Sale? What sale?
One would never know by the number of new Hotjobs products and applications rolled out before and during SHRM that the job board might be on the auction block. The possibility of an impending sale has been speculated about for months, while a recent report from New York Times confirming the rumors only added more fuel to the fire.
But at the recent SHRM conference in New Orleans, the Hotjobs crew displayed no signs of leeriness for the future. Before the conference was underway, Hotjobs made the big announcement that they were appending their job posting pricing structure by introducing Pay Per Candidate, a new product that allows recruiters the option to pay for candidates instead of just paying per listing. Hotjobs said this is the industry’s first performance-based product.
In addition, the job board launched Twitter integration for recruiters, employers, and job seekers. Hotjobs, whose Twitter presence has been growing steadily the last few months, will now be tweeting postings in real-time.
Twitter users will have two options to receive job listings: they can choose to follow any of Yahoo! HotJobs’ 100 pre-defined category-location job feed accounts or they can receive job alerts through their Twitter account that match their criteria. Both provide real-time updates, rather than feeds once per day.
“Yahoo! HotJobs’ real-time Twitter integration of listings gives our users immediate visibility into the jobs they’re most interested in, which is important to both candidates and recruiters,” Chris Merritt, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! HotJobs, told OnRec. “The products we’re rolling out at SHRM this year demonstrate that Yahoo! HotJobs is more focused than ever on helping recruiters maximize their resources and find the right candidates.”
The job board also debuted enhancements to their Smart Ads, which are display ads delivered to job seekers across the Yahoo! Network. Smart Ads can now support international positions and locations, plus they no longer require a four-job minimum for recruiters.
And the party didn’t stop at the Hotjobs booth – it poured into the hurricane-slicked streets of the French Quarter and made its way onto a Bourbon St. balcony, where HR professionals ditched their nametags and corporate etiquette for Hotjobs koozies and handfuls of beads.
People can speculate all they want about a possible sale, but if that’s one happy Hotjobs rep I see flashing for beads, then one might say that everything looks a-ok on the Hotjobs (home) front.
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July 1st, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Good to hear that hotjobs is alive and making progress. I see this as a sign of confidence and the new CEO at Yahoo may have committed resources to grow this business.
WizTalent is supporting integration with Hotjobs as one of the resume sources for recruiting.
July 1st, 2009 at 3:30 pm
HotJobs is a Hot Steamer, the site and performance is awful. No matter what they do, everyone knows their product is lame. If Hot Jobs charges $50,000, then if I was a recruiter I’d simply offer to pay $10,000 the next year, guarantee they take it.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Well I can tell you from experience in small recruiting companies to Fortune 50 Technology firms the spend on Major job boards is decreasing and has in most cases ceased altogether.
The current pricing structure for Monster, Hotjobs and Careerbuilder is painful for recruiting budgets in a big company the cost is about 1 million plus and that’s only for about 25 agressive recruiters! So imagine of you have 300+ recruiters, it adds up quickly.
I’ve discovered that in the past, 95% of the corporate technical recruiters were overworked with 25 – 85 requisitions per recruiter and that just isn’t the case now.
So Hotjobs may be dancing now but I guarantee you won’t see the same number of Hotjobs reps next year because the full affect of their loses are only about half right now.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Isn’t the article about advancements in the recruiting industry? Why must everyone’s comments lead to “death of big job board!”??
Good for Hotjobs, at least they are trying
July 4th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Hi Vanessa…How was the show itself aside from the bon vivants in the French quarter? Were there really a lot of genuine non-vendor attendees there to drink the Hotjob/twitter integration kool-aid?
I’d wager that 10 times more consequential stuff took place in the recruiting innovation world not at some trade show but in some innocuous cubicle at Google/Bing/CB/Facebook/Craigs take your pick.
Ross…I agree with the 15 yard piling-on penalty re death-to-big-job-boards. After all these years, “They’re still dying.”
July 6th, 2009 at 10:39 am
This is more tended to the recruiter, not the job seeker. HotJobs unique visitor numbers are down and will continue to be down. So in retrospect, HotJobs is turning into a ‘recruiter’ board and not a place for job seekers to connect with companies. Whif.