Job Board Doctor

By now you’ve probably heard of JobDeck, a modified version of the popular Twitter search application, TweetDeck. A collaboration between TwitJobSearch and TweetDeck, JobDeck has a permanent, specialized search that focuses on jobs. These are sourced from the Twittersphere, based on employment-related keywords, plus additional content from LinkedIn.

Well, it’s gotten the New York Times excited.

But where does JobDeck (and other specialized job-centric social media apps) fit into the job board world? Well, JobDeck is basically a pre-packaged search tool. In essence, JobDeck is competing against Twitter’s own search tool.

In a world of Twitter search tools, a job board wants to ensure that its jobs are visible. Sounds a lot like good old fashioned SEO, eh? And if JobDeck and its relatives begin to gain significant market share, the spoils will go to those job boards who have taken the time to optimize their Twitter job postings.

What does that mean? The right keywords. The right hash tags. The right links (and yes, links that work are good, too!). Not rocket science – but poke around a bit. You may be surprised at how bad some of the ‘automated’ job tweets are with regard to the above.

So take the time with your site to make your job tweets the best they can be. (And it’s probably not a bad time to start tracking their performance, either!)

There are thousands of job sites out there. If you spend much time looking at them, like I do, you quickly realize that many lack ‘brand identity’.
In other words, they’re forgettable.
Try it yourself. Go to JobBoardReviews or Google “your favorite industry + jobs” and see what you find.  I’m betting that (after you get past [...]

It’s true: anyone and his or her dog can have their own job board. Actually, the dog could probably run the board, thanks to Job*a*matic (well, maybe not my dog – she sleeps too much).
How many job boards is too many? Peter Weddle says we have 100,000 or so worldwide. I suspect only a small [...]

A few weeks ago I put out a request: what would you want to see from job boards in 2010? Quite a few of you responded – so here are your comments and ideas

It’s never a good idea to upset your customers. So why would a job board allow a so-called ‘fake’ job posting – a job listing that, in fact, does not currently exist?

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It was an ugly, painful year. I haven’t talked to a single job board owner – not one – who saw revenue declines of less than 35 to 70 percent. Many had to lay off employees, cut benefits, or otherwise pull back. They weren’t alone, of course – almost every aspect of our economy (Goldman [...]

It’s easy to do: you work and obsess over building the perfect job board, making certain that posting a resume is easier than sneezing – but then you forget about the world outside your site. Or you spend hours on backlinks, blog postings, and email campaigns, only to discover that your site just isn’t that [...]

As anyone who has tried to lose weight or exercise regularly will attest, changing your behavior is hard. You’re fighting years of mental and physical conditioning – and (unfortunately) many times the old habits win out.
That was the challenge that job boards faced in the mid-90s – how to change the ingrained behaviors of job [...]

In the spirit of the season, I thought it would be worthwhile to give some thanks (sometimes you forget about it in the midst of everything else). So, in no particular order, here are a few things that I’m particularly thankful for this year:

You: Seriously. I appreciate the time you spend reading this blog. I [...]

When was the last time you asked your job board customers what they want? Not just a one-off question to a few clients – but an systematic, organized survey of everyone who uses your site? Employers and job seekers?
A recurrent theme in the ‘job boards are dying’ blog posts that I see is a feeling [...]