What Would Happen if Job Boards Became Obsolete?
Posted by JasonBy Jason Buss.
For RSS and e-mail subscribers it should come as no surprise I am not a big fan of most job boards - that is - the way that they are typically used by most organizations and candidates. For new readers, welcome, and here are a couple of posts to set the stage:
- Seriously, this is the candidate experience in a web 2.0 world?
- Reasons to slash your job board spend by 30% to 50% today!
Since most job boards are not effective, it wouldn’t be a big loss if they were obsolete. Don’t believe me (or you work for a board)? Here are five examples of problems today with some of the boards:
- For the most part, candidates need to register on the job board and then at some point, register on your career site. So, let’s build up their database, and pay to access it. Wouldn’t an agency model make sense for corporate recruiting functions? Your database and competitive intelligence is your goldmine, and the starting point for everything.
- For organizations that do not use branding templates for their postings, the job listings are filled with clutter and paid advertising. Again, the board is the winner here.
- They become a crutch for Recruiters, and give a bad rap to some recruiting functions… We’ve all heard about “posting and praying”. Well, there is a bright side - agencies stay in business with the current model.
- For some organizations and job postings, it is too easy for unqualified candidates to apply. This creates clutter and unnecessary work in the system.
- Without an effective tracking system, it is nearly impossible to track the effectiveness of your job board spend and ROI. As an example: A candidate, like the 100 million that did last month, start their job search on google. They enter “financial analyst job, new york“. Take a look at just the first page and the results. Out of the first 10 results, 9 of them are from different job sites. So when the candidate clicks on one and eventually applies to your opening, where does the credit go? Google, the job board, your corporate site, site aggregators? The fact of the matter is there are thousands of job boards, and they’re not all listed on your site (if you are still asking candidates the source). And if you are, experts agree, that 90% of the data is not accurate. Take the example above - what would the candidate say the source was? They may have seen the job on a networking site or received a call from a contact before even going online to search.
The impact of job boards becoming obsolete (which they’re not anytime soon) would change recruiting as we know it. Have they made hiring quality talent more effectively and efficiently?
There are boards that continue evolving with changing technology, and they do deserve some credit.
What can you do? Be an innovator. Start testing the waters with alternative online recruiting methods before your competition. The other alternative is do your homework, prove the decline in site traffic, quality hires, and hiring ratio’s to negotiate a better deal. You may be surprised and save the 30% to 50% right there, and everything else becomes self funded.
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July 21st, 2008 at 3:57 am
Most job boards use the same pay to post model. Since there are many new sites that offer risk free posting where you only pay when they find you a candidate, I doubt most of the pay to post sites will survive. heres are an article about it on the recruiters lounge -
http://www.therecruiterslounge.com/2008/07/17/pay-to-post-verses-pay-for-performance/
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July 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
in my experience, financial consulting and insurance companies like yours love job boards. If job boards became obsolete, your cost of hiring would undoubtedly rise.
sure, there are problems. but the problems are on both sides of the fence. in this post, you appear to be sitting on one side of the fence only.
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July 21st, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Eric,
Thanks for the comments. I think the problems are broader than 1 or 2 industries, and do agree there is a shared accountability between the boards and organizations. Hence, the reference to the “post and pray” practice and the content of the opening paragraph: “the way that they are typically used by most organizations and candidates”. This post is more focused on the boards, and there are more to come from all angles (Managers, Candidates, Recruiters, Recruiting Leaders, and the Boards).
Jason
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July 21st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Sarah,
Thanks for the comments - and the link to an additional resource.
Jason
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July 21st, 2008 at 3:27 pm
“Since most job boards are not effective, it wouldn’t be a big loss if they were obsolete.”
Love hearing this from the recruiting world … as I consistently share this perspective with my clients.
Cindy Kraft
the CFO-Coach
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July 21st, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Here I am jumping off the fence…
I was anti-job board, but after reading several comments in this and other blogs I have changed my view. For some industries, geo-areas, and levels of positions in the company — job boards make perfect sense. And lets face it, the HR department an my old software company was Margaret and she had no idea about Web 2.0 technology.
Those of us looking for new models and best practice hiring are going to jump into the recruiting marketplace. Whether it be dayak, talenthire, bj or the next web 2.0 recruiting solution, we will use which ever one evolves to offer service and quality pools of candidates.
oh and just a note about the market anology — I live on the east coast and its a total guessing game where to find the freshest avacados in my town.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 2:55 am
Cindy,
Thanks for the comment, and stopping by The Talent Buzz!
Jason
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July 22nd, 2008 at 3:00 am
Hi Jeri,
Thanks for your comments. We do need to keep adopting new technologies and overall solutions, and this gives us leverage to partner with suppliers to change the game. Especially the areas we can influence when we have the information. Again, it’s a shared accountability. Thanks again.
Jason
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July 22nd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
While I love job boards in the sense of what they have done for the job search in the past, from a corporate perspective, it is alot more streamlined to market your careers site and brand then it is to rely on so many marketing channels.
I think as SEO evolves and we have significant, valid and reliable research on its effectiveness, we’ll have a better idea of the future of job boards.
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July 26th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I think that they’re not only becoming obsolete to hiring companies, but to candidates as well Jason. The online metrics show it. All job boards together (added up) only get around 1% of the entire internet visitor traffic (that’s even with them spending $250MM in advertising on super bowl ads).
The 1st generation of job board users has come and gone, and it wasn’t a pretty experience. They uploaded their resume, got hammered with spammers and over aggressive agencies, and everyone called/emailed them but reputable companies in their markets with legitimate jobs. Why would a candidate do that to themselves again?
There’s no question that they will have some role, but the amount of hatred that I hear about in the HR world toward the job boards is because they rocketed their prices high, won’t install any systems that help companies to measure real hiring success, and leveraged their short lived monopoly on being the only online recruiting source.
Well, like you’ve said, that’s quickly changing with SEO/SEM, social networks, mobile recruiting and new career site technologies, any company can play the same game as the big boards, but for a lot less money and effort.
The recruiting world is flattening fast, and progressive employers that know how to leverage it will have a much better time building strategic recruiting platforms which will make them self-empowered in driving talent acquisition, and capture Google surfers directly, even on their most passive days.
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August 1st, 2008 at 3:28 am
[...] place to start a job search. If anything, it should be classified as a site aggregator. Considering 100 million job searches are now taking place monthly on Google, where are the candidates landing (purely from a site aggregator perspective)? It’s not [...]
August 5th, 2008 at 2:10 am
[...] The discussion came from a question posed by Madeline Tarquinio as a follow-up to my post: “What Would Happen if Job Boards Became Obsolete“? [...]
August 6th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I find the following, as written above by Doug Berg, to be spot on: “the amount of hatred that I hear about in the HR world toward the job boards is because they rocketed their prices high, won’t install any systems that help companies to measure real hiring success, and leveraged their short lived monopoly on being the only online recruiting source.” I think, however, that it is important to not throw out the baby with the bath water. Here me out:
The online recruiting game, to this point, has been frustrating, lop-sided, and inefficient. However, the immense communicative capacity of the Internet remains an invaluable resource for recruiters and managers everywhere. There is no doubt that the recruiting game needs to change, but the best move is not necessarily to run away from the Internet.
The change, in my humble opinion of course, starts precisely with what Doug references above. The major job-boards have created an online recruiting War, with few winners and many losers. People everywhere, from job seekers to recruiters, have, in many ways, failed to realize that HR need not be a “zero-sum” game. Yes, everyone wants the biggest slice of this lucrative pie–yet, in actuality, everyone in this profession shares the same goal: to find the best people for the best jobs. If everyone is one the same page, there need not be risk, there need not be LOSERS.
The problem, in its most general terms, is high cost coupled with low ROI. Obviously, this needs to change. The answer? Well I don’t know it for sure, but I would just be careful of running away from the Internet–especially considering the fact that the frontier of technology continues to be pushed. It is no secret that social media is currently at the edge of this frontier, and it does have the potential to provide a lot of relief to those who simultaneously feel exploited by job-boards and constrained by their ever tightening budgets.
Yes, my site is Yellojobs.com, and yes I do think it might help the problem. Whether you check it out or not however, I encourage everyone to continue to fight to ensure that these “monopolies” are, in fact, “short lived.”
[Reply to this Comment]
August 6th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
find the following, as written above by Doug Berg, to be spot on: “the amount of hatred that I hear about in the HR world toward the job boards is because they rocketed their prices high, won’t install any systems that help companies to measure real hiring success, and leveraged their short lived monopoly on being the only online recruiting source.” Doug speaks the truth here, but I would warn everyone to not throw out the baby with the bath water. Here me out:
The online recruiting game, to this point, has been frustrating, lop-sided, and inefficient. However, the immense communicative capacity of the Internet remains an invaluable resource for recruiters and managers everywhere. There is no doubt that the recruiting game needs to change, but the best move is not necessarily to run away from the Internet.
The change, in my humble opinion of course, starts precisely with what Doug references above. The major job-boards have created an online recruiting War, with few winners and many losers. People everywhere, from job seekers to recruiters, have, in many ways, failed to realize that HR need not be a “zero-sum” game. Yes, everyone wants the biggest slice of this lucrative pie–yet, in actuality, everyone in this profession shares the same goal: to find the best people for the best jobs. If everyone is on the same page, there need not be risk, there need not be LOSERS.
The problem, in its most general terms, is high cost coupled with low ROI. Obviously, this needs to change. The answer? Well I don’t know it for sure, but I would just be careful of running away from the Internet–especially considering the fact that the frontier of technology continues to be pushed. It is no secret that social media is currently at the edge of this frontier, and it does have the potential to provide a lot of relief to those who simultaneously feel exploited by job-boards and constrained by their ever tightening budgets.
My site is Yellojobs.com, and yes I do think it might help the problem. Whether you check it out or not however, I encourage everyone to continue to fight to ensure that these “monopolies” are, in fact, “short lived.”
[Reply to this Comment]
August 26th, 2008 at 12:29 am
[...] started as a blog post - “What Would Happen if Job Boards Were Obsolete?” turned into one of ERE’s hottest discussion board [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 12:10 am
[...] Job Boards. Take a good, in-depth look at your job board spend, and overall results. Besides the crappy candidate experience, it should come as no surprise job board traffic continues on a multi-year decline. Use this to your advantage - and negotiate. You should be paying a substantially less amount per posting than in previous years. Most of the big boards continue to add new services to offset posting and resume database access. For more ideas on job boards, you can read an earlier post, “What Would Happen if Job Boards Became Obsolete“? [...]
October 4th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
[...] is an interesting article on this by Jason Buss “What if Job Boards became obsolete? . This article gives a good overview of the issues being discussed around Job Boards in the US, [...]
March 8th, 2009 at 8:08 am
I should have discovered this great discussion long time ago. Many thanks!
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