Now that there’s plenty of job seeker lovin’ to be had, rivals Monster and CareerBuilder are dreaming up every possible tactic to become the darling of search in an all-out job board war.
From free job fairs to contests to book deals, both job boards have been digging deep into their bag of tricks to win over the hearts and home pages of America’s job seekers.
For starters, CareerBuilder’s received a ton of mileage out of their partnership with CNN. CB executives are always on-hand to dole out tips during morning shows or to provide colorful charts and graphs depicting job losses across America. Surveys and stories featuring job seeking advice or anecdotes appear regularly on CNN’s homepage.
A partnership with Facebook Engagement Ads, a program launched in August to more closely integrate advertisers into the fabric of the site, brought out the Creepy Co-Worker in all of us. The beta period for the engagement ads is expected to run into the early summer, so expect more of these interactive ads from CareerBuilder.
The job board also ran a bevy of online banner ads on sites like Gawker, Deadspin, and College Humor with the notion that job seekers browsing these sites during their lunch hour might hop over to the CB site for a little undercover job search.
Not to be outdone by Monster’s NFL contest, CareerBuilder launched their own friendly competition and asked job seekers to submit a 45-second video telling why it’s probably time to get a new job, with the winner receiving $5000.
While their web site didn’t get a complete overhaul, they did launch and promote AnonymousTipGiver.com, a web site that allows employees to tell their bosses how they should run the company.
CareerBuilder’s solid online-advertising efforts, superlative organic search, and smart tactical promotion assures that their brand won’t soon be forgotten, even as job boards continue to lose their relevancy to DIY searches on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.
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Monster received its fair share of attention during the Super Bowl with the launch of their Fandemonium contest in partnership with the NFL, which will continue to provide press for the job board during several upcoming NFL events, and with the debut of their Super Bowl spot depicting a moose’s front and hindquarters displayed in different rooms.
The Monster.com site underwent a complete overhaul at the beginning of the year, treating job seekers to customizable features and tools integrated throughout the Monster site. They aggressively promoted their makeover on various online sites like About.com, Amazon, CNN, Digg, Fandango, Time.com. comScore noted the surge in traffic that followed; however, their report declared CareerBuilder the overall leader of January traffic with 12.2 million visitors v. Monster’s 9.5 million.
Despite earlier criticism that their Super Bowl campaign failed to address the recession, Monster eventually did come through when they announced a free job fair to stop in over 140 cities nationwide. Reports from the earlier attendees say that attendance was overwhelming.
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What else do these competitors have in store for us in 2009? I expect to see a more aggressive sweep into social media from Monster.com, especially in the Twitter playground, in which there seems to be a never-ending supply of job seeker applications. I wouldn’t be surprised if another one of Monster’s acquisitions included a strong player in this category.
CareerBuilder’s “It’s Probably Time” campaign may be running out of gas, especially considering that many Americans aren’t looking to change jobs at the moment due to threats of layoffs. Look for a fresh campaign and a new slogan to address the millions of jobless. They should keep promoting BrightFuse, a possible competitor to LinkedIn, especially since BrightFuse appeals to an entirely different market. I also expect that CareerBuilder will continue expanding their brand internationally to gain further market share over Monster, and that they will launch more niche sites here and abroad. Need more proof that they’re in it to win it? Just ask their CEO.
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March 29th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Great blog. Its amazing to see how the landscape of job boards and job search has changed over the years. A few years ago there were only 3 major players. When we launched our job board, someone told me that your job board is only as good as the jobs you have on it. Good, bad or indifferent as job owners we can learn a lot from these two pioneers.
http://mashable.com/2009/03/02/ning-job-networks/