talentReef has announced Richard Crawford as its President and CEO. The announcement comes after an extensive search process to find a SaaS leader with the right experience. Crawford built and grew SambaSafety by more than 30x during his tenure as CEO at the driver safety solutions company.
He stepped down two years ago. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he has spent the last two years as an “Investor, Advisor and Board Member.” John P Raeder Jr, talentReef Chairman, who acquired talentReef in 2017 with Frontier Capital commented: “Rich is a proven CEO and has done an outstanding job scaling and leading other SaaS companies. Rich is a great fit with the talentReef mission. The Board and I are confident that Rich is the right person to build on the momentum talentReef has gained over the last few years.”
talentReef provides a social recruiting and talent management solution for the hourly workforce. It has continued to grow steadily since its acquisition but has not reached its potential. Crawford brings a deep experience of building a national SaaS organization from SambaSafety and it is this growth that the board will look to him to replicate. What he doesn’t appear to have experience of is international growth. This may mean that the board has no ambitions to expand beyond the US borders in the short term. Alternatively it may be the carrot that lured Crawford into the role.
Crawford commented: “It is a tremendous honor to serve as the CEO of talentReef. We have an exceptionally talented team that is focused on innovating and transforming the way companies recruit to retain their hourly workforce. I am committed to delivering the highest quality solutions to our customers that are easy to implement and easy to use.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Crawford has been set clear objectives by the board. Michael Ramich, Partner of Frontier Capital and talentReef Board of Directors member said: “We are enthusiastic about talentReef’s momentum and confident that Rich is the right leader to guide our next phase of growth.”
talentReef faces growing competition from the more traditional HR vendors that are beginning to extend their reach into social recruiting. Talemetry recently partnered with Infor. The integration of that combined with Infor Talent Science provides just one potential threat to the hoped for growth.
What will be interesting is to see how talentReef looks to expand its reach. It already works with more than 70,000 sites but it will need to retain those and grow faster, bringing in candidates that make the platform sticky. The mobile optimised platform delivers Social Recruiting, ATS, Onboarding, Training and Development, Performance Management, and Analytics. In recent months, talentReef has issued few announcements about either growth or product development. Will that cadence now change under Crawford?
