Ok, it’s been a bit more than a month since the last news round up – I blame it on the holiday season. But now I’m working off those Christmas cookies, so here’s all the news that’s fit to print, more or less:

• Chris Russell sells out: Well, at least he hopes so. Chris has put his 20-site job board network on the market. The offering includes AllCountyJobs, FairfieldCountyJobs, and others. Sounds like a great deal for the right buyer!
• Unrabble adds job distribution: Unrabble has expanded its hiring software platform to include cross-posting to Indeed and SimplyHired. Just in case you weren’t already doing that, you see.
• SuccessFactors acquires Jobs2Web: Spending $110 million just a few days after being acquired by SAP, SuccessFactors picks up job posting distributor Jobs2Web. I suspect this is not the last we’ll hear from SuccessFactors in the online recruiting space.
• Job boards refuse to die: Bersin & Associates releases a study that shows 19% of new hires come from job boards. Spending overall for recruiting rose as well to $124 billion in 2011. In related news, Chris Russell raises the sales price on his job boards.
• It’s like eHarmony for geeks: Actually, no. CodeEval is a coding ‘challenge’ site where programmers compete for prizes and jobs. Now they’ve opened up their candidate database to employers for only $500/mo. They won’t be the last.
• Dice Holdings has a 92.9% gross margin: Yep, it really does, at least according to these folks. (Note to Chris: call Dice.)
• LinkedIn insiders sell: Although the NASDAQ is up 18%, LinkedIn stock has dropped from $83 to $69 – yet LinkedIn CEO Jeffrey Weiner netted $25.7M in early selling. Perhaps the stock is overvalued? Say it ain’t so!

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Once a week (more or less), I sit down and write about the job board and online recruiting industry. Some of these posts are more popular than others (and honestly, some are complete duds). As it’s almost the end of the year, I though you might find it interesting to see which posts my readers turned to most often in 2011. So, in reverse order, here are the most-read posts of 2011:

10) 2011 Online Recruiting Survey Results: Change…and no change: In which we learned that everyone is still looking for high quality candidates.

9) A tour of new, unusual, and interesting job sites (that may or may not be job boards): There are tens of thousands of job boards, but these were just a bit out of the ordinary.

8 ) Did LinkedIn hijack the resume database? And what should job boards do?: LinkedIn, the job board that says it isn’t, dug into a critical piece of the job board industry’s revenue.

7) Indeed, customer service, and job boards: a cautionary tale: The first rumblings in 2011 that Indeed was moving into job board territory.

6) 3 great ideas to steal for your job board: Sometimes, stealing ideas is just a great way to grow.

5) Mobile apps for job boards: a scorecard for job seekers: Mobile continued to grow in 2011 – but mobile job search apps lagged, in my opinion.

4) Indeed: the elephant in the room – or just the same old friendly puppy?: Another post about Indeed and its move to add resumes.

3) Job board industry predictions for 2011: Some of these prediction were actually correct.

2) Are you awake? Lots of changes in the online recruiting world!: Social startups, VC money, and peer-reviewed candidates, among others.

1) It’s all mobile: Results from the 2011 mobile recruiting survey: Mobile was big in 2011 – and this data confirmed it.

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It’s that time of the month – time to glance back and see if anything really happened in the past 4 weeks. Surprisingly enough, it did. Here’s what I noticed:

• Monster partners with Ogden Newspapers: Monster adds to its bevy of 70 newspaper alliances by agreeing to power Ogden Newspaper’s 39 publications. It’s called expanding the network.
• Dice revenues climb 36% year over year: Dice’s Q3 revenues rose to $46.8 million, up from $34.4 million for the same quarter in 2010. Soothsayers predicting the “end of job boards” responded by gnashing their teeth.
• Mobile recruiting more popular with candidates than employers: A survey of 30,000 job seekers found that 19% are using their mobile devices for career-related purposes, but only 7% of employers have a mobile version of their career site. As usual, job seekers are leading the way…
• Out of work? Don’t apply: Hundreds of job ads specify that applicants must be employed in order to apply – a discriminatory practice that is now drawing the attention of Congress. Monster, CareerBuilder, and others quickly respond – after all, who wants the attention of Congress?
• LinkedIn shares slump after insider selloff: LinkedIn’s share value has dropped to its lowest level since June as insiders begin selling – and investors become concerned about its valuation. This feels a bit…predictable.
• Job boards are dying – umm, no, they aren’t!: Gregg Dourgarian says that job boards are dying; John Sumser begs to differ. This argument is the gift that keeps on giving – for bloggers, that is.

That’s all for now. Hmm, wonder if anything will happen this month?

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Back in the day – say, 3 or 4 years ago – if you were looking for a job, you typically visited a big job board like Monster, an aggregator like Indeed, a few niche sites, and a few company sites. The large ‘destination’ sites like Monster did everything in their power to draw Mr. Job Seeker to their URL – Superbowl ads, wacky web promos, and even cartoon figures. Aggregator sites flew under the radar – they depended on search engine visibility to entice their visitors. The niche and company sites focused on being visible to the people in their particular industry.

Things change.

Jobs are widely distributed across multiple sites, in ads, via Tweets, Facebook status updates, and more (much of this driven by search engines and aggregators). Nowadays, first stop for most job seekers is a search engine. If they’re adventuresome, perhaps they delve into the wild west world of Twitter. But more and more, the expectation is that (a) any job can be found if you search the Internet long enough; and (b) jobs should come to you.

If this is indeed true, what does it mean for destination sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, TheLadders, and other heavily marketed, generalist sites? Has their time come and gone?

I see it playing out as a decision on the part of job seekers about efficiency and emotion. Is it more efficient to go to a big general site to find that perfect job? Or is it more effective to rely on Google to ferret out the jobs? And which do they trust more?

There are several factors that might sway job seekers one direction or another:

• Laziness: After all, doesn’t Google index everything? So why should I need to use anything else?
• Fear: What if Google missed something – maybe a perfect job that only (insert job board name here) had? I’d be a fool not to check.
• Belief: As in ‘I believe that the jobs on (insert job board name here) are fake and junk. I trust Google – surely none of the jobs it finds are fake.
• Disbelief: As in ‘It’s too easy to search for jobs in one place. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything. My job search has to be better if I use multiple sources.”

The bottom line: if enough job seekers decide – no matter how much marketing is directed to them, no matter how many white papers are written – that they would rather use search engines, social media, et. al. to locate their jobs, the destination sites are toast.

I might add, that’s a big if. Why?

1) Never underestimate the power of marketing.

2) Never underestimate the difficulty of changing millions of job seekers’ deeply ingrained habits.

But it’s something to think about, eh?

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Another week, another ‘job boards are dying’ blog post. If I had a dollar for every post like this, I’d be a (moderately) rich man. Truly.

I try to avoid the ‘job boards are dying’ discussion because (a) it’s a flamer’s game (not unlike arguing with those who disbelieve climate change), and (b) those of us in the biz know it simply isn’t true – so why waste time talking about it? It’s much more useful to talk about how you can continue to evolve and develop your sites to take advantage of new paradigms, technologies, and audiences. (I’m hardly the only skeptic out there; check out this posting, this one, this one, and this one.)

But…Gregg’s post got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be great to have a nice pocket-guide to the reasons that job boards aren’t dying? I thought you would never ask!:

• Job boards as a ‘source of hire’ have increased: Career Xroads ‘Source of Hire’ study for 2008-2009 showed job boards at 12.3% of external hires; in 2010-2011, their share jumped to 24.9%. This level of increase suggests that employers are finding job boards more useful - not less.
• Niche site revenues up significantly: As one of the only niche sites that publicly reports its revenue, Dice is frequently viewed as a barometer of the niche board market. For Q3 2011, their revenues increased 36% year over year – again, an apparent sign of job board growth, rather than shrinkage.
• Job seekers use job boards: As both job board operators and employers will tell you, this is truly the acid test – do candidates use job boards? The answer is (not surprisingly) yes. A LinkedIn poll of 4,318 respondents tells the story: 23% use job boards, versus 7% for social media and 11% for aggregators. (This may have some relationship to the previous 2 bullet points…)
• Job boards are not static or generic: Many complaints leveled against job boards are targeted at a ‘generic’ site (often modeled on a generalist board). With 100,000+ job boards worldwide, both employers and job seekers know that there is not a ‘one size fits all’ job board. Some sites including matching technology; others are focused on video; still others have screening tools, ATS functionality, mobile platforms, and more. As in any industry, those job boards that are static will fall by the wayside – but don’t expect them to drag the entire industry as they go.
• Job boards have survived – and even thrived – in the worst recession since the 1930s: If you’re in a business that is directly tied to hiring, it would seem that a significant drop in hiring would lead to significant drops in revenue for your business – and you’d be right. What’s interesting, however, is that the number and variety of job boards has actually grown during the recession. One of the strongest IPOs in recent memory was for a job board/social networking mashup – LinkedIn. In fact, the recession has produced the biggest burst of innovation in the industry since its inception.

So what could kill job boards? Simple – lack of job seeker interest. If job seekers quit using job boards, the sites are toast.

As I’ve said many times, job boards are evolving (and I do hope they can evolve past their current moniker!). Just as this blog post will not prevent job boards from evolving (or disappearing), neither can the determined efforts of other pundits bring the industry down. Job boards help job seekers find jobs. Job boards help employers find candidates (at a reasonable price).

Ok. No more ‘job boards are dying’ posts for a while!!

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Per this week’s survey results from job boards, we’ve seen some changes over the past 12 months – not the least of which is increased optimism. Perhaps part of that is based on what HR and recruiting professionals are actually doing to find candidates. This installment of the survey results describes how things have changed (in some areas) during the last year. Here are some highlights:

• Social media (78%) and general job boards (74%) lead the pack as the tools used most frequently. (For comparison’s sake, last year had social media (70%) and company career sites (65%) leading the pack)
• Not surprisingly, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook continue to dominate the social media tools used – but company blogs have gained popularity (from 28% in 2010 to 29% this year)
• Niche job boards, company career sites, and social media are all slated for the largest increases in spending for the coming year (last year, SM, company sites, and referral programs led)
• The quality of the candidates is far and away the top deliverable respondents gained from job boards (as it was in 2010)
• .jobs saw a slight uptick in interest – from 13% in 2010 to 18% in 2011

Take a look for yourself (survey download requires free registration).

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So, the last few years have not been so wonderful for most of us. A tenacious recession has managed to squash both new entrants and industry stalwarts.

And yet…I’ve heard from board after board over the past 12 months that they are seeing growth. Some are launching new projects. Others are acquiring. And there is a steady, increasing stream of new sites popping up.

That’s why this year’s survey of 154 job board operators and employees is so interesting – it provides some data to back up the anecdotal evidence that perhaps, just perhaps, we’re nearing the beginning of the end of this long business slowdown. (You can download the complete data here – free registration is required, as is Adobe Reader).

Here are a few highlights to pique your interest:

• One-third of respondents have a mobile-friendly site – and another third are working on creating such a site for the coming year
• Respondents are less worried about .jobs, the recession, search engines, and ‘free’ job sites than they were a year earlier
• Respondents are more worried about LinkedIn, technological change, and price erosion
• An impressive 88% are optimistic about opportunities for their job boards in the next 12 months

Take a look for yourself, and let me know if you think the industry has turned the corner!

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Another 30 days, another month of excitement in the online recruiting world! This is the stuff I thought worth noting:

• CareerBoard has a new director of sales: CareerBoard has appointed Dennis Liniman as their new Director of Sales. He’s been with the company since 2010, and is now on the hook to double job postings in the next year. Good luck on this aggressive goal!
• SmartJobBoard releases a new version: The latest version of this low-cost (and popular) job board software package includes: user login via Google accounts; ‘autocomplete’ in forms; and a Form Builder for the site administrator. Good to see this package continue to revise and expand.
• LinkedIn acquires a social CRM company: LinkedIn expands its offerings to employers by purchasing Connected, a social-flavored contact management startup, adding to a previous acquisition of CardMunch. Apparently they like the flavor of CRMs.
• BranchOut finds a job board partner:  The Facebook employment app BranchOut has partnered (somehow – the press release was vague) with CareerBuilder. Take that, Monster!
• USAJobs.gov says goodbye to Monster: USAJobs.gov is moving to an inhouse database system – and in the process leaving their long-time partner Monster, possibly as a result of past data breaches. Monster fights back.
• CareerBuilder is targeted for discriminatory job postings: Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) sent a letter to CareerBuilder’s CEO asking him to stop the practice help wanted ads discriminating against the unemployed. The National Employment Law Project unveiled examples of ads posted on the site that offered opportunities only to those who had a job.
• New job board for teen hackers: Teens in Tech, a network of support and events for young entrepreneurs, has just launched the Connect site, what 18-year-old founder Daniel Brusilovsky called “a social network meets resource center for young entrepreneurs”. As I’ve said before, there is a job board for everyone.

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I’ve worked with dozens of job boards over the years, and I often take a look at what the job seekers are saying to them. Since the onset of the recession (and honestly, before), it goes something like this:

“Why don’t you have any jobs in my area?”

“I’ve had my resume posted on your site for months and you haven’t called me.”

“I’ve been working in my field for twenty years but you don’t have a single job for me??”

There are lots of things going on here – whether a job seeker knows how to actually look for a job, whether they have the skills and training, if they will consider relocation – but a theme runs through many of the comments: job seekers often think job boards have the jobs. Not employers – job boards.

It doesn’t make much sense if you’re in the industry – but step outside for a second. Let’s suppose that you’re a somewhat educated but previously indifferent person who just lost their job. Where do you go first? Probably a job board – most likely one of the big ‘brand names’ like Monster or CareerBuilder. You see lots of jobs, you apply for lots of jobs – and you don’t get a response. Who do you blame?

The job board.

Now, let’s say that some of the job ads don’t list the name of the company, or even any contact information. It’s entirely possible that you might think that the job board actually posted the job.

Or…say that you’re looking and looking, but can’t find any listings for your town – even though you know the local manufacturing plant is hiring. Maybe, you think to yourself, the job board is hiding the jobs. Or failing to post them. Or worse.

A little nutty? Yes. But logic does not seem to play a big part in the public discourse these days. Why should job hunting be any different?

Getting back to my original subject, though: job boards are tools. At their best, they can enable job seekers to find jobs much faster and more efficiently than any other means (and yes, I’m including referrals, social media, and the like).

But job boards don’t create jobs – employers do. And employer don’t create jobs in a vacuum – they are part of an enormous (and enormously complicated) ecosystem that includes buyers, sellers, governments, trade, demand, and….job boards. I wanted to write about this because I understand the job seeker’s frustration – and I think it’s completely understandable that some of them become confused during the emotional, tense, and taxing process of looking for a job.

But if you’re a job seeker, please, take it from me – job boards don’t create jobs. They just communicate them.

It’s that time of the year – leaves are falling, frost is threatening our gardens….and I’m knocking on your door about the online recruiting survey. Despite the Job Board Doctor name, lots of different folks read this blog: HR and recruiting pros, job seekers, and yes, even job board operators and employees. So I’ve created surveys for each group – and of course, if you take the survey, I’ll be happy to send you the results! The survey takes about 3-4 minutes max, and you’ll finish knowing that you’ve helped the industry learn a little bit more about itself. So how about it?

• If you’re a HR or recruiting pro, click here
• If you’re a job board operator/employee, click here
• If you’re a job seeker, click here

(And when you’re done, forward the links to a friend in the industry!)

Thanks!