Sometimes when something is popular and successful for a long time it becomes a defacto standard, or something that is just accepted, no questions asked. Over time, other people and organizations try to catch hold of the coat tails of this success by copying (sometimes with slight variations, often with none) the original idea.
There comes a point when everyone is too busy admiring this “something” to notice that times have changed and the world has moved on. Such is the case of the ubiquitous job board.
There have been many massive market shifts by inventors and free-thinking people in history. Think of the first automatically sliced loaf, a buzzer when you leave your car lights on, Dyson and the vacuum cleaner industry. All were big revelations: the kind that make you think, well, that’s obvious.
It’s the same in the recruitment industry. The job board market is lazily jogging along (fat from its profits) unaware that its nemesis the “people board” is about to sprint past it and leave it for dead (quite literally).
You see, times have changed. The Internet is now much more people focused, much more open. People/users demand more from Internet services and they want these services to be free. Any Internet service that is going to succeed in a massive way must focus on the benefits for its users, open its doors and let the people in.
Job boards simply do not focus on their users. What they do is, in fact, the reverse. Many job boards concentrate on two areas: job advertising and proprietary CV (resume) databases.
For job advertising, the job boards charge a lot of money for employers (or agencies) that wish to advertise their job vacancies. It’s a pretty blunt weapon (and poorly aimed), but it can attract large volumes of resumes.
The other side of the job board website, the resume database, is a little odd. Essentially the premise is that users can send their resume (free of charge) to the job board. At first, this sounds like a reasonable deal until you realize that the resume database is locked down. Only employers who register with the job board and pay (far too much money) will be able to search for your resume.
There are three fundamentally bad things here:
1. The job boards are selling YOUR data and you gave them it for free.
2. The job board has effectively restricted access to companies who can afford to pay for the service.
3. Your data is only visible for those periods of time when companies pay for it and actively search for some skills.
People boards are the reverse of this and bring benefits for those actively looking for work, those not actively looking for work, employers and even agencies.
So what is a people board?
Here’s my definition:
A people board:
1. Enables people to promote their skills
2. Enables people to publish their availability and references
3. Enables people to control how their data is presented and how they can be contacted
4. Allows ALL employers to search for people
**1-4 MUST be free of charge
We don’t need to over-complicate the recruitment business. There should only be two sides to it: employers seeking candidates and candidates looking for roles in businesses.
The objective of a people board is to make it much easier to put both sides of the recruitment equation in touch with each other, no matter what the business, no matter what skills the person has.
Popularity: unranked [?]
May 11th, 2009 at 10:05 am
I guess the other side of the argument is, do you really want to be contacted by an employer that can’t afford (or is too cheap) to be on a job board? New technology will come that will strangle the big boards in the future, but for now they’re a fraction of what they cost in the late 90s. Cost isn’t as much of an issue as the loads of unqualified, off the mark CVs one gets.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Like Socialism this idea is great in theory and awful in practicality. I assume you would pay for the people board with advertisements on your website because there must be revenue.
The information on a resume needs to be protected, do I want any person who represents themselves as a company to have my address, phone numbers, and references? If you don’t check the companies references than you will have every scammer in the world accessing the database. Peoples phone numbers and mailing addresses will end up on call and mailing lists. There are thousands on thousands of companies, checking them all will be a time consuming and expensive enterprise.
There is a reason why the job boards charge (besides making money), it is also to protect the users.
As I said, good idea in theory, terrible idea in practicality. Good luck though, wish you well and make sure you have a great lawyer for the eventual law suits filed when peoples identities are stolen/compromised.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Hi Roberta,
You’ve kind of answered your own question. If I was an employer, why would I pay hundreds of dollars for loads of unqualified, off the mark CVs? It’s not that I can’t afford to do it, it’s just that it costs me more to wade through the CVs. What if I could search online myself for free?
May 11th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Hi Naive,
The idea is that people control how they display their own data. You don’t need to put your address, phone numbers and references on your online resume. You could use an anonymous email address (as we recommend), and your data is only out there when you want it to be…not all the time.
If you think the job boards do a thorough job of checking “employers” before letting them access the CV database then think again, they don’t.
As for protecting the users, I seem to remember some of the bigger job boards data being compromised on several occasions in the recent past!
May 11th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Graham,
2 items….
First, what are your thoughts on Linkedin.com as compared to your 4 item list and just your overall opinion.
Second, “large candidate databases” already exist within corporate ATS systems and it seems to me a large number of “recruiter types” simply do not know what do with it or how do “data mine” it. Would a people board be different?
It seems to me, a big question that needs to be answered in general in regards to resume databases/social networks/job applicants is simply stated…”Who are the good ones?”
May 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Isn’t this “people board” description really just a description of Linkedin? And isn’t this also what Jobster tried, and flamed out at? (Ask Joel. I think he was tracking Jobster at some point.)
People love to bag on the big boards, but HotJobs, Monster, Career Builder, Dice, etc. are making tons of money. I think it’s because they provide real value. At this point, almost all of their business is repeat business, so they must be doing something right.
People don’t want their resumes and references posted publicly, which is why so few Linkedin profiles have much more than title and employer. Personally, I’d rather know that someone was serious enough about hiring to pay to see my resume, and pay to post a job.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
All hail the utopia of the People Board! Graham – your idea is asinine. Do you know how many totally free job boards there are out there? Can you name even one? The reason job boards charge a fee to their customers is because they are providing a service. Mainly, that service is acquiring job seekers of a particular nature and presenting them to employers in an organized fashion. It costs money to properly find job seekers and maintain a quality job site. Your idea is fatally flawed. You may not like it that some employers can’t afford a job board’s services, but that money keeps the candidate flow going and keeps out the riff-raff companies from harassing job seekers.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
It’s an interesting idea, and I am sure something the big boards (and other startups) are/were considering something like this. I would have some of my own concerns when it comes to this though…
1. I understand that a user can format their own data to display what you want but assuming I work for company X and am listed as actively seeking a job, they can presumably load my account for free and find exactly which employees are eager to leave. I think this is somewhat similar to what Blake is saying above. If you’re looking to make this for passive job seekers that may make it tough.
2. Free services make it tough to make money – leaving only ads open. I would rather pay for something than get ads in my face or some BS applications every other page. Side note: why is making money so bad for a startup?
3. Free services (with no payment on either side), for me, mean that the service and quality will be crap. If you don’t take money somewhere down the line none of your customers have any guarantee that you’ll maintain a certain level of quality or that you’ll be around next month. Let’s be clear: GMail is NOT free. Facebook is NOT free.
I don’t think your analysis of the “death of job boards” is wrong, they are, presumably, on their way out (See: Innovator’s Dilemma). However, just like every technology or service before it there is still opportunity to innovate and make money using job boards without jumping onto something new. Eventually, these networks may be the de facto job hunting standard but right now they aren’t. If they were, LinkedIn would be making considerably more money and we would hear of one of the big boards start to make offers to acquire existing solutions/building their own. We’d also see some more movement from other startups.
I think the problem is that users lost faith in existing solutions out there. There is simply no authenticity or honesty in job boards anymore.
Best of luck.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
First, for all who say this can’t work – just because a thing has not been done, does not mean it cannot be done. I forgot who said – “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”
This People Board concept could have merit- but would require some system wide changes. I agree with Blake that this is part of what Linked In is trying to do. Will HR as an industry be willing and able to change? I don’t know.
I do know the current system is complicated and frustrating to many people on *both* sides of the process. It is hard for me to believe this is the best possible system of matching people to positions. While the system does work, it could stand some improvements.
Of course with all the money tied up in the current system, there will be a strong interest in keeping the status quo, especially from those who profit from the whole application/recruitment rituals.
May 11th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
All of you folks that are married to the current model of job boards should go work for a newspaper…oh yeah, that’s right-newspapers are dying off faster than we can write obituaries. If you keep your head in the sand, it will only leave your a$$ exposed.
May 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Um, aren’t you just describing LinkedIn?
May 11th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
There’s already a ‘people board’, its called LinkedIn.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Sean,
LinkedIn have labelled themselves as part of the social networking band waggon. What they’re doing is building relationships between “professionals”, but hey, that’s what various forums have been doing for decades. The difference with the people board is that its really attempting to put employers directly in touch with potential employees, cutting out middlemen on one side and helping the potential employees promote themselves. Both very positive, uncomplicated messages.
That said, there are obvious similarities between professional networking sites and people boards, such as publishing references and bringing people together, but to me it still seems like they are using their model to force you down a certain path….you have to be a member of this, you should upgrade to the next level of service to view that.
To answer your second point, yes, large candidate databases exist all over the place, but the onus is on the recruiters to keep their database up to date. I think it’s more likely to succeed if the candidates have some control over the type of data in the database and are able to update their own data….so yes, a people board is different.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Blake,
No, people boards are different to professional/social networks…see my comments in reply to Sean above. Don’t know the history of Jobster I’m afraid…there’s just too many job boards to wade through these days.
I love to bag on anything that doesn’t work for me. The big job boards make tons of money (making tons less these days) because they have a monopoly and well tons of money. They’re just cranking the handle.
I disagree… I want my resume (or parts of it posted publicly). That’s how I’m going to get my next job. As for my references, I definitely want them posted publicly…they say good things about me.
Personally, I’d rather someone cut out all the middlemen, cut out their costs and give their cut to me, but maybe I’m old-fashioned :-)
May 11th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Shai,
Thanks for your comments. Let me answer your points:
1) I’ve seen this question raised several times before. What if you send your CV to one of the job boards and your employer pays to search their database, or you put something up on a social networking tool, Twitter or LinkedIn. The answer is that they’re all searchable, it’s just that your employer might have to pay to find the data.
2) Making money is good for a startup, but to get in the game you have to get people using your service. It’s really extremely difficult to do this without major financial backing for marketing/advertising etc… if you make the service free then you stand a small chance. I hate ads too.
3) Why does free equal crap? Free equals opportunity for investment. I suppose a people board could tag on a little job board activity and get employers to pay for that!
Finally, yes I think job boards have had their day and in the current climate, they are the wrong vehicle for job hunting. Just think how many applicants employers/agencies get for one job advert right now…how do they find the best candidate? They don’t. They probably take the first 25 and trash the rest. With a people board you could do the reverse. You wouldn’t have to advertise the job, but you could find the right person.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Joan,
Thanks. Like the quote. Here’s one my business partner like to use, “Job boards are so bad they’re not even wrong!”
Joking aside, yes, the people board concept is vastly different to how things are carried out in the HR industry now. The time might be right though as people boards could save companies large amounts of money. Whether other camps have too much vested interest though is another thing.
The systems that HR use today are neither efficient or cost effective, plus they’re restrictive.
The people board is about changing an industry and not before time.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Daniel,
I think the utopia of the People Board is much better than the living hell we have to suffer with those hebetudinous Job Boards.
Yes, I can name plenty of free job boards. Yes, I agree that job boards provide a service to their customers….it’s just that it’s not great. Just because you pay for something doesn’t make it any good.
We tried the CV service offered by one of the main job boards. Out of the 250 resumes we waded through, we found one with the right skills but the resume was 3 years out of date and when we contacted the individual they weren’t available for 6 months. Quality was a bit of an issue, but I couldn’t get our money back.
By riff-raff companies do you mean job agencies? I’ve got another post for them.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Thanks for the response…
Free doesn’t always equal crap, just when the company needs some more money and opens up the “University of Phoenix” type signup ads while browsing for jobs. Or sell data… or decide to change how they protect their users to give the paying parties more “features” :)
Right now some job boards work, and they are good for some niches. When applying for jobs at a job board only people interested apply and it’s easy to kick out unqualified people (even if you only pick the top 25).
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I was recruiting for a position would I try to hunt down people right for the job only to find out they’re not interested in that role? Then weed out what some profiles mean and if those people would be a good fit/worth contacting? Users would just have to be very specific in their profile about what they want to do and where they see themselves (not a bad thing at all, but may mean less interest).
I imagine most job board postings are more inline with the “we need someone quickly and we don’t have enough resources to search the web – post on ABC”. Companies that are really looking to find the perfect fit for certain positions use specialized recruiters, find them at industry events, get recommendations from workers/friends/family, or use other industry specific events/contacts to find them.
In conclusion, job boards are easier for recruiters/HR to use. It’s a post and wait game and they get enough volume now that they don’t care… that much.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Catbert,
Yes agreed…whoever thought those bricks of cell phones would ever take off? Not me.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
The Digitalist,
Um, nope. LinkedIn describes itself (well in Wikipedia) as a business-oriented social networking site…probably overcomplicated for a recruitment industry. People boards are simply trying to connect employers with prospective candidates and let the candidates promote themselves how they wish to. See my response to Sean for a slightly fuller answer.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Jobboarders,
Well I couldn’t leave you out….see my response to Sean and The Digitalists above.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Graham,
I agree with your points #1-3, but the points that all services must be free and that all employers to search for people is something where I disagree. A profit has to be made if the website domain will continue to still be up and more importantly for the people who spend 100% of their time maintaining it. For point #4, I believe the reverse: the people who should choose which employer they want to be searched and contacted by, not the company choosing. For example, a graduate of a medical school would rather want to be searched and possibly be contacted by a hospital or prestigious medical university for a job rather than a telemarketing company.
However, I think our vision of how people boards will become the future are very similar to what my company Eggsprout is trying to accomplish. It goes beyond job boards and caters towards a people board –> community. Let me know what you think.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Interesting concept and interesting comments. I think what we’re all missing here is the ROI on any board – free or not. What’s the best method of gaining employment? Friends, family or a referral.
The ROI on job boards, LinkedIn, and the 40,000 other sites that bill themselves as job boards (or social networking, business oriented sites) is hovering somewhere around, what – 8%? Is that an acceptable number? Not in my book. If my computer (which was given to me free of charge) only booted up 8% of the time, I’d chuck it in a minute. If your company’s product only worked 10% of the time, I’d find a new vendor.
Graham questions the status quo which is great. However, job boards have been on the decline for years and the reason is the ROI. The economic decline has forced companies to look at their recruiting methods and resources, taking stock at what truly delivers results. Job Boards are a necessary evil from a marketing perspective but they sure aren’t delivering the results they pitch. Suddenly but not surprisingly, employee referral programs are a hot ticket again. Why – because it’s cheap, effective and you usually get better results.
Bottom line, I think challenging the accepted “way of doing things” can only be positive but I don’t think another board, free or not, will revolutionize an already over saturated market.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
It doesnt matter what LinkedIn calls itself, the perception among recruiters is that its a ‘giant resume database’.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Graham,
To your original and follow-on posts:
1. Evolution is not an “alternative”, it’s inevitable.
2. You’re speaking against two entrenched interests, rather than just one (the “job boards” you seek to marginalize):
a. Fee-paid recruiters, the second oldest profession known to man, and somewhat less honest than those practicing the oldest profession. You see, my dear man, they charge a hefty transactional fee to willing (and sometimes unwitting) corporations for managing all those “relationships” with “passive candidates”. Of course these relationships could never be created (or recreated) by intelligent individuals in the direct employ of said corporations using free content provided by the candidates themselves. That just wouldn’t play in Peoria.
b. Job Board employees, the dot-com leftovers still operating under the sad illusion that either additional VC funding, or the next strong employment quarter will pull their commissions/stock options above water. The fact is that internet employment advertising has been monetized through, and beyond its natural life cycle. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.
3. Current job board models will likely remain in-play for several years, selling space and access to companies filling high volume, low-skill positions. Monster’s market coverage and CareerBuilders partnerships with the dying newspapers (is that the blind leading the blind, or what?) will provide a marginally effective life-support system. I doubt they’ll acknowledge the disruptive changes in their space, as I haven’t noted any signs of intelligent life on those planets in a long, long time.
4. I think your attempt to minimize LinkedIn is self-serving at best and ignorant at worst. I realize Cheez has provided you a forum to freely advertise your product, but I really think you’d be better served to take a holistic view of your space rather than to toss off the obvious market leader. LinkedIn provides free, online, professional content and networking management systems. You want to remove the “middle man”, and they already have.
5. Move into the space and exploit the hell out of it. Don’t expect too much validation from the Cheez crowd. There’s a lot of job board reps and 3rd party agency folks.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
free free free. how are “job boarders” supposed to make a living then? By cluttering their “people boards” with google and affiliate ads?
May 12th, 2009 at 8:50 am
I looked at your ‘people board’ knokknok.com, the number one people board – and I just see a free job board with no users. I don’t want to knock it, but attracting attention by shouting ‘job boards are dead and dying’ is cheap. Talk is cheap.
Maybe you are right, but don’t tell me, show me!
I can’t think of a single example of anyone having invented some new terminology that caught on. Rather, new lingo is a sure sign in my book of a nonstarter.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Jon,
Sure I admit that a people board site needs to be a commercial success and there are several different ways of doing that.
The problem with your take on point 4 (or rather the reverse of it) is that it’s easy to say but not easy to do. You could still get employers to register but not charge them for using the service. Even if you charge them, a legitimate employer could still “harvest” resumes and pass them onto someone else.
Glad you like the vision, it has certainly attracted a fair amount of attention. Will check out Eggsprout soon.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Facetime,
Interesting take on the discussion and I agree with your statement on ROI. Recommendations or referrals are definitely going to become more popular in the future… that’s why we included it in our brief list of the services a people board should offer.
Differentiators like this are what is needed in the current job climate. It’s just an easy way for people to publicise their skills, when they’re available and what references they have. They can post their entry on a people board and leave it there. Most people aren’t looking for a new job every day.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Catbert,
Yes, I guess I am “speaking against two entrenched interests”; fee-paid recruiters and job-boarders.
You can certainly view the fee-paid recruiters (agencies) as one of the middlemen, a barrier between the employer and the employees, but often large employers use them to shield their HR department and prune a bunch of resumes before they land on the employers’ desk. But, hey, wouldn’t it be just great if teh HR department could pull up a list of suitable candidates based on skill, location and even availability?
As for the “current job board models remaining in-play for several years”, maybe the current credit crunch will shorten their life-expectancy (it’s that old ROI thing again).
I’m not trying to “minimize” LinkedIn, I was just trying to point out the differences that I can see. When I’m looking for my next job, I don’t need professional content and a networking management system. I want something simple that hits as wide (and as relevant) an audience as possible. Don’t think I mentioned my website in the article or my subsequent posts, but I apologise if I did so.
It’s certainly sparked a lot of debate ;-)
May 12th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Doron,
I guess they can register with a people board and watch the new job offers flow in :-)
May 12th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Eric,
Catchy tag line, you must admit. It’s not a free job board and it does have users. It’s a startup so give us some time. I’m not saying anything new by shouting “job boards are dead and dying” (which are they by the way… you can’t have it both ways ;-)). What I am saying is that there must be better alternatives…..hopefully the people board is one of them.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I definitely agree that both sides are not very well served by the status quo of jobs boards. Still, the fact remains that the best jobs to be had rarely hit these modern versions of the classifieds. You have network into them. Boards/classifieds are ok for commodity jobs but none of *us* is a commodity.
Linkedin seems like an ok attempt to aid people in networking, but the power of F2F networking is diluted by the ease and shallowness of the connections.
So it seems like there is room for something else and that something may well be a people board. But I have yet to see or hear any ideas about how a successful one would really work and differentiate itself and community from the stuff that is already out there.
Maybe if a site had a really effective resume parser that effectively matched job seekers with hiring managers. This board, http://jobfox.com/ , tries and IMHO fails with a tedious input process and buggy matching. And it is a board, which means they are also going to try to sell you resume writing services.
Maybe that is something to explore; along with disintermediating the boards and headhunters, what can be done to eliminate the need for a flashy resume formatted in the style of the month? The fact that you paid $600 to have your resume groomed only means that you had $600 to spend and not that your are better suited for a given job. It might get you an interview, which is all a resume, or job board for that matter, can do for you.
So maybe a good people board will be designed to get the right people into interviews for which they are well suited, while eliminating middlemen and resume services. How do you do that? And how do you monetize it? I am not saying it is impossible, just that no obvious solution exists. Maybe these guys have one: http://www.koda.us
May 12th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I am all for new ideas…..
There are many and have been many who tried to “connect” the “best” candidates with the “best” job. See: Jobfox, Jobkabob, Itzbig, etc
In theroy who wouldnt want that. In reality the issue is the matching doesnt work and the candidate pool has to be gigantic in order to make it work. If you have 100 jobs in one market and 10,000 candidates the matching will not work. The employers do not see the correct matches and the candidates do not see any good jobs for them.
Most innovation comes from startups. The problem is funding. If any of these new ideas spent the same amount of advertising dollars as EHarmony they might make a dent. Until that day, there just will not be enough candidates. I know MySpace and Facebook grew with a viral wave but the reality is most people will spend time socially online but not looking for a job.
LinkedIn might say they are social but in the employment world they are a great place for candidates to be found.
In regards to free places to post and to search there are many. I saw one comment that said can you name one. The answer is yes! There are many. Craigslist has become a huge place to post and search for a job and in many of their markets it is free. Recruiters have used Linkedins status update to say they are looking for a position. Oodle.com allows anyone to post for free and like Craigslist has traffic throughtout the US and Canada. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
The downside to free sites is that most of the time the tools are not as advanced as the boards. The reason for this is beacuse there is less revenue to put into the product.
We all have to pick out battles.
My rule of thumb is use one of the big three boards, two – three niche sites and pick a site to trial for 90 – 120 days.
Do what you can to target a unique audiance and to not have overlap from the other sites you are using.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I agree that the new job board should be candidate-focused. As an owner of 2 niche job boards the reason I charge a nominal fee for access to the resume database is to protect the data from getting into unwanted “hands”. A resume can be a goldmine for phishers. I offered free access for many years and it was a huge problem. I now screen each person/company that wishes to have resume database access.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
If everything is free then there isn’t any value, or did I miss something?
Aren’t the murdering people off Craig’s List and not too sure all that information is particularly secure.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Hi Alex,
You make some interesting points. A friend of a friend of a friend isn’t necessarily the best reference.
I thought about writing a fancy parser to read through peoples resumes. That’s what most job boards seem to do. I then thought about it from the job-seekers point of view….
How would I describe myself or my skills? Probably a few key words or phrases would be about right, so I came up with the idea of talent tags. Essentially free-format, nearly-anything-goes phrases that I could use to describe my skills and that potential employers would use in their searches. I might even want to use my name as a tag so that people that know me can find out my availability and plan to get me in for a piece of work in the future. There are doubtless other uses for these tags that aren’t apparent yet.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
This mind numbing conversation is enough to convince someone to get out of this industry. There are just a bunch of morons, who make no money, rail on those that do, and try to reinvent the wheel.
There are definitely viable options to the job boards out there, and job boards are definitely losing favor. But most of the industry, will die broke or will need to work elsewhere in order to afford dinner.
All these losers in their underwear, plugging away in mom’s basement on their Horticulturist Jobs in the Northeast.com sites, making $20/month off AdWords are just muddying the waters…
…and IF they really want to facilitate the demise of the Big 3, then they should just get out of the way of the real alternatives w/ real business models.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Hi The Middle,
Yes, you’re right…. a people board needs a large pool of candidates for it to work. That will happen over time, but why wouldn’t you do it as a prospective candidate? It’s just takes a few minutes to set up and then you can leave it alone (except to update your availability). The idea is to attract recruiters to you, not go out and look for jobs. The employers can search for your skills, look at your references and resume and THEN decide whether they’d like to talk to you. Simple.
Advertising (i.e. getting noticed) is the key in this market place.
In my book, advanced tools doesn’t equal better tools. Simple, easy to use tools with good, well thought out concepts that actually benefit users equals better tools. They don’t have to cost a lot.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Hi Stacey,
Yes, candidate-focused is the way forward. People get hung up about access to a resume database for some justifiable reasons and some not so justifiable reasons.
It’s up to the user to put whatever data they want to in the resume. I wouldn’t recommend putting in your address, phone number, d.o.b….that kind of personal data. What should be in there is a summary of your achievements/work experience etc. Where I see people boards coming out on top is that the privacy of the data should be under the control of the user (i.e. the person that owns the data)!
For example, the user could control whether their name is displayed (or an anonymous id), whether their real email address is displayed (or they can only be contacted via internal site messaging), whether their phone number is displayed and whether their resume is displayed.
I’m not saying that this privacy control eradicates the problem of phishing but it reduces the risk.
That said, what’s to stop an employee of a legitimate company getting access to a job board’s CV database and selling the data to someone else anyway?
May 12th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Hi Bruzzy Von Pennington,
Um, air’s free but it has a particularly high value! Seriously though, there is plenty of value in people boards. If you cut out the middle-men for each transaction, then that’s either money saved by the employer or a salary increase for the employee.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Huh…I think its a good idea. I hope it works out for the start up.
I see many pro’s and con’s to this concept. The pro??? Well its free. Look at Craigslist.com. In markets where you don’t have to pay, they kill. The negative…sometimes they really KILL. The big 3, monster, careerbuilder, and Hotjobs spend money and time making sure that each posting up follows its rules. Some boards are a little more forgiving than others however. They also check the company to make sure its a real firm. Free is great, and I am all about new ideas in the market place, but unless you can show that the “companies” are for real, it will go no where. Just look at all the stuff with Craigslist…I don’t know about you, but I would never brand a job for my firm on the same site that sells “exotic services”. :)
Good luck though..
May 12th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I’m all for “innovation” of any kind and encourage Graham to “fight the fight.” However, I think the “middle man” is getting a bum rap here with all the talk about cutting him out.
Full disclosure, I used to be a “middle man” but now support/develop the corp recruiter.
Middle men(women) exist for a reason… employers/hiring managers need them for a variety of reasons.
“Middle Men” don’t have to be a headhunter that carry a $25k placement fee or a $500 job posting fee. They can be a coworker, a friend, a Linkedin Connection, or preferably a “trusted source” in the area of expertise that you are looking for.
Middle men provide a great service…they filter for you by knowing their industry. Creating easier or more ways for people to get at hiring managers and for hiring managers to get at people…doesn’t solve the “where are the best people for my open job” problem. Even if the price is cheaper or even if its free, information overload (or complete lack of information) is there and now you have lost your filters.
Here is my “game changing” prediction for the future: Technology will allow people’s networks to connect in a meaningful, targeted, and filtered manner that is focused on one thing that we all have in common… our careers. At a peer to peer network level, a secured and open data exchange among fellow professionals will occur.
Now…just need to figure how to make that happen. ;)
May 13th, 2009 at 3:26 am
SEM,
So mind-numbing that you were compelled to comment? I agree with you, there are far too many job boards out there and that was one of the points in my original article…..”other people and organizations try to catch hold of the coat tails of this success by copying (sometimes with slight variations, often with none) the original idea.”
You mentioned that there were real alternatives out there to job boards but didn’t say what they were.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:30 am
the dudesf,
Glad you think it’s a good idea. However, I don’t agree with your statement about showing the “companies” are for real. The trick is to give the control of privacy to the users (see one of my replies above to Stacey).
May 13th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, there are different kinds of middle-men. Some add value, some don’t.
“Middle Men” don’t have to be a headhunter that carry a $25k placement fee or a $500 job posting fee. They can be a coworker, a friend, a Linkedin Connection, or preferably a “trusted source” in the area of expertise that you are looking for.
You talk about middle-men carrying out filtering tasks, but the people board is giving recruiters that filtering process without being bombarded with unqualified resumes.
For example they could pull up a list of qualified people for a particular position but rule out 80% because they’re not available for the timescales for that position. On the other hand, recruiters could actually do some forward-planning by finding an individual who wasn’t available for several months etc etc..
Let’s hope your game changing prediction works.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Graham,
I agree with the passive candidate approach to post and leave it alone. I think there is a merket for the 1 in 3 americans who will change jobs this year. The issue I see is that LinkedIn has really taken over the market and they might say they are a social site but we all know better.
I am ALL FOR someone going head to head with them. The competition is great for the industry.
Keep it up!
May 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Hi The Middle,
I think with a people board you could be a passive or active candidate. If active then you set your availability to “available now” or some date in the near future, if passive you set your availability to “interested in job offers”.
Why restrict contacting people to the ones within your “trusted” network? I don’t understand that way of thinking. That’s just building lots of little networks…why not just have one great big one?
May 13th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Even the Wall Street Journal is writing about this stuff -
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204475004574126832685403014.html
I dont think job boards or employer services are going away anytime soon.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Hi Graham,
I also have a website which has a lot in common with yours. We started the development about 3 years ago. I didn’t hear about Jobster, nor even LinkedIn back then. We launched it about 2 years ago in my home country (which is a small country in Europe). We got good feedback and it started to generate some revenue as well. So we decided to make it international. We launched it yesterday (ITwiw.com), so now you have another competitor:)
May 14th, 2009 at 7:42 am
But job boards do help and they help in preoparation with their advice.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Hi Domastick
That’s good news (no pun intended)! Glad to see the WSJ are jumping on the people board band-waggon ;-), but I wrote my article first!
You’re right, job boards aren’t going to go away soon…. it takes time to turn an industry on its head.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Hi Attila,
Cool, welcome to the gang of people boarders. I’ll take a look at yours.
Maybe you can be the No.2 people board ;-)
May 14th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Hi “Your resume services guide”,
You say job boards help but don’t explain why. I’ve never used any advice from a job board. Maybe when I started working 20 years ago I could have done with some advice on how to structure my resume, but not any more. There’s plenty of free advice out there if you Google it.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
I have looked at knokknok.com you can reveal as much or as little of your personal data on your initial page as you want. If you then fill your resume with information that makes you clearly identifiable such as being the CEO of ACME inc rather than the CEO of a leading FMCG company then frankly you are making your own problems. You can be contacted via a numbered anonymous email address which maintains your privacy. Clearly at some point further down the line your identity will become known to potential employers, they seldom take on staff without knowing their names.
At the end of the day ou either want to further your career or you don’t, for God’s sake people ADVERTISE !!!! A number of posts in reply to this article clearly indicate people are stuck in the job board mentality of looking for a job rather than the employers seeking candidates. Despite the current economic climate, the right candidate is still hard to find.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:16 am
For reasons that we are all painfully aware of there’s not a whole lot of recruiting going on right now, businesses have turned in on themselves and are spending a great deal of time ‘naval gazing’ trying to figure out where it all went wrong. All costs are up for review (review being a fancy term for reduction and if possible removal).
One of the costs that must stand out like a sore thumb is the invoices submitted by recruitment consultants which have been the seed corn for the explosive growth in job boards. I can’t be the first person to notice a single vacancy 10 or more times on a job board from 10 different agencies. This plays into the hands of the job boards quite nicely thanks very much as they are collecting 10 times the revenue.
In the UK the permanent recruitment business normally charge something in the region of 25% of the commencing annual salary, for a mid level manager position this would amount to a fee of around 10K GBP. That’s a lot of dough for putting a role up on a board for 7 days, first filtering say 30 resumes, speaking to 15 candidates on the telephone, speaking to 10 candidates in person to ensure that they are articulate and personable and passing maybe 7 candidates through to the employer for 2nd interview. My experiences on the employer’s side of the fence would suggest that the agency’s personable and articulate filters need some adjustments too, the rubbish that have had to interview !
The contract end of the business works to the benefit of the recruitment consultancies even more than the permanent recruitment business. The end user of the service may be billed 600/day by a primary agency that may well be being billed 520/day by a second tier agency and the person fulfilling the role at the customer site might be picking up 450/day. So that’s 150/day that’s disappearing between the customer and the vendor, over a typical 100 day contract that would be 15K and if the contract rolls over do the agencies reduce their cut ? All their costs, security clearance etc are front loaded so their margin for the extension certainly is increased, erm no they don’t.
A closer relationship between the contractor and the end user would clearly be financially beneficial for both parties. The end user could find the contractor on a people board, the agency could be just used to ‘front up’ the contract for a much lower fee as all their whining about all that effort they put in to find the right candidate would no longer hold water.
Contractor agency fees must be one of the only business models that does not have price breaks based on volume. Imagine a hotel chain who charged the same rate for a 1 night stay as they did for a 100 night stay.
Once businesses start to cut the fees that they are prepared to pay recruitment consultants this will feed down to the job boards and who knows may be business HR functions might look at cutting agencies out altogether. If you’re a major recruiter where’s the logic in paying for recruitment on a transactional basis.
I thought Stacy’s comment about charging for access to her job board was to ensure that resumes don’t fall into the ‘wrong hands’ was amusing, would they be the hands that are not clutching $$$$ ?
May 15th, 2009 at 6:19 am
Job boards are charging money but they are giving something in back also. All are money minded so if they are charging something then i don’t think that they are doing something wrong.
………………..
Online Uk Jobs Resource
Martha
May 15th, 2009 at 6:23 am
Toby Tyke,
That’s one of the points I’m trying to get across; let the people looking for jobs decide what they put on their resumes, and how they control their data. It’s about self-promotion and NOT hiding your light under a bushel. It’s an initial step to connecting the right employer to the right employee, but it won’t replace a face to face interview. What it may help with is stopping employers drowning under a sea of unqualified CVs.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Martha,
What exactly are job boards giving back? I agree that having a business that doesn’t work commercially doesn’t make sense but there are different ways of charging for a service (either directly or indirectly). Asking people to send their data for free and then charging for it doesn’t seem fair…see my quote in the original article “The job boards are selling YOUR data and you gave them it for free.”
May 21st, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I love the job boards for their business model that has made them rich – get content for free (from jobseeker) and then charge someone for that content!! brilliant – genius – wrong!!
have a look at Talent on View’s latest product – launching in June – aimed at Gen Y – this is the gap between Facebook and Linked in – Facebook – a little dangerous and Linked in – positioning itself as a social network and not a “people board” :)
http://www.cvonview.com
May 28th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Hi Lisa,
Yes, you’re right, there is a gap here, although I’d call it a gaping hole. Why aim it at Gen Y when you can aim it at everyone?
May 31st, 2009 at 4:32 am
Interesting concept – a bit like linkedin + my personal career management system with key elements exposed for recruiters and searchable. This is not exactly linked in as the messaging system especially one’s intent to find a job is rudimentary i.e. not exactly searchable and not public enough especially for communication from someone outside your network.
July 21st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
The number one factor accounting for double-digit increases in the average length of unemployment is the reliance on job boards.