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Today’s the day. The infamous Howard Stern takes to Sirius satellite radio. It’s a $500 million bet by Sirius over 5 years that just might pay off.
From where I stand, the dollar amount is risky, but the strategy is not.
Satellite radio was really going nowhere until they started incorporating the exclusivity of personalities. People love celebrities and will pay to hear Snoop, Eminem, Howard, Ellen, whoever.
There’s a lesson here for job sites.
This is one of my more out-of-the-box ideas, but I really think it has some legs: Internet job sites should take this play out of the satellite radio playbook and pay employers for exclusivity of their job content.
The aggregation of job content is getting better, and it’s getting more homogeneous. A day when everyone has access to the same job listings is coming.
This phenomenon leaves a job board like Monster in quite a pickle, not to mention all the niche players out there currently making a decent living. But what if a job board followed satellite radio’s lead and paid a popular employer to be the exclusive provider of their job content?
Wanna see job openings at HOT COMPANY, INC.? Gotta go to JOBBOARD.com.
It wouldn’t even have to be all an employers jobs; just enough to drive significant traffic and awareness to said job site. The company Web site could drive traffic to the job board from their own site, and the job board could agree to do an ample amount of promotion for the employer, as well as hand over a check for the relationship.
On the employer side, I’m at least investigating such a scenario and how much I could get for such a relationship. I’m saying to myself, "I’ve been paying you, Mr. Job Site, all these years, now it’s your turn, because my content is what keeps you in business as it is, so pay me."
The jobs would be spider-free and only found in one place, which would help solidify a job board’s existence and traffic numbers, or at least buy it some time to figure out the whole free classifieds dilemma.
Believe it or not, this happens on a smaller scale already. Companies too small to put jobs on their own site direct visitors to their job board of choice, and many employers use one board exclusively anyway.
Therefore, I don’t think this idea is too farfetched, except for its practice with employers of the size and name recognition to make it work effectively.
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January 9th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Now that’s audacious! :-)
Joel, I really enjoy your thought provoking ideas! Keep up the great blogging!
This seems like an opportunity cost question – will the exclusive arrangement bring in enough money to offset the risk that hiring may be slower (impacting company profit) as a result of lower exposure.
January 9th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Joel,
It’s a good concept, but I think it won’t work out. In the end of the day, employers are looking to HIRE…and signing an exclusive for job content would be essentially betting the future of the business on one career site’s ability to provide the company’s most precious commodity…people. As a business owner and manager, I would never tie myself to one channel like that…unless they were able to guarantee me all the hires I need.
I would be interested in sites paying me to publish my jobs…I just wouldn’t undermine my core mission (fueling my labor force) to get that ancillary revenue stream.
Just a thought…keep up the good, insightful commentary.
Matt
January 10th, 2006 at 9:50 am
The Ladders already does something slightly in this vein- while they don’t charge for any postings, if you agree to give them exclusivity for I think 10-15 days, they will give you some premium positioning.
January 10th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
I think Joel is pretty close to reality with this one (not always the case of course!!). In the UK in the sector I cover (retail) there are only 2 decent niche sites which carry pretty much the same content so why does a jobseeker need to bother with both – I think the idea could work. However, in retail their brand is their key asset so in turn why bother with any job boards, if indeed, they (job boards) will even exist in 3 years. From birth to extinction in around 10 years… the bright light is about to land on them!