Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

I recently came across another free job board, Werkboard.com, a one-man show created by Giuseppe Rosati, and its got a Craigslist vibe going that I think many job seekers will appreciate.

The site’s been live for two months now. I checked in with Rosati to see how receptive job seekers/companies have been to the no-frills experience his site offers.

During our correspondence, Rosati admitted that he created the site to mimic Craigslist and Kijiji’s interface but also said that he wanted to take it a step further.

“I got the first spark of an idea to create the site when I saw how well Craigslist and Kijiji were doing with their job boards,” he said. “Frankly, I wasn’t that surprised because I’ve thought for some time now that mega job sites like Monster and the like are cluttered, inefficient, and not very cost-effective. So I knew that the simplicity/efficiency of Craigslist and Kijiji, as well as their low cost for postings were the reason for their success, but I thought that there could be something even better.”

Rosati said four keys aspects sets his site apart from competitors:

* It’s completely free, no ifs, ands, or buts
* Whereas Craigslist and Kijiji are broad-based classifieds sites, this site would be focused only on jobs
* It’s even easier to navigate, involving only two clicks (”What” and “Where”) or a simple keyword search
* It’s a sharper-looking site

He added that the last differentiator was the easiest because of “how ugly” both Craigslist and Kijiji are.

Although there are many free job boards creating clutter in the employment space, Rosati said he believes his site will be more attractive to job seekers for a variety of reasons.

“We do not require registration from employers or job seekers in order to keep things as simple and efficient as possible,” he said. “Also, continuing in the vein of keeping things simple, we’re not concerned with collecting resumes or matching systems. We simply display the jobs and let the job seeker apply directly to the employer, so we act only as a middleman connecting the two.”

Rosati said the tough part has been getting traffic, and that he’s open to anyone using the site, including third parties, recruiters, or companies.

“As long as they are legitimate, quality jobs, I really don’t care who posts. Our postings are displayed on Indeed and SimplyHired currently and will also be on LinkedIn, GoogleBase and a few others in the near future and most of our job seeker traffic is driven through those sites. So the more jobs we have, the more traffic we receive.”

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