Despite protests by The Job Board Doctor to the contrary, the job boards – specifically those companies that formed the monopoly/oligopoly of job posting – are dying. Oh yes they are.
Evidence?
Monster lost tens of millions in 2010 thanks in no small part to clever accounting that let them hide a billion dollars in other losses that they have tucked away in a secret account called ‘Goodwill’. Granted the Goodwill trick is one played by many public companies and legally so thanks to our lethargic SEC. Nevertheless, the one billion number there by Monster would make Jon Corzine proud.
Dice manages to make a little money, but its Goodwill accounting also raises suspicion. Also of concern is that despite this being a boon period for tech recruiting, Dice’s sales have plummeted since 2008.
Although job boards are dying, clever posting of jobs to websites is very much in vogue. Take a look around. Career sites are everywhere, and increasingly they’re connected directly backend databases that that spit out openings in real-time.
Hundreds of staffing companies, recruiters and hiring organizations have got this figured out pretty well and some are spinning it right with good page indexing, backlink building, and original content. SEO to the max. It’s really not that hard now that web development platforms have matured.
Others like eLance, oDesk, and RentaCoder run from the ‘job board’ classification for reasons I’ve documented here, here and here.
This gets me to Facebook and the lesser social networks and all the attempts by job boards and pseudo job boards to leverage them (spoiler: they aren’t). I’ve been up nights with coding against the Facebook API, the madly changing Facebook API, and I’m grumpy about it.
I’m so mad about how poorly they support developers that I’d love to write that they are going nowhere, but of all the threats theirs is the most likely to make job boards less relevant than your unused rolls of Kodak film.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
How do you really feel Gregg?! Not too many of us get an up close and personal view of the Graph API, or the core of the Facebook platform, so I can’t speak to that. I do find it interesting though, even as recruiting in several spaces is white hot, these online sources for jobs are struggling. So I will assume your premise is an accurate one. Good luck with the coding.
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“…but of all the threats theirs is the most likely to make job boards less relevant than your unused rolls of Kodak film.” I agree but don’t take your eye off of Google+ just yet. Once they open the “developing floodgates”, I think that people will be more apt to seek employment using their Google+ account vs their Facebook because of the amount of personal information put into Facebook and Google+’s ability to segregate and manage that aspect of things. Does anyone know what Facebook’s Social Jobs Partnership to Assist American Job Seekers actually entails? For anyone who was wondering if FB was going to stay in the “jobs” game, that press release should have been their solid yes.
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Ed, yes I’m seeing a lot more traffic on Google Plus in the last month especially on the tech side. Also, you’re right that FB ‘Social Jobs Partnership’ (cough) is one of their many trojan horses galloping for job matching revenue stream.
If I were Google I’d let it slip that Google Plus activity related to your brand will deliver upside SEO…that would give Sergey and Larry all the muscle they need to take on Facebook.
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Gregg, I started to write a response but it turned into a blog post. So here it is: http://www.jobboarddoctor.com/2011/11/15/only-job-seekers-can-kill-job-boards-not-pundits
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There’s enough room for both. They’re both heavy hitters. I think there’s still a vast market. We’ve only just begun. Gregg, absolutely right about strength in Google. Those that use it and look will surely see. As far as FB actually extending beyond merely being a platform, no. People connect people in the jobosphere. Facebook isn’t Facebook without your face. Think of Facebook like your brand canvas. Your website is your information hub spot. Your Facebook is where you connect with people as is your Google+ and Linkedin. Blogs and forums are where you can engage. Grab a piece of the internet and imagine the possibilities. Want change on the job front? Seize the day and take action.
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That’s a well-written post Jeff but I’m left wondering what your definition of living is.
You specifically mention Dice’s recent increase in sales as evidence of ‘life’ but I’d ask you to go back and look at the numbers. Look at the Goodwill (aka hidden losses) Dice has taken on, look at the booming 2011H2 all of us who provide technical services are enjoying. I wish Dice no ill-will and largely applaud their focus on tech but any reasonable extrapolation on their performance since 2008 looks like death.
I did like your ‘thousand points of light’ … that many niche sites with clever differentiation and evolving revenue models are prospering, but please don’t confuse that with the death of the job board oligopoly.
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Gregg, Just think we have to agree to disagree. From my perspective I’m seeing growth, innovation, and expansion in the industry. If I’m wrong, well…I may end up changing my moniker!
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Interesting observations that I think could dig deeper. I think the more proper context should be that traditional job boards, which now represent a 17 year old business model, are not dying but ineffective as they could be in today’s hyper connective world. No other alternative offerrs the speed and reach of the internet, but current tools are still designed as if we were in the mid-90s or to capitalize on the latest buzz trends (social networking). I believe both you and Jeff are correct in assessment when followed by your data points.
However, my company has done market research on this subject directly over the last two years and the number one choice – by a very wide margin – that professionals go to when looking for work is… tada, job boards or aggregators. Likewise, the area they least seek work on… once again, tada, social media platforms.
You may be correct in the financial assessment of the companies mentioned, but that is not necessarily an indicator of their usefulness to their target audience but more the hypercompetitiveness of a dying business model. Instead, what we have today is more akin to what happened in the video rental industry as newer business models presented themselves (ala, monthly subs by mail and video streaming).
We follow a lot of talk about recruiting/hiring through social channels, passive sourcing and custom integration with other platforms. Then we talk with hundreds of companies and professionals always ending with the same conclusions. The industry appears to be very disconnected from how professionals and companies use these tools.
You mention three freelance sites (also known as reverse auction style sites). In talking with professionals, these type of sites are viewed rather negatively and more used out of desperation for generating income. The issue is this works in the current economy, but will be quickly abandoned when things get back to normal. No one, and I mean not a single person, wants to respond to a job where it is usually given to the lowest bidder. This is not in the best interest of the professional nor, in the long run, in the best interest of the company.
Never have I seen such a disconnect between an industry and it’s customers and the current two sided debate on the usefulness, or lack thereof, of job boards is a small indicator of this disconnect.
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Chris, Good comments, and the feedback you’ve heard about the freelance sites lines up with what I’ve heard from the programming community. At best, many contractor programmers view these sites as lead sources, albeit perhaps not the best for leads.
I do agree that there is a disconnect between a portion of the HR/recruitment community and the job board industry – but I’ve also witnessed firsthand some very close, productive partnerships between mid-sized and large corporations and job boards. Of course, these job sites tend to be on the ‘evolved’ end of the scale!
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Good stuff there Chris, and your analogy to video rental works.
However, as a heavy buyer of services on what you call ‘reverse auction sites’ (eLance etc), we don’t use them as you describe. We routinely choose not the lowest bidder but the highest, and often the project being auctioned is not the one really in play.
We use them like a dating service (not that I ahem have any experience there). ‘Just Lunch’ is really not about men needing lunch partners.
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If I believed that I would have never launched my job board this year.
Yes, the traffic is decreasing on Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, etc. as the years progress, but for employers job boards are still in the top 5 of candidate sources (often number 2 or 3) – survey after survey.
I think Monster and the other big boards are losing traffic and profits because there is more competition…there are other boards companies can use. Also money is tight. Before companies would post to 2 or 3 or all the big boards…now they are frugal and pick one (job posts did not used to cost over $400 each).
Also, the candidate experience on the big boards suck. When I use Monster, I have to wade through their endless popup advertising (for example). Most of the job posts on the big boards come from the same handful of companies…I don’t know about you but I leave when I see that a big company has posted 30 or 50 jobs at once and so all you an see are their job posts. Not to mention that many (sometimes most) of the companies posting are recruiting firms or staffing agencies, and as a job seeker looking for a permanent position (who would rather avoid a headhunter)…it makes wading through their endless posts tiring.
Enough of my rant. I know that job boards are still a main source of candidates hired by employers…as long as that is the case, job boards are not going anywhere.
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Eric, there is always room for a sharp, hard-working business person to find a way to make a profit in a threatened market, and I’m glad to hear of your success.
would love to hear further critiques from you about candidate experience…maybe a guest post on StaffingTalk?
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Is it false to say Dice manages to make ‘a little money’? They did 15% net income and 40% adjusted EBITDA margins with FCF of +10%…you can argue all you want about job boards dying but these guys are printing money. Online job boards grew +20% in 2011.
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Michael…thanks for the input, but do you have insight as to why Dice’s Goodwill account has grown so dramatically? Is it legitimate? What profits are they currently getting from the investments represented by that Goodwill which has increased almost equal to the sum total of its stated profits over the last three years?
As others have also commented, many niche players are shrewdly using some fashion of posting jobs to drive a revenue stream.