In the old days – say, 2 or 3 years ago – you had an internal database of candidate resumes that you mined during a hiring phase. Perhaps you paid a job board to access its resume database. Or perhaps you paid a recruiter, who claimed to have access to resume sources that you couldn’t even imagine. If you were innovative, you might use a tool like AIRS to search across multiple databases (that is, if you had paid for access).

Flash forward to now: last week LinkedIn announced the launch of its Talent Pipeline, a tool that allows recruiters to import resumes, tag them, and link them to the appropriate LinkedIn profiles. It’s designed to manage prospects, not applicants, thus staying out of the ATS zoo – but I can see how it might easily be modified to handle the entire candidate flow. Given that 98% of respondents from my last survey use LinkedIn, this tool seems like a slam-dunk – who wouldn’t want to consolidate what they’re already doing on LinkedIn with the data from their other sources? Oh, did I mention the tool is free for users with the LI corporate recruiting package? Nice upsell, guys!

This release comes on the heels of Monster’s announcement in July of SeeMore, a tool based on Monster’s 6Sense semantic search engine that allows recruiters to comb through internal and external databases of candidates – and the technology is arguably more powerful than LI’s.

Both tools reflect a fundamental change in resume databases that has been brewing for years: tearing down the walls that surround this data. As noted above, recruiters can become overwhelmed with ‘buckets’ of applicant data – and if these buckets exist alongside each other without allowing any type of cross-searching, they lose much of their usefulness. Talent Pipeline and SeeMore represent attempts to tear down the walls between the data buckets (and, of course, these tools provide new revenue opportunities for their respective companies).

I suspect an interesting side effect is that recruiters will be able to see precisely which databases provide the best candidates.

Will we see more tools like these? Undoubtedly. What do they mean for the future of job board resume databases? Hard to say. For those boards with high value, hard to find candidates, there may be little or no effect, as their data will continue to be useful and cost-effective for recruiters. For others with more general and less lucrative candidates, charging for resume access may become a thing of the past.

In either case, this trend is a ‘win’ for recruiters – they can do more with the resumes they have, and spend less time climbing over, around, and under walls.

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Well, folks, it’s official – Indeed is letting anyone and everyone search their resume database. It’s free – for now.

Sound familiar? It does to me – after all, Indeed used the same playbook during their initial launch: they allowed job boards to list their postings at no charge. Then they began charging for preferred listings. Most recently they’ve pivoted to focus on employers, while at the same time tightening the screws on job board listings.

Who does Indeed’s latest move affect?

• Job Boards: If you weren’t sure before, you should be certain now – Indeed wants your customers. They’ll offer free access for a while (maybe a few months, maybe a few years) – then they’ll charge. And they’ll do their best to make your job board’s resumes irrelevant.
• LinkedIn: This move directly targets LinkedIn, serving notice that Indeed is not content to be a search aggregator but instead plans to dip directly into one of LI’s core revenue sources.
• Monster and CareerBuilder: Indeed has already lapped these boards in terms of traffic, and over the past 2 years has increased sales staff and focus to lure the generalist job boards’ customers away. Adding resume access is another move in that direction. (However, as long as Indeed’s resumes remain free and publicly available, expect many of Monster customers to use 6Sense for search and access).

Even at 1 million, Indeed’s database is much smaller than its generalist competitors – and many niche boards will continue to have deeper and more active databases, at least for the near future. But the move will further destabilize the online recruiting industry – a sector that is already reacting to social media and cloud startups, contracting recruiting budgets, and a lingering recession.

Competitively, I think it’s a great move on Indeed’s part – one that had been long anticipated. ‘Free’ is an irresistible lure for recruiters (as it was 5 years ago for job boards), and many will migrate to Indeed simply because of that. Then, one day, they’ll wake up (as job boards did) and realize that they are now paying for what once was free.

How does that old saying by Santayana go? – “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Yep. What he said.

I’m a great believer in stealing ideas. Think about it: are most successful businesses truly original? Not often – instead, they take an idea and perfect it, then execute skillfully. (This applies to art, music, and literature, too – if you listen carefully, you’ll hear Matthew Sweet stealing from The Beatles, who stole from Buddy Holly, who stole from Hank Williams, who stole from….).

Are there ideas out there that are worth stealing for your job board? You bet! And just because another site is using them doesn’t mean you can’t apply them to your own niche successfully. So let’s get started:

• Idea #1: peer-reviewed candidates: StackOverflow is a technology site that added a job board – with a twist. They took their existing community activity and made it useful to employers linking into their Answers feature (think Quora for geeks). Employers can see what answers the candidate supplied to specific technical questions – AND how the community voted on their answer. Lots of votes = confidence in the candidate’s technical skill. A great idea that really just requires building a community and giving them a way to talk.
• Idea #2: referral bonuses: Yes, companies and recruiters have been using formal and informal referral bonuses for years to lure candidates to lure their friends. But recently we’ve seen first TopProspect and then JobFox add the referral bonus as a feature that employers or recruiters can add to their job listings. Both companies solve the age-old problem of handling the payment by doing it themselves – putting their payment system between the referrer and the employer. This should bring an increase in participation – the candidate will feel more confident of actually getting paid after giving up the info. If employers in your niche use referral bonuses, then you could definitely steal this idea.
• Idea #3: you’re not a job board, you’re a candidate location tool: Pretend you’re LinkedIn. Now say, over and over, “I’m not a job board, I’m not a job board…” Yes, you and I know that LinkedIn is a job board. But their idea – the one you should steal – is that they act like they aren’t. That means they look at employers and candidates differently than the traditional job site. The value of that perspective? They can come up with new ways to ‘locate candidates’ – and connect them to employers. You may argue that they in fact aren’t doing anything new (who did they steal their ideas from, anyway?), but the bottom line is that both candidates and employers think they are. That belief, coupled with some astute work on LI’s part, has helped them succeed.

So there you go – 3 great ideas to steal. How about it – do you have one for me?

As recently as several years ago, it was considered standard operating procedure for job seekers to post their resumes on as many job boards as possible. Why? Visibility. Employers and recruiters used the job board resume databases to find possible hires, so it made sense to have your resume in as many places as possible. Job boards encouraged this behavior because it made the resume access features easier to sell to employers.

Enter LinkedIn. It was certainly not the first ‘public resume’ site, but it quickly became the most successful. As mentioned in this insightful article, LinkedIn provided candidates with a place to brag – and (at least at first) a free source of resumes for recruiters. It then successfully added numerous services such as Answers and a bunch of places for advertisers to advertise. Along the way it appeared to suck a lot of the life out of the job board resume business.

Or did it? Research continues to show that job boards get between 20 and 40 percent of their total revenues from resume search and access. That figure appears to be unchanged since the mid 2000s. ‘Free’ resume sites continue to flourish. What’s really going on?

The short answer: job seekers are not stupid. It still makes sense for them to post their resume on the sites their target employers use.

The long answer: If a job seeker sees a company advertising on a particular job board, he/she will post a resume there. Then they will also post their resume/profile on LinkedIn, because those same employers and recruiters might find them there. They’ll continue posting their resume on certain sites until they are certain that there is no likelihood of a potential employer finding them there.

So what are the implications for job boards? Should they ignore LinkedIn, per the reasons above, and assume that the resume database will continue to contribute its piece of the revenue pie?

No. Here’s why:

• Critical mass: the number and quality of profiles in LinkedIn for a particular industry will at some point (in fact, may already have) become so large that key employers will decide that they can save money and time by relying on one vendor: LinkedIn. They may convince themselves that this is a smart decision by locating their friends and colleagues in LinkedIn.
• Technology: Many job board resume search tools are abysmal. In a limited universe, this may not matter – but if your particular niche has met the LinkedIn ‘critical mass’ as per above, your search tool may drive the nail in the proverbial coffin as far as the employer is concerned.
• Atmosphere: Social media is in the air that job seekers breathe – and it’s part of the fabric of life for newer candidates. They may continue to post their resumes in ‘gated’ databases on job boards, but that doesn’t mean they want to. Long-standing privacy concerns appear to have been decimated by social media’s omnipresence – so job seekers may gravitate toward the most ‘open’, exposed places to post their skills.

So what’s a job board to do? I have a few ideas:

• Remember why employers use your site: They want to hire the best people, as quickly as possible, with as little hassle as possible. Is your current resume database helping them – or driving them nuts?
• Lower the hassle factor: Make it as simple and straightforward as possible for candidates to post their profiles. Tie into popular social media tools. Don’t have a ‘one size fits all’ solution.
• Give options to top-level candidates: In other words, give them control over their privacy in a way they can’t get from LinkedIn – or other job boards.
• Pump up the quality: Ask employers to describe what aspects of a resume indicate ‘quality’. Then make sure your resume database provides that information. Invest in technology and staff to screen resumes.
• Provide services that LinkedIn can’t – or won’t: You’re competing with a huge company – which means by definition that it simply can’t or won’t provide certain types of services. Ask your employers what they want – and sell it to them.

Go to any animal shelter and you will usually see pets that simply got too big for their owners – hulking St. Bernards, twelve-foot pythons, walking catfish, and so on. It’s easy in hindsight to blame the owners. But the owners weren’t thinking about how big the animal would one day become; they were focused on how much they wanted it.

Since roughly 2005, job boards have lived with aggregators such as Indeed and SimplyHired. As discussed in a previous post, the coexistence has had its positives for job boards (lots of traffic) and negatives (competition for direct employers). But for most sites, the relationship has been positive – the aggregators have created more traffic and response than these sites could have obtained on their own. In fact, I’d argue that many boards became addicted to the aggregator traffic.

Over the past few months, however, Indeed has made a couple of moves that have folks in the industry talking:

• No more ‘free posting’ sites: Sometime around January 2011, Indeed began ridding itself of job postings from ‘free to post’ sites. In conversations with those at the company, I was told that this was in direct response to ‘hundreds’ of complaints from job seekers about ‘fake’ postings – all of which were traced back to the ‘free posting’ sites. Thus, Indeed no longer accepts job feeds from such sites.
• Job seekers can post resumes: In the past few weeks Indeed has quietly rolled out a new feature that allows job seekers to post their resumes – something which had never been offered before. When asked about the change by ERE.net, CEO Paul Forster said, “I’m not aware of any feedback from job boards on this. We have always seen job boards as partners and don’t see that changing for any reason.”

What is a job boarder to think about the above? Well…

1. The optimist: This is just the same old friendly puppy – no changes. Good riddance to the free sites, and who cares about the resumes.
2. The nervous realist: Geez, when did that puppy get so gosh-darned big? And eating all the time, too! First the free sites went, then….  And resumes – they comprise 30% of my revenue stream. It’s kinda warm in here.
3. The cynical survivor: I told you we should have killed the puppy in 2005! That’s not a puppy, it’s a #$%* elephant! They’ve got enough direct employers to start dumping those job boards that aren’t profitable for them. And of course they’re adding resumes – that’s what the direct employers want.

The real answer? Only Indeed (and its competitors) knows. They are a for-profit company, so they will do what they deem best to stay profitable and grow. The online recruitment industry is changing rapidly, and they are no doubt reacting to that change.

Lest we forget: it’s always prudent to know the difference between an elephant and a puppy.

Is job seeker registration good or bad? And if you require registration, how much is too much? And…how much value should you attach to these registered users?

Personally, I think a little friction is a good thing (as does Seth Godin, apparently).  If a job seeker wants to land a job, why shouldn’t he (or she) give up something? After all, your site is delivering something of value, correct?

“But you lose job seekers every time you require registration,” I know some of you are saying. Yes. Absolutely. However, ask yourself – did you want those job seekers anyway? You want seekers who are willing to put a little skin in the game to get what they want – a job.

Nevertheless…you should not go overboard. I’m a big fan of progressive registration – start out asking for a name, email, and password. Then ask for a bit more information each time the job seeker reengages. This requires a ‘smart’ job board – one that realizes which data has already been collected, and which is yet to be collected. A bit of a technical challenge, but certainly doable – any lead-nurturing system worth its salt employs this feature.

Avoid a one-sided relationship – if the job seeker is giving up information, you should be providing services in return. Job alerts, research, free trials of career services – you have lots of options. Don’t just take – give.

Let’s return to the topic of this post, though – what exactly is the value of these registered job seekers?

Depending on your job board revenue model, you can:

• Market products and services to your registrants
• Send targeted emails from employers to these seekers
• ‘Upgrade’ these seekers to other job board services, such as job alerts
• Survey your registrants to provide data for employers, PR, and internal analysis
• Test new products

So, yes – it’s worthwhile to register your job seekers, and these registrants have real value for your job board. If you’re not doing this already, get started. And if you are, make sure that you give more than you get, and that you leverage the registrant audience you have.

In the beginning was the job post – a classified ad on the internet.

Then came the resume database – a collection of job seeker wit and wisdom, long and short, awful and awesome.

Employers and recruiters saw the resume database and liked it. They flourished.

Jump to now. I’m guessing that at least one-third of the job boards launched during the past year lack a resume database. What gives?

1. Many of those boards are on platforms like Jobomatic, which simply doesn’t provide resume functionality.
2. Resumes are seen as a dime a dozen, particularly in a down economy.
3. Employers and recruiters have a bad taste in their mouths about low quality resumes – you know, the kind with misspellings, perversions of the English language, and little or no quality checks.

But I ask you: should a job board have a resume database? Is this a feature that is key to satisfying the customer, or is it a feature whose time has past? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons:

PRO: Resumes are an additional revenue source. They provide another way for employers to find candidates – without being bombarded by applications to job postings. Resumes give candidates another way to market themselves to employers.

CON: Most resumes are messes. Resume searches consume time and deliver unpredictable results. Why pay for resumes when you can find them on LinkedIn or other ‘free’ sites? Resumes are a pain to maintain from a job board’s perspective.

So? What do you think? Submit your thoughts now!

Marketing a job board is akin to walking a tightrope with two contentious children hanging from either end of your balancing rod. On one side you have your employers, wanting more exposure, better candidates, and yes, their logo in a prominent location. On the other side you have your job seekers, wanting some sort of response from employers, a really great (or at least well-paying) job, and lots of stuff for free.

The challenge? Too many job seekers and you’re most likely spending too much on marketing; too few job seekers and you have employers jumping ship.

The answer? A few well-chosen metrics that can guide you, and a careful, thoughtful, and multi-channel marketing program. Here are my nominations for the metrics:

1. Ratio of unique job seekers per month to active jobs per month.
2. Average number of applications per job.

What?? That’s it?

Well, I can certainly come up with plenty more – but most of what you need to know is contained in these two. Think about it. If you know the optimum number of unique job seekers to jobs, you can keep your marketing spend ‘just right’ (of course, you have to anticipate sales increases or decreases – easy, right?). And if you know the right number of applications per jobs (i.e., the amount needed to retain your employers), then you can evaluate the quality of your job seeker traffic.

Easy to lay out, difficult to execute – but if it wasn’t challenging, we’d be bored, right?

So what are your metrics?

In the everyday bustle of dealing with your employers, it’s easy to forget about your resume database. Easy, but not advisable. Long commoditized and scorned by many recruiters because of poor quality and short shelf life, resumes actually provide you with the opportunity to truly differentiate yourself from the hundreds – no, thousands – of mediocre career sites out there.

Here are three simple steps to elevate the quality of your resumes:

1) Have a resume submittal process that ‘pre-qualifies’: This doesn’t need to be complicated – for example, include a drop-down list of typical licenses and certifications for your target job seeker. The more form-driven you can make it, the more likely the job seeker will use it – and the easier it is for your employers to use as well.

2) Screen the resumes: I can hear the teeth gnashing already! If you get 1000 resumes a day, this will require some programming. But at a minimum, cull out the ridiculously short or obviously incomplete resumes. Communicate back to the job seeker – encourage them to resubmit. They’ll be amazed to hear from an actual person at a job site!

3) Talk to your employers: Don’t give them what you want; give them what they want. Call them up. Send them a survey. No matter the method – just ask them what they think is missing from the resumes, and then adjust accordingly. The extra communication with your customers rarely hurts.