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.

[Want to get Job Board Doctor posts via email? Subscribe here.].

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!!

[Want to get Job Board Doctor posts via email? Subscribe here.]

Last week I read a post about how social media killed job boards (yes, again!). Whether or not you agree with the argument (and as you can surmise, I don’t), the piece inadvertently brings up a larger issue: are job boards still relevant to job seekers? After all, this is all about the job seeker, right? Many social media evangelists would have you believe that job boards (employment hubs, job sites, whatever you wish to call them) have as little meaning for the average job seeker as the (gasp!) Sunday classifieds.

Which made me wonder – how do you determine the relevance of a particular job hunting tool for the average job seeker? Seems like these metrics might make sense:

• Usage by job seekers: job boards consistently end up in the top 3 recommended tools for job seekers to utilize during a job hunt. Traffics stats from both general and niche job sites bear this out.
• Usage by employers: job boards account for 12-30% of external hires for employers – exceeded only by referrals for most organizations.
• Multiple delivery methods: job seekers can discover jobs via online search, automated job matching emails, text messages, Tweets, and probably a few more I’ve missed.
• Multiple levels of engagement: job seekers can post ‘anonymous’ resumes; fully public resumes; profiles that can be matched to specific types of jobs or employers; direct email or phone interaction with employers; interaction on company career ‘micro-sites’ (that are managed by the job boards) via email, Twitter, etc.

The bottom line on whether job boards ‘die’ is relevance and usage  (not how many articles are published by social media evangelists). If job seekers continue to rely on and regularly use job boards, then they will, by definition, thrive. If the same job seekers no longer find the job sites useful or relevant – and thus no longer use them – then the job boards will die.

It’s that simple.

And yes, you can probably guess what I think will happen!

[Want to get Job Board Doctor posts via email? Subscribe here.]

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).

[Want to get Job Board Doctor posts via email? Subscribe here.]

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!

[Want to get Job Board Doctor posts via email? Subscribe here.]

The more things change, the more they stay the same – except when they don’t. Now how’s that for equivocation?

The results are in for the 2011 Online Recruiting Survey, and they are intriguing. We had a record 323 completed responses (a 15% increase from Fall 2010!), from three categories: HR and recruitment professionals, job board operators and employees, and job seekers.  We used many of the same questions from the 2010 survey, so it was relatively easy to track changes over the past 9 months. Here’s a sampling of what we found:

• For employers with 250 or more employees, ATSs (85%) and social media (85%) were the top recruitment channels; for employers with less than 250 employees, social media and referrals led the list

• .jobs continued to draw meager interest from employers, with only 6% having purchased a domain

• Job boards saw the recession (40%), LinkedIn (40%), and price erosion (31%) as the top problems for their businesses; LinkedIn had risen in threat level since the 2010 survey

• Both the quality (72%)and quantity (46%) of candidates produced by job boards remained important to HR and recruiting professionals

• The top problem for HR and recruiters? Lack of qualified applicants

As one job board respondent said, “I think the only constant is change. New and existing job boards must adapt to changing technologies and customer behavior.”

Truer words were never written. Get the full survey results here (free registration required).

I’m hoping that you’ll help me out by taking a short survey on the future of the job board industry. It will take about 4 minutes of your time – and I’ll be happy to send you the complete results!

It’s divided into 3 tracks – one for job seekers, one for job boarders, and one for recruiters and HR professionals. Pick the one that best fits you. I’ll be cross-referencing the results to see how the different respondents’ perspectives line up. Are job seekers actually finding jobs via social media? Is .jobs having an effect? Do job boards plan major changes in the coming year? Are companies planning to increase or decrease spending on job boards?

So go ahead - take the survey! And thank you.

Mobile is omnipresent – at times it seems as though more people are on their mobile devices that actually talking to each other. But what role is mobile playing in recruitment?

This was the question I set out to answer a few months back. (Thanks again to my co-sponsor on this endeavor, AllTheTopBananas!). The survey, which was targeted at HR and recruiting professionals in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, garnered a solid response of 155 completed questionnaires. Of these, 63% said they were using mobile in their recruiting efforts. 63% of the respondents were recruiters; the remainder were either some type of HR or hiring managers.

So, what did we learn?

• Direct text messages to candidates is the most popular use of mobile (66% of respondents)
• 40% of respondents have mobile versions of their career site
• 89% are using mobile in combination with social media
• Respondents are using mobile because it’s ‘always on’ (64%), immediate (58%), and provides another choice for the job seeker (57%)
• Spending plans are split: 37% have no plans for spending on mobile – but 34% plan to increase spending on mobile.
• The top three barriers to implementing mobile recruiting are: Lack of knowledge about mobile recruiting options (54%); lack of a mobile recruiting strategy (52%); and lack of knowledge about mobile recruiting technology (51%)

You can download the complete results here. (Free registration and Adobe Reader is required).

There is a lot of great writing out there covering the job board and online recruiting industries – in fact, it’s easy to overlook good material. So I’ve rounded up some of the most interesting pieces from the past months for your perusal. Enjoy!

• In age of social media, job boards are far from dead: How job boards are reinventing themselves for a new wave of recruiters.
• Is your job board PCI DSS compliant?: Thomas Shaw takes a look at the ecommerce component of job boards, security, and PCI DSS.
• A postmortem analysis of StandoutJobs: Founder Ben Yoskovitz looks at the life, struggles, and sale of his job board – and what it says about being an entrepreneur.
• Does your job board need a new prescription?: A response to one of my columns by Carrie McIntyre, about Linkedin and associations.
• How will job boards survive?: A Q&A I did with Destination:Talent, an Australian online recruiting resource, about the challenges in the job board world.
• My take on the Monster/HotJobs deal: Rob Kornblum of Bullhorn talks about what didn’t make sense re: Monster’s acquisition of HotJobs.
• The same thing that’s dragged job boards down will kill off social recruiting: Alasdair Murray tackles the poor writing common to most job postings – and why social media hasn’t changed it.
• 10 free usability testing tools: Not specific to job sites, but extremely useful nonetheless.
• Are job boards trying to kill off social recruiting?: Really an article about how job boards should embrace social media, not fear it.
• How job seekers may use social media in the future: How job seekers’ behavior is changing and what this means for online recruiting.

In August, I began gathering data from job seekers, HR professionals, recruiters, and job board employees and operators on the future of job boards and the methods for finding jobs and candidates. Now, 275 responses later, we have some results.

Each survey respondent identified him or herself as a job seeker, a HR or recruiting professional, or a job board employee or operator. Based on their response to that question, they then answered a series of questions specific to their background.

Here are some of the key findings:

• LinkedIn and Twitter are the primary social media channels for recruiting
• Most job seekers use 3 or more job boards in their search
• Planning recruitment spending is static for job boards and going up for social media and referral programs
• Job boards continue to see the recession as problem #1 for their business
• Job seekers are most influenced when choosing a job board by ease of use and profession or industry focus
• Most job boards are planning to add new social media features in the coming year
• Less than 7% of HR or recruiting professionals have purchased .jobs domains for their organization
• Most job seekers are using job boards to locate jobs, then apply for them (either on the company site or job board)
• The biggest challenge for HR and recruiting professionals in meeting hiring goals is a lack of qualified applicants

There are some warning signs for job boards in the results. For instance, less than 20% of job seekers have found a job via a niche job site.  Also, usage of general and niche job boards by HR and recruiting professionals falls behind social media, company career site, and referrals with regard to frequency of use.

If you’d like a copy of the complete results, register here for free access to  the survey (as well as a previous survey). I welcome your comments and suggestions for future surveys.