Cheezhead

Very interesting editorial on the state of job boards as they celebrate their 10th anniversary of being in the mainstream of recruitment conscious in ERE today by Raghav Singh. He says:

It’s disappointing that ten years after their inception job boards have proved to be largely ineffective. Some of the larger boards have simply become a cost of doing business for most employers, the conventional wisdom being that jobs must be posted on these, despite the fact that there’s little likelihood of getting a result. Of course, the unit cost of an individual posting is small, so many do it — but that still makes for a large cost-per-hire. Click here for the entire editorial.

I’ve worked for job boards over the past 8 years, and I have to agree with Singh for the most part. Obviously, there are success stories for both candidates and employers in using job sites, however they’re too few and far between. I also believe a lot of the success is due to a glut in the market of job seekers who have been aggressively looking for work since 2000. Employers could pick and choose from a large pool, and job boards were typically the cheapest and quickest pool in which to fish.

That said, as the Boomers retire and the economy continues its upswing, it’ll be interesting to see how job sites respond, or more importantly how candidates respond.

I think employment branding will become very important as the quest for passive candidates grows. And I believe corporate career centers will become much more than just job postings. They will become store fronts to an employer’s personality. In hopes of luring the already-employed, corporate job sites will become streaming video, highlighted employees, HR blogs, direct interaction and, maybe most importantly, a marketing vehicle to farm the candidates of the future.

The Monsters and CareerBuilders of today will become a way to get job seekers to a corporation’s Web site. And I think search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN will become a way for job seekers to directly connect with employers Web sites, cutting out the middleman that is the job boards.

Should be an interesting future. The employers who start earliest with these strategies will be the biggest winners.