At the recent Direct Employers annual meeting, Hitwise, a company that “provides insights on how 10 million U.S. Internet users interact with more than 1 million Web sites, across 165+ industries,” shared some interesting data across the employment sector. It wasn’t pretty for the likes of Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs.
Year-over-year numbers from last Sept. revealed a 21 percent drop at CareerBuilder, 17 percent at Yahoo! HotJobs and a 16 percent decrease at Monster. The JobCentral network includes sites like Indeed and Simply Hired, rose 39 percent.
According to Ray Schreyer of IBM and JobCentral’s Board of Directors, many employers buy into the three most popular job sites because of brand awareness and internal pressure. “We’re not on the basis of ROI,” said Schreyer. “We’re buying because of pressure. The mentality is, ‘If you’re not on these boards, something is wrong with you.’ My answer is if we do the Big Three, we can’t afford to do anything else.”
According to Schreyer, the Big Three have less than a 25 percent hold on the market. “Job boards had phenomenal results in the ’90s and early 2000s,” he said. “But their declining traffic and increasing cost makes them less so.”
Not unlike many other industries, such as television, fragmentation is the name of the game today. Thanks to Google, for example, the door is open for sites with a laser focus their efforts and out-optimize the opposition. Hitwise’s Heather Dougherty, Research Director, shared a slide at how a search for “Alaska jobs” returned few big brands.
According to Dougherty, “Niche sites are better at reaching different demographics. Job seekers are casting their net as wide as possible, so they’re surfing many sites driven largely by searches done on Google.”
As a result, bigger boards are scrambling to make up the loss.
One-third of Monster’s traffic is generated by pay-per-click advertising, according to Dougherty. Unfortunately, fewer people are clicking on ads. Hitwise data reveals that only 9 percent of Googlers are clicking on sponsored listings when searching jobs. This is down from 13 percent just a few quarters ago. Another interesting tidbit: Monster-branded searches are down 56 percent year-over-year.
“Search is a key driver of traffic, with the majority coming from organic results,” said Dougherty. Paid search is currently not broadly used within the Employment category.”
As a result, they seem to be turning more and more to e-mail as a means to drive traffic in the absence of search advertising effectiveness. According to Dougherty, 28 percent of CareerBuilder’s traffic is e-mail driven, with Monster at 18 percent and Y! HotJobs at 11 percent. Simply Hired, in contrast, is less than 7 percent.
In summary, Hitwise data revealed the fact that nobody owns the employment market. In fact, it’s not even close. Growth of job distribution networks and job board aggregation services is redefining the industry. Job seekers are able to canvas thousands of Web sites rather than depend solely on a few destinations.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
How is this apples to apples if JobCentral’s number is an aggregation of individual (and competitive) company sites (SimplyHired and Indeed are different and compete directly, no?), while CB, Monster and HOTJOBS are stand alone? If you include HotJobs’ global network wouldn’t the results be in favor of them for instance?
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
The post isn’t meant to be “JobCentral vs. The Others.” Sorry if it read that way. I didn’t create any of the charts. The focal point is the immense challenge currently facing the industry stalwarts as shown by Hitwise data.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Hi Joel, is that just US data or worldwide? Would that make a difference? Obviously competition is good in this domain. If we checked purely by traffic growth, does this change the top 10 or top 50 list from say last year i.e. kind of movers and shakers. Now that would be interesting, probably clearer too as to where the losses or reduction in gains of the big 3 are going.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:35 am
sounds plausible but the hitwise data on monster doesn’t agree with compete.com data, why not?
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/monster.com+careerbuilder.com/?metric=uv
– Eric
October 24th, 2008 at 11:28 am
@eric … I’d check the methodology of each provider for a full rundown on how they track data. I’d also point you here, which raises questions on Compete: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/21/simplyhireds-traffic-soars-but-is-it-real/
October 24th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
could be, but when someone starts gaming the system I think you can expect to see a sharp jump like simply hired here: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/simplyhired.com+indeed.com/?metric=uv
monster’s increase looks gradual and timing matches recession. either way, careerbuilder.com looking flat is significant in itself
Thanks
-eric
October 24th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Actually hotjobs sells search marketing and a suite of media products to target passive job seekers………Get the full picture. HJ is not just a job board but can reach 130 million passive job seekers.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I call on corporate recruiting professionals all day everyday and lately I have been hearing a lot of negative feedback regarding the big boards and more specifically Monster.
I agree with Joel’s idea that better and more cost effective internet recruiting results are coming from Google and search engine optimization. Companies are starting to see the value in having hundreds of web pages indexed on Google with only their jobs and employment brand. Also, I’ve heard from many recruiters that the best passive candidates won’t put their resumes on the big job boards because they want to be more discreet versus having their resume out there for everyone, including their current boss, to see.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Good article Joel but Hotjobs works differently than the other two. HJ competes as a destination site but they also preach about SEO, paid search plus behaviorally targeting the entire Yahoo network. If there truly was a reduction in pay per clicks wouldn’t we see Google’s valuation decrease? How do these Hitwise numbers compare to MediaMetrix? I agree the days of post & search are decreasing HJ seems like the only major board that understands and is trying to create new options for the industry. They are incorporating the HJ brand to SEO and behavioral targeting. It’s definitely a wake up call for CB & Monster.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:23 am
In response to Jay’s post, Monster does already do behavioral targeting with their Career Ad Network product…
http://hiring.monster.com/products/CareerAdNetwork.aspx