From the Groupon Era of AI to the Future of Recruiting

Guest Author: Martin Lenz, CEO of Jobiqo

When Tom Tunguz recently described today’s AI boom as “the Groupon Era of AI”, it struck a familiar chord for anyone watching the recruiting technology space.

In the early 2010s, Groupon exploded onto the scene by offering daily deals at lightning speed. Its model spread virally, spawning hundreds of copycats. But most of those players vanished. The reason? While the model was easy to replicate, few could turn that initial burst of distribution into sustainable value.

Today, AI is following a similar trajectory. Dozens of tools appear each month promising to “reinvent” recruiting: AI résumé builders, job description generators, automated interview bots. Trial costs are low, switching is easy, and hype is high. But just like Groupon, many of these will fade once the novelty wears off. Or is simply absorbed into larger platform’s standardised offerings.

Recruitment Adopts Later, But Holds on Longer

If we compare industries, recruitment has always been a late adopter of digital trends:

• Programmatic advertising: Already mainstream in e-commerce years before job boards started to adopt it.

• Mobile-first design: Retail embraced mobile checkouts long before job seekers could apply easily on phones.

• Social media marketing: Consumer brands built strategies around Facebook and Instagram long before recruiters experimented with job ads there.

That slower adoption curve has two consequences for AI:

•  Recruiting will see the AI hype stick around longer than in consumer markets, because many employers and job boards are still just discovering its potential.

• The lag gives an opportunity: players who build infrastructure now will benefit from  sustained demand as the market catches up.

What Lasts in HR Tech: Distribution and Ecosystems

Like in Groupon’s story, the real winners in recruitment won’t be the first flashy AI résumé parser or the nth “AI interview bot.” These are easy to copy.

The lasting value comes from those who:

• Own candidate distribution; e.g. Indeed and Stepstone dominate because of traffic and brand, not just features.

• Build ecosystems around distribution; LinkedIn turned a professional network into a full recruiting, advertising, and learning ecosystem.

• Embed AI where workflows need it most; Stepstone now invests heavily in matching algorithms and conversational AI for job ads; Indeed integrates AI into sourcing and campaign optimization.

This is the evolution from platforms to ecosystems, from being “just a job board” to becoming the infrastructure where candidates, employers, and content interact sustainably.

Examples of AI “Groupon Moments” in Recruiting

We already see patterns that mirror Groupon’s trajectory:

• AI job description generators; dozens of startups and ATS plug-ins offer them. Switching costs are near zero; adoption may fade once the novelty wears off.

• AI video interview bots; once hyped, now questioned by regulators and candidates. Many of the early players have stalled.

• AI sourcing tools; new entrants compete with LinkedIn, but LinkedIn’s scale and distribution are hard to beat.

By contrast, the survivors will be those who tie AI to real distribution power and workflow integration:

• LinkedIn’s AI-assisted job matching works because it sits on top of one billion user profiles.

• Indeed’s “Smart Sourcing” leverages their traffic dominance to improve candidate delivery.

• Stepstone uses conversational AI and data-driven matching to enrich its European ecosystem.

• Jobs.de (powered by Jobiqo) is on track to fill the void left by Monster Germany by combining strong brand distribution with modern AI-enabled workflows.

How Jobiqo Helps Clients Ride the Wave

At Jobiqo, we see our role not as building a “flashy AI tool” but as enabling job boards, publishers, and recruitment platforms to evolve into ecosystems:

• Jobiqo AIR (Automated Intelligent Reach) automates intelligent reach across aggregators, Google, and social media.

• AI-powered Search & Match improves candidate experience and employer ROI by delivering relevance.

• A modular and flexible platform enables clients to grow from simple job postings to full-service recruiting ecosystems with branding, candidate databases, and programmatic ad tools.

• Partnerships (e.g. with whatchado.com or kombo.dev) combine engaging video content with AI distribution, giving platforms unique hooks to stand out.

This is how short-term AI hype becomes long-term recruiting infrastructure.

Closing Thought

The “Groupon Era of AI” reminds us that hype waves come and go. In recruitment, the wave may last longer than in e-commerce, but the lesson remains the same.

The winners will not be those with the flashiest AI demo. They will be the ones who own distribution, embed AI into workflows, and evolve from platforms into recruiting ecosystems.

That’s the future Jobiqo is building together with our clients.