Hey folks – I will be conducting a webinar on May 2nd at 11 AM EDT, and I’d like you to attend! I’ll be talking about the many challenges facing job boards these days – and what you can do to ensure that your job board will not only survive, but thrive. This webinar is courtesy of RealMatch, and it’s completely free.

To register, click here.

The presentation is about 30 minutes and I’ll also be taking questions. So go ahead – register now! And I’ll see you in May.

Almost every week I see a blog post or tweet claiming that job boards are dead or dying.

We’re talking about the top source for hiring outside of employee referrals here. A tool that almost every employer uses to locate some or all of their job candidates. A fixture on the recruiting scene for over 15 years.

So what’s with the bad rep? Well, given my business name, you would expect me to give you a biased answer – and after reading the rest of this blog, you may think I did. But based on conversations with recruiters and HR professionals (and several years of survey data), I actually believe there are some factors that have nothing to do with the actual performance of job boards that drive the ‘ooh! job boards!’ movement. Let’s take a look:

1. Job boards aren’t new and shiny: Let’s face it – new things are usually more interesting than old things. Job boards have been around for over 15 years – an eternity in the internet/technology/recruiting world. There’s a reason why the car companies rework their designs every year…
2. Those who decry job boards have their reasons: Social recruiting ‘evangelists’ are exactly that – people who believe social recruiting solves almost every problem that currently faces the recruiting world. That’s ok – it’s their opinion, of course – but that’s also why they employ the common (and as many politicians will tell you, effective) technique of ‘going negative‘. It can be much easier to run down ‘job boards’ for their alleged failures than it is to demonstrate whether social recruiting can actually produce better results.
3. What is a job board, exactly?: The term ‘job board’ is a catch-all that gathers such disparate players (in size, techniques, and effectiveness) as the big general sites (Monster, etc.), aggregators (Indeed, etc.), niche sites (Dice, etc.), social networking sites (LinkedIn) and classifieds sites (Craigslist, etc.). The phrase is so vague as to be meaningless – I’ve heard more than one recruiter say ‘Job boards are awful’, then follow up with a glowing recommendation of a niche site. They were obviously disenchanted with the large general sites – but not so much the smaller ones. I don’t expect ‘job board’ to fall out of common usage – it can be useful shorthand – but a bit more qualifying and precision of exactly what kind of job board is being discussed would be appreciated.

Those are three factors that don’t have a basis in actual job board performance. But there is a fourth factor that does:

1. Sometimes job boards don’t work very well: It’s true. You put up a posting and get poor results. You search the resume database and don’t find what you need. Sometimes you use a job board whose technology remains firmly rooted in the mid 1990s. You know what to do in those situations? You quit using the board that sucks, and find the one that doesn’t. The failure of one job board does not make you immediately decide to drop all job boards, everywhere. That would be akin to going barefoot because you had a bad experience with a single shoe store. Instead, you look at the data – 20% of hires (plus an additional employment branding effect) comes out of your job board usage. So you adjust your buy and use the ones that work.

A final comment: I think job boards – specifically, niche and general sites – have not done as good a job as they might have in talking about their strengths. They haven’t always been aggressive enough in adopting and/or developing new technology. And they – like other players in the online recruiting world – sometime lose track of the real goal: to bring the right candidates and employers together, as quickly, cheaply, and effectively as possible. In a nutshell, they must evolve.

So….what’s in a name? A lot.

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The data is still rolling in (and I’m a bit behind), but after 190 (yes, that’s right – 190) responses, I believe we have some very good information about the state of the job board industry in 2012.

The full details will be ready soon (perhaps next week), but here are some tidbits that you may find intriguing:

• The top reasons you believe clients use your job board: Quality of applicants (74%); Price (50%); and Quantity of Applicants (46%). No other answers came close to these three.
• What kinds of quality-enhancing tools are you offering your employers? 69% offer candidate-to-job matching and 65% offer screening questions. Only 14% offer psychometric assessment.
• Mobile isn’t quite there yet. Only 45% of job boards offer mobile-friendly versions of their websites, and just 17% offer either an Android or iPhone app.
• The big threats to your job board? LinkedIn leads with 48%, followed by the recession (34%), a negative public perception of job boards (30%), and social recruiting (30%).
• What’s the plan for your site in the next year? 64% plan to put money into SEO, 46% plan to add new products, and 46% plan to improve their search technology.
• Is your site for sale? 10% say yes (which of course means that 90% of you would prefer not to!).

There were also some interesting comments:

While I selected LinkedIn as a cause for concern, we aren’t seeing a huge impact. LinkedIn is helpful to recruiters BUT most are finding that it is much more work compared to job boards.

Most concerning to us is the way Indeed has chosen to treat job boards. I am less worried about social media and LinkedIn than I am about Indeed.

We see that education of employers is necessary to help them to understand that social media is not the ‘silver bullet’ of recruiting. The old rules still apply as it relates to attracting top talent to your company.

Full results will be available soon for download. Thanks again to everyone that participated!

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I don’t know if it’s inevitable that age and experience brings cynicism, but the ongoing discussion about social recruiting certainly brings out the skeptic in me. Social recruitment is about the ‘conversation’, the ‘engagement’, the ‘ongoing discussion’. Umm, no. Social recruiting is about landing a candidate. And somewhere along the line, landing the candidate involves money.

Don’t misunderstand me – just because I’m crass enough to talk about dollars and candidates in the same breath doesn’t mean I think we should treat candidates poorly. Au contrair! In my experience, we as an industry (and I’m speaking of the online recruiting world) have not treated candidates as well as we should have. I would like that to change.

But the reason for the existence of 3rd party recruiters, corporate recruiters, job boards, recruitment ad networks, social recruitment agencies, and the like is really quite simple: there is gold to be had when you link the right candidate to the right employer.

So whether you have a ‘talent community’ that you are ‘nurturing’, running a job board, or are simply keeping a very copious database of every Ruby developer in Portland, remember: it’s all about the candidate and the employer and actually bringing them together. Don’t get lost in a maze of feel-good phrases, endless (but fruitless) Twitter conversations, or the eternal hunt for that ‘silver bullet’ that will make everything you do so much simpler. If you’re a job board, get better candidates and make it easier for employers to land them. If you’re a recruiter, get better candidates and get them to your client. And if you’re a social recruiter, well – do the same.

And don’t forget to get paid.

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Depending on who you talk to, the phase of the moon, and the price of corn in Iowa, there are roughly 50,000 to 100,000 job boards out there. Yes, really. Why so many? There are a lot of reasons (low barriers to entry, continued demand, margins), but what this really means is that if you run a job board, you have competition. Above you, below you, next to you – you could argue that the online recruiting sector reflects capitalism at its most Darwinian.

Well, guess what? This is the world that most businesses have lived in for a long time. Shoe stores, pharmacies, dentists, software – you name the segment and you’ll find lots of competitors. In each segment/geographic area/sector, you’ll also find some businesses that are thriving. Everyone knows about them. Everyone at least thinks about buying from them. And their competitors are complaining about them.

These companies have learned to differentiate themselves.

This is a lesson that every job board yearning to succeed must absorb. Basically, you have to stand out from every other ABCJobs site. You have to gain visibility. You have to gain an audience. And you have to become a known quantity. (I mean that in the positive sense, of course!)

Let’s break it out. What must you do to differentiate your job site?:

• Keep it understandable: Even if your site offers 30 different options for employers and a bevy of tools for candidates, you have to boil the basic value proposition to something simple and understandable. If you don’t, you’ll just confuse your audience.
• Make it visual: Repeat after me: your site deserves a logo. It needs a logo. It needs a clean, professional logo. Not something your brother scrawled on his iPad. Your audience sees. They have visual memory. And you want them to remember your site! (And yes, the same goes for the rest of the site design. No short cuts.)
• Be creative – and honest: I’m not talking ‘wacky marketing’ here – no baby bunnies or cartoon characters (unless those happen to be your niche). Instead, think about what your audience of employers and candidates would find interesting, amusing, or cool. Speak their language. Get inside their world. This will give your site a ‘personality’  that no amount of off-the-shelf, standard ad agency ‘creative’ can ever provide.
• Be consistent: Are you getting bored with your logo? Your messaging? Your promos? Well, if they’re working – keep doing them. Don’t confuse your own opinion with your audience’s – they don’t look at your site day in and day out. Remember – your prospects need to see your messages 6-10 times before they actually ‘see’ them.
• Spend money – wisely:  Remember the old adage about you have to spend money to make it? It’s true. You have to spend dollars on SEO, SEM, (sometimes) shows, salespeople, and all sorts of other things. But that doesn’t mean throwing money out there. Each time you put money on the table, have a good idea of what you should get back. If you don’t get it, stop spending there and move it elsewhere.

The real bottom line? You’re building a brand when you differentiate. You’re moving past the category of ‘another bleeding job board’ and into the rarefied air of ‘my hiring solution’. Brands typically make more money, grow faster, and command higher prices when they’re sold.

I’m betting that you want your site to be a brand. Go for it!

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The last 3 years have been full of advice for companies were struggling to survive. But what about companies that are growing? It’s been a while since I’ve written about the challenges of growth – so it’s about time.

Despite the flat overall employment market, some areas are experiencing growth and even shortages (think healthcare, technology, skilled trades, etc.).  Is your job site experiencing an uptick in business? Then here are some things to think about:

• Hiring: It’s like talking about oil to Exxon, but in fact, hiring is one of the hardest things you will do. Finding that right salesperson or tech genius or versatile customer rep is extremely hard. As we all know, it’s usually not so hard getting applicants – it’s hard getting the right ones. I’m a big fan of screening questions on the job application, and an initial phone screen. It also helps to know yourself and your company. What kind of person is going to thrive in your environment?
• Money: Isn’t it interesting how making more money always involves finding more money to spend? It’s not uncommon to have imbalances in cash flow and ongoing needs (like that new hire, for example). My advice: stay close to your bank. Don’t show up once a year. Make sure you know at least a couple of the key officers. Banking locally is also useful – a local bank is often more customer-focused, and more flexible. And, of course, don’t forget about non-bank funding sources, such as friends and family (although these sometimes come with strings you don’t want).
• Focus: It’s great when things are working – until they don’t. I am a pessimist – and that’s held me in good stead. Assuming the worst keeps your eyes on the core business. Don’t confuse ‘focus’ with ‘obsession’, however. Make sure that your core business is working – and then build some new business.
• Time:  Time is the biggest enemy of any business. Why? Because lack of it (whether actual or perceived) prevents you from paying attention, thinking ahead, problem-solving, and growing. If you’re running from one fire to another, you’re not a hero – you’re a goner. Make time for yourself and your coworkers to think about and execute on long-term projects. Make time to actually get to the root problems.
• Goals: Hey, just because business is booming doesn’t mean that goals should fly out the window. In fact, when money is pouring in, you really need goals to keep you moving forward. Why? Because lots of money also means lots of ideas that you wouldn’t have given a 2nd glance to a few months earlier now suddenly seem worthwhile. ‘After all’, you say to yourself, ‘we can handle a flop. We’ve got money in the bank.’ Wrong. Bad ideas always suck. Really.

I hope and trust that this year will be a prosperous, growing year for your site.

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As another year draws to a close, it’s time to take a look back at the year that 2011 was (man, that was truly an awkward construction, eh?). As usual, there was much sturm and drang about social media, the lingering recession, and the Iowa caucuses – no, wait, that’s another post. At any rate, here are the things I thought were most notable:

1. Job boards did not die: Yes, the combined power of thousands of bloggers and SM evangelists simply could not bring down the 100K+ or so job boards around the world. In fact, the publicly-held boards seemed to recover nicely as the year progress (er, maybe not Monster’s stock). Well, hope springs eternal, right? Maybe in 2012?
2. LinkedIn got serious about making money: Nothing like an IPO to focus a company’s attention. LI settled down to creating more recruitment products for its audience of employers and recruiters to buy, and it continued working on the 1-5% of its users that actually visit the site monthly to pay for that privilege. LI is not going away, folks – and that means you, job boards.
3. Monster fought back: The job board monolith made several key moves in 2011 that kept it in the game and growing. First, they launched a Facebook offensive via their BeKnown app (tens of thousands of users and climbing). Next, they introduced SeeMore, a database-bridging search tool aimed directly at the LinkedIn threat. I expect to see more initiatives in 2012 (once they get past that stock thing, that is).
4. Matching sites proliferated: Taking their place alongside well-established job-matching sites such as RealMatch and JobFox were new entrants: VentuRocket, Grex, Direct Approach Solutions, JobHat, Geekfinder – the list goes on and on. Have any of them solve the precision issues that have historically plagued matching sites? Stay tuned.
5. Mobile kept growing: It was no surprise that mobile continued to make significant inroads into the online recruiting space. According to Beyond, 77% of job seekers were using mobile in 2011. Is your site ‘mobilized’?
6. The .jobs universe fizzled: 2011 should have been the year that the .jobs universe grew. Perhaps it did, but the adoption rate among companies I surveyed was still below 15%. Legal issues may make this a shrinking universe.
7. Money started moving: As John Sumser pointed out in a recent post, acquisitions  increased in the online recruiting space – and that shouldn’t change in 2012. As we inch our way out of the recession, a combustible combination of pent-up demand, smart use of technology, and pre-emptive strikes against competitors will keep the pipes full.
8. Temps became the new perms: The recession left considerably fewer jobs in its wake – and more of those left were filled by temps. This drove up business for staffing firms, freelance sites such as oDesk and eLance, changed hiring cycle patterns throughout the industry.
9. TheLadders said ‘adios’ to $100K only: In a move that probably surprised no one, TheLadders moved away from its long-held position and embraced jobs under the $100K mark. But it’s still not a job board, right? At least, that’s what its ads say…
10. Indeed targeted employers: After years of saying it worked with job boards rather than against them, Indeed began directly competing for employer dollars. Monster was not amused

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Consider the term ‘job board’.

For some, it is a term of derision, an insult (as in, “geez, why would you use a job board?”). For others, it is a badge of honor (“we’re the biggest job board in the world for New York urologists!”).

For me, it is…. inaccurate. At its core, what does it say? “This is a board where you will find jobs.” As in bulletin board. As in, very dated. Yes, the term is extremely convenient as shorthand for employers and recruiters – it describes a site that they can use to promote their jobs.

But you know what? The best ‘job boards’ – and I mean the ones that are successful, growing, and innovative – are really ‘candidate acquisition sites‘. They have become places where employers can use a variety of methods (not just job posting) to locate certain types of candidates – at a lower cost (and faster) than if they tried to do so on their own. Yes, the phrase ‘candidate acquisition site’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. We need something better and snappier. But it tells the employer what the site can do for them.

A cardinal rule of sales is, ‘don’t tell me who you are or how great you are – tell me what you can do for me’. That holds for what you call your services. ‘Job board’ doesn’t really do the job anymore, does it? From the employer’s perspective, it’s all about finding the right candidates, when needed, at the right cost – and keeping their company in front of the right candidates, all the time.

No one will quit calling job boards ‘job boards’ just because I think they should. But you can redefine what you call your site. And you can reinforce that with each and every communication you have with your employers and job seekers. It will take time – but you will find that even though those ‘other sites’ are still job boards, you’re something different.

And that’s good.

(And no, I’m not going to become the ‘CandidateAcquisitionSiteDoctor’. Just ain’t gonna happen.)

There have been a lot of blog posts here over the years – 120, to be exact. Some faded quickly, and some didn’t. So I thought it might be useful to have a roundup of what I consider to be the most interesting and useful (if not always successful) posts. Hope you like them!

• People, Balance & Technology: The future of job boards: Very popular, very insightful – and I didn’t write it! Felix Wetzel of Jobsite UK did, and it’s a provocative read.
• Will Job Matching Ever Take Off?: As I say in the first line, “Job matching is the AI of the job board world.” And who knows how many job matching products have launched since I wrote this?
• 5 ways to screw up your job board: As Recruiting Animal has often ranted against ‘number in title’ blog posts, I thought I had to contribute to the genre – and it was popular.
• How to make money – Revenue models for job boards: Not surprisingly, this post about how to increase your job board’s revenues has been popular.
• Are job boards dying…or evolving?: Tackling the ever-popular theme of dead job boards – guess which side I come down on?
• .jobs: Who does it benefit?: The .jobs ‘Universe’ is kind of like an old fashioned zombie – every time you think it’s down for the count, it rises up again. Will I be writing about them in 2012?
• How branding protects against commoditization: Branding is a topic near and dear to my heart – and judging from the feedback, also for my readers.
• The dangers (and benefits) of backfilling job listings: Since their inception, aggregators have been both a threat and a blessing to job boards. Here’s why.
• What makes a job board suck? (Jobseeker edition): Dumb things that job boards can do to upset their primary customers.
• Results of the Job Board Future Survey 2010: In which we discover some interesting things, like job seekers want their job boards easy to use.

Imagine that you’re one of the thousands of job boards that provided Indeed with job postings from its inception. Imagine that in addition to providing those jobs (which turned Indeed into the most visited job site on the web), you also spent money promoting those same jobs – thus providing Indeed with a lucrative source of income. Imagine that, in return, Indeed provided your job board with a stream of inbound referrals (both organic and paid) that grew as rapidly as Indeed did.

Now, imagine that Indeed’s referrals to your site suddenly disappeared – and when you asked why, you were told that Indeed’s Search Quality team had determined that your listings are of ‘poor quality’. That your listings were no longer indexed, and that your money was no longer welcome (for if there were no jobs from your site on Indeed, how could you in fact spend any CPC dollars?). And, ahem, no, Indeed would not tell you why your listings were no longer wanted. Your sales contact simply told you his hands were tied, that he in fact did not know why – that the Search Quality team was a black box – nothing was shared with Sales or Customers.

And oh, by the way, traffic from Indeed (both organic and paid) comprised about 50% of your site’s total traffic.

I first heard rumblings about this many months ago. The story kept surfacing, first from one site and then another. The general pattern was the same. I honestly found it hard to believe – until I became directly involved, on behalf of a client. The job site in question had been indexed by Indeed for years. Then literally overnight its feed was pulled and when the site asked why, they received the answer in the example above: “Sorry, we don’t know why, they won’t tell us, look at these rules and see if you violate any of them.” The client asked me to try to get an answer (they were willing to rework their site to get back in Indeed’s good graces) – so I did.

Guess what? I talked to a very nice sales director – who said his hands were tied, who said he knew nothing, and who sounded as frustrated as I was. Next, I tried various other contacts at the company – garnering one of two responses: ‘That’s not in my area’, or ‘I can’t help you.’  Finally I reached out to the founders, hoping against hope that I might get a response.

Nope – nothing.

Well, ok. Indeed is a business and they can treat their customers as they wish. In fact, a few days later, they published a posting on their blog that addressed the issue. The real issue?  ’Search quality’. The internal ‘black box’ team responsible for shutting down job sites is doing so to improve the user experience. OK, seems reasonable.

What doesn’t seem reasonable is the company’s unwillingness to talk to its customers: job boards. What is wrong with telling a newly banned board exactly why they were banned? Doesn’t Indeed want the job sites to get better? Or does it simply not care that much anymore about the job board section of their customer base?

The entire situation seems a bit heavy handed, to be honest, and curious too. Why the sudden push to ‘search quality’ now? As long as Indeed has been in existence, I have gotten complaints from job seekers about the quality of their listings (as well as the infamous multiple-click-bounce that job seekers are subjected to). I suspect there is more to the story.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I counsel job board clients to use aggregators like Indeed with caution – as they are addictive (and expensive). On the other hand, most job boards have benefited from aggregators – just as aggregators have benefited from job boards (in fact, would there even be aggregators without job boards? I don’t think so).

But at the end of the day, Indeed will do what it wants to do – and job boards will have to make their own decisions.

Just be sure to ask yourself: can my site survive without Indeed? If the answer is no, you might want to start working on plan B.