A.I. will change agency recruitment but in an unexpected way
SEEK bets big on Sidekicker but whatever happened to OneShift and Gen George?
Why SEEK’s profitable job board future is assured for a while yet
It’s quite clear they have broken consumer law and given they are now scrambling to fix things, it’s even clearer they know they have too. Guilty by action twice over.
How they have put themselves and their clients in this position of risk is astonishing. I’ve never seen a supplier in over 20 years put their clients at such risk with their actions. Ignorance is no excuse and they should be ashamed.
A platform that talks about trust and reputation, well how can you trust any review and or anything they do now? You are simply putting your business at risk by using the platform. Who knows what else they have done or will do next?
How is it they didn’t know the law in this area already? Scary!
Even if Sourcr do all these things you mention, agencies are still at risk with the ACCC, what do they do?
Yes, it’s hard to believe the ignorance of the law that has been on display here. Executives at both Sourcr and SEEK are asleep at the wheel it seems.
This is very frustrating news and it sounds like there’s more to come or be uncovered.
Reputations take years to build but mere moments to destroy.
Whether deliberate or through sheer incompetence Sourcr has jeopardised our industry reputation, endangered their own clients and damaged themselves and Seeks product team reputations.
Seriously, how can an ASX company of this size with teams of Legal and Product teams have allowed this to occur – not just briefly but continuously and aggressively by the looks of it.
The major trouble is that due to Seeks market power and effective monopoly presumably some of their customers are nervous to shout too loudly for fear of retribution.
I am sure there have been some hard questions being asked inside both companies these past couple of weeks.