What are you struggling with?

Is there anyway to tell which job board is the best for a local niche? - such as [in Greensboro, NC] whether to use triadcareers.com - part of the local newspaper the News & Record - or to use piedmonthelpwanted.com? We are a small employer and want to post a job or 2, but how does one choose the best site for lets say; a webmaster or IT system administrator? Is there a database that shows how many jobs are posted on sites and how many active resumes are posted? thanks Sam

 ** es ** Sam, thank you for your question - there is no such database.  A good place to start is with the compete.com traffic graph for these websites. Then review them for credibility and authenticity. Finally, contact the websites and share your dilemma with them and ask them what information they can give you...

At LatPro.com all registered employers can search our resume database at no cost.  Contact information is hidden but this gives employers a way to evaluate us. 

Often, employers ask for a free trial which we sometimes grant depending on the circumstances.  I hope this is helpful. -- Eric

First, let me say that I find your blog to have some very valuable information for a wanabe job board owner. Thank you for sharing stories about the ups and downs of owning a job board and articles like "Start Crappy".

Here are my list of my main struggles: I am not ready to be outed because I work full-time at xxxxxxx and xxxxxx part-time. I don't attach my name to anything I do on the internet and never blog or post blog comments. How can I reach out to bloggers and others without being outed? I'm also shy and it is hard to put myself out there on the web. I've always liked working behind the scenes!

I think I also need a realty check. With 50,000 job boards out there, how can someone make a living at this? I don't want to be a big fist but realize that I need to provide something unique and/or service a niche that is not being served.

I struggle with developing a quality website on a small budget. For the niche sites, I would like to start, I struggle with finding the right job board software or deciding if I should use a revenue share model like JobTarget. I struggle with finding ways to increase the number of users visiting my website. Today, I struggled with someone hiding my website name and content on their website. I think this is a form of spam. I reported it to google. I struggle with keeping my website's name credible. How can you do this, if others hide your text and/website name on their website?

I struggle with balancing time for me and my husband. I put a lot of time and energy into the website and learning about technology and working out all the problems. I struggle with not having the support and encouragement from my spouse to move forward.

Lastly, I struggle with moving from doing this to help others to actually monetizing the website and trying to make some money because ultimately, I would like to be able to be successful and make a living at doing what I love to do.

**es** wow, not even sure where to start... what are you afraid of? You can't reach out to anybody with so much fear.  Pat yourself on the back for writing to me and keep pushing yourself. 

This is a service business in which marketing is everything. It's a very difficult place for someone that is shy. I personally found that telling friends and family about my business increased my commitment level... maybe even to the point of being unhealthy! Have you thought about working for someone else's start up? It's hard for me to recall ever having met a very shy entrepreneur...

Starting a business without your spouse's support is like trying to eat dinner with your hands tied behind your back. You are going to make a mess! I was able to start a business because my personal circumstances were just right when the idea came to me -- the stars were aligned.

If you decide to stick with it, forget about the software and the business model. First, choose a niche that has some meaning for you! Second, create a free social network using Ning... if you can't bring yourself to be public, invent a virtual personality, consider using a severely cropped photo of yourself.

Use your site to build relationships with recruiters and job seekers who may be willing to help you build the site. Once you have a website that recruiters and job seekers use and come back to, then you will know it's time to start a business.

You may find, in the end, that affiliate marketing for other job boards is more in tune with your personality and life circumstances... hope this helps in some way.

Hi Eric, I am a big fan of your blog and I am on it two days a week. Great Job.....Speaking of Job I am involved in a new startup called casinojobs.com which will be a verticle search engine (PPC). I was wandering if I can pick your brain. Anthony Mari

**es** thank you Anthony, I would like to hear about it... will try to reach you next week.

I own an office of major franchise staffing and recruiting company in Omaha, NE and I enjoy the heck out of your Blog. It has been extraordinarily helpful in simplifying the understanding of existing jobs board marketplace, issues, and essentially the whole gamut of issues. Frankly it is the only one I read weekly and have plugged into my calendar.

I am in the process of starting a niche job board so am cutting and pasting your comments on all that I plan and do. Anyway, thanks for your blog. It is interesting, informative, and simple to read and use or not.

Regards, Rik Smith

**es** Thank you so much Rik for your surprisingly kind words!! Will look forward to your launch...

Hi Eric, I would be interested to know your thoughts on Marketing Vs Sales. When we initially launched our board in May, we planned to hit the phones and spend as much time speaking to people as possible. With a background in sales, this seemed a sensible approach especially for quite a narrow niche. And it has paid some dividends.

But not only are recruitment individuals extremely tough to reach on the phone (CEOs are so much easier!), it is a hard pitch, primarily because they get so many agency calls, and have an unsurprising reluctance to be sold to. I actually have sympathy for them. Unquestionably it has been a learning experience and perseverance is key.

What I'm interested to know is how important you see outbound sales for niche boards? We spend more of our time link building, establishing online relationships and SEO than outbound sales at the moment, but we do plan to continue hitting the phone. Thanks for the blog - great info. I do rather enjoy this job board business - although it's a challenging and increasingly crowded industry, anything worth doing is a challenge, which is half the fun.

One other quick question - what would be your top 5 launch tips for a new job board? Many thanks, Will

**es** Will, one of the first big lessons I learned in this business is that telesales is the difference between running a mom-and-pop Internet site from a spare bedroom, and building a real company. That said, sometimes the spare bedroom days seem like the good old days. Yes, selling in this business is about perseverance. Sometimes, we call a company for literally years before they become a customer. We don't give up. here is your top five...

Eric, I'm a real skeptic of resume databases. It's a major undertaking to develop one (ie. $$$$) and technology is changing so fast that I wonder if adding a traditional resume database on a young job board is wise. I also wonder if resume databases are really more about attracting job seekers (not a bad idea) even though many resumes are seldom ever viewed.

I myself have posted a resume on a major job site and it has been viewed less than five times in four years. Honestly, how many employers are weeding thru resume databases and hiring people this way anymore? Am I on the right track here, or way off base? Thoughts?

**es** I am very sensitive to the cost issue both in terms of money and development time. I cannot give you advice but I can share some of the ways in which we have benefited from having a resume database apart from the obvious revenue opportunity.

* when we run a job fair in New York City our database is an indispensable tool for promoting the event by e-mail.

*  Our efforts to create social networking groups by city benefit equally using the same technique.

* Our first 'database' was a simple tool to allow jobseekers to publish their resume publicly as an HTML document on our website. It was a tremendous SEO  strategy. We no longer offer that, but I wish we did.

*  The value of the resume database may be significantly higher for niche employment sites then for generalist boards. As specialization increases, you can expect the value of your resumes to go up in the eyes of headhunters and employers who spend much more to reach higher paid professionals.

I hope this is helpful. -- Eric

Hello. Since I first came across your personal site a week or so ago, I have become a fan of yours. I can appreciate your seeing this kind of career as a mission to help others, as well as an accomplishment.

My involvement in job board industry is that I post resumes to appropriate job sites. I like the way LatPro is designed, though I don't get to use it very often. I've seen how the industry has evolved, mostly in good ways. I've also seen how firms like Beyond.com have gone around gobbling up some of my favorite job boards, then replacing their original design with the firm's own programming.

I work with hundreds of sites regularly. A resume writer originally got me involved in this, then something happened to her, and I inherited the business. It has been frustrating at times. I appreciate the devotion you bring to the business. I enjoy helping people with their career dreams. I love doing postings for drug sales reps - they have so much enthusiasm; though most of my work is with top executives.

I do wish more job boards include a desired income range or amount in their search agents options. I have so many executives who specify they want to be a manager, not thinking they're more likely to get fast food positions than they are Fortune 500 executive ones.

One question. I try to keep up with all the networks. Some use similar wording, so I call them quasi-networks. There used to be a site called JobFind. BoomerJobs and a few educational institutions still use the same basic format. I would be curious to know who first made up the programming; it does seem to be a generic script. I've always liked the way it was designed.

Thank you for sharing your story, and for sharing information about the association. It helps me better understand things from your perspective.

Daniel Hawthorne

**es** thank you for the complements Daniel! I wish I could answer your question but I am not familiar with those websites and see no 'powered by' lin on BoomerJobs... -- Eric

Hi Eric, I just discovered your site and it has already been a great source of information and encouragement as well. My niche job board is 1 month shy of its 2 year anniversary. We are on a shoestring budget. It's been a rocky 2 years, but we've managed to keep our heads above water.

A year ago we spent alot of time improving the site for SEO and were pretty successful with that. We have several links on sites that are related to our niche. We send a monthly newsletter to our registered users, which increases traffic for a few days.

Our biggest challenge is; 1. getting traffic to the site, and 2. getting job seekers to register and/or apply for jobs. I know this is the million dollar question, but do you have any suggestions for increasing traffic on a tight budget?

**es** sorry, I only answer easy questions, lol, but congratulations on your first two years in business! Okay, I'll try -- I believe many job boards try to e-mail candidates as often as once a week. We also used to e-mail only once a month but have tried to increase the frequency.  What additional reminders or information can you send by e-mail? Have you started a social network? What is the most aggressive but affordable thing you can think of doing that you haven't tried yet? Do you already send your jobs to the vertical search engines? Hope this helps a little bit. You are not the only ones struggling with this question -- Eric

Hello Eric, I think your site is great and the information you provide is extremely helpful. Keep up the good work. Jennifer Porter GoliathJobs.com

**es** thank you Jennifer!

I'm looking for someone with job board experience (and about as competent as I) to work closely with me on a project envisioned as a network of 200+ local job boards.
By way of background: 500jobs is a business in formation which controls over 80% of the domains of the form 415jobs.com, where 415 is one of the US or Canadian area codes.

With over 250 area code based domains in the dot-com format (and the balance in dot-net), 500jobs has the raw material to become a distinctive, granular, geography-based advertising network for employers of all sizes.
My near term goal is to launch and demonstrate the model and its potential. The collaborator/partner I'm seeking does not need to commit full time.

**es** thank you for writing - I am a strong believer in the importance of domains. However, I like "exact match" keyword domains.  93,000 people a month search for 'Boulder jobs' while 200 people a month search for '303 jobs'... on the plus side, your domains are short and memorable. however, I believe you would need a very substantial marketing budget to get your domains in front of job seekers nationwide - tens of millions or more. all in all, a very risky investment considering the level of competition in this business.

Hello, We have looked through the following page on your site http://internetinc.com/job-widgets and noticed that you have a "jobs" section in which several sites were listed. We would like to recommend the addition of our site OpcionEmpleo (http://www.OpcionEmpleo.com), an employment search engine for Spain. In one simple search, OpcionEmpleo gives the job seeker access to a massive selection of jobs that are compiled from various internet sources, saving the trouble of having to visit each site individually. Some of our embeddable tools might be of interest to you: JobBox - see http://www.opcionempleo.com/partners/jobbox.html SearchBox - see http://www.opcionempleo.com/partners/searchbox.html We hope this site will interest you and can be included in your listings. Thank you.

**es** thank you for writing, I added your link!

I have been doing research and keep being directed to this site. As far as looking for books on " how to" there does not seem to be anything out there.

I am up against this scenario: I need job postings, however I cant seem to get anyone interested (we offer free job postings to our clients) because there are no other clients posting. I cant get more people to post resumes because there is not job postings....so I am feeling a little perplexed on how I am going to get this going.

As the lead on this project, I need to show results, am I missing something? What resources are out there that can help me accomplish growing our job board site? I would appreciate anything you can share with me. FYI- This is not a revenue generating site, it is a value added solution that we offer our clients at no cost as a part of our core product ( pre-employment background screening)

**es** the chicken or egg problem - there are actually lots of places to pick up job postings beginning with indeed.com or simplyhired.com...

We are interested in starting a job board, but need one that offers OFCCP compliance tools. I was hoping you might be able to recommend a good one. Hopefully, one that is affordable for a small start-tup. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.

**es** I wish I could help, but I am not familiar with the providers. if you do the research and are willing to share it, please comment on my software providers list. thanks for writing!

Eric, I applaud what you have been able to do with the company, but what about your fellow Americans? I do have questions in regard to Latpro and a discriminatory trend in the job market.

My question is: Why do we HAVE to be bilingual in order to earn a living? If you have that ability GREAT, but many of us do not have the money or resources available to quickly master a new language in order to obtain decent employment. I can name companies in the United States today that will not consider any candidate unless they can speak Spanish.

Even when the company focus is not predominantly in the Hispanic market. This practice has grown to the point that current employees are now being advised their jobs are doubt because they are not bilingual. This is happening to individuals with more than 20 years service despite the fact being bilingual was never a requirement of employment. I myself have a Spanish surname and have found myself to be the recipient of reverse discrimination because I do not speak Spanish EVEN THOUGH I fit the job requirements perfectly.

Some in HR/hiring positions have gone beyond bounds to state to my face I was ashamed of my heritage and threaten me personally. This type of reverse discrimination is illegal and unacceptable with more individuals now filing suit against these companies. So how does this tie to Latpro? Simply put, are you of the same mindset? Do you in your zeal to promote bilingual/ Latin workers discriminate against your countrymen (and women..) by excluding those who only speak English, and if so why? I am searching for a job and considered using your site, but not if it does what I've described.

Many are hurting financially because the only barrier to employment is one based on language in an English speaking country and I for one am sick of it. Your thoughts?

**es** Rick, I am very surprised to hear your comments. I don't see the trends you speak of reflected in the economics of our business.  If employers were so dedicated to finding bilingual employees, I would expect LatPro to be recession proof.

But, our business is down and I sense no growing surge of interest in Spanish language skills nor the intensity which you describe.  Yes, many employers value Spanish language skills, but I do not believe that this is out of proportion with the changing demographics of the country.

In our business, there are only a few positions which require Spanish. For the other positions, we strictly look for competence with a blind eye to ethnicity or language skill.

The greatest irony here is that we emphasize language skills to be inclusive and to avoid promoting reverse discrimination -- anyone who really wants to can learn a new language and develop cross-cultural understanding.

Personally, I find that speaking Spanish makes me feel more relaxed and at home in my own country. If you want to learn Spanish, I believe it can be done inexpensively, above all, considering the ease with which you could find an immigrant to tutor you while you work with tapes and books. But, that is something I would recommend doing mostly for fun and personal enrichment more than for your career. -Eric

Eric, I would tend to agree with Rick. I have been qualified for a number of jobs but lacked fluency in Spanish. I can speak some Spanish and French. If I am wanting to work in Mexico or Spain then I would feel the need to learn Spanish. People who come here need to learn to speak English, not we need to learn Spanish. Ask yourself why being able to speak Spanish makes you feel more comfortable at home. So far I found you site useless. Some of the jobs are more than 2 years old and not even close to the area I needed. Most of these so-called Diversity Sites are interested in only one type of diversity, not diversity in general.

 **es** you lost me there... what is the one kind of diversity you are referring to? What type of diversity do you represent? which website of mine was not helpful?

Hi Eric, Great resource for information. We are developing Jobsinfood.com and I am looking for your opinion on the best site(s)(service) to partner up in getting jobs posted distributed to related industry, associations and local sites. Much appreciated.

**es**  thanks Joe. I don't know of anyone that will customize distribution for your industry. GoJobs.com and Net-Temps.com do have distribution networks that might be useful...

Hi, Eric Shannon,how are you? i am shan from singapore. i just want to make one website like yours that olx.com. my longuage is TAMIL[ONE OF INDIAN]. Also olx.com don't have in tamil longuage. so i want make a website in my own longuage for my community. so i need your advise and suppot. then i want to know that what kind of software to use too. GOD bless you. thanks. shan singapore.

 **es**  Shan, we use our own software, so I cannot make any recommendations there.

Eric, I just found your site and I am exploring the possibility of starting a niche board. I am on the verge of signing a contract with one of the job board providers, but I would love to get some expert insight before I sign the dotted line. Any chance I could pick your brain for a few minutes at some point? I live in Denver... are you in the city or up in Boulder? Dan

**es** Dan, I am way overcommitted - just about every spare moment of my time is invested in maneuvering my company through the recession. However, I might answer your questions here on my blog if they are easy enough.

I am putting together yet another jobs board site at the moment and am contemplating a CV Database. Just wondering are they used much by recruiters? I never got an email directly about any job which I did not apply for from any agency!! So is it worth the hassle of building one?? 

**es**  I think it depends on the nature of your job board - the higher-level your demographic, the more use your database will get.  It's a valuable marketing tool if this is your core business and you are in it for the long run... but the investment is high, so it's not something I would do lightly. -E

I have been researching technology providers. So far, I am leaning toward JobTarget or Boxwood Technologies. Both offer revenue sharing models and each have different pros and cons. I am looking for a hosted solution that will require little administration on my end, allowing for focus to be put on the marketing of the site and sales. Any other suggestions? Any thoughts on either of those?

**es** YES - ask each provider for the name and phone number of as many customers as they can provide you, especially those who run job boards similar to what you are planning to do.  See what happens, call and e-mail those folks!

Hi Eric, We are a UK job search engine and would like to think we are the 3rd best placed in UK market. We really want to enter the US market but it cant helped but be noticed that American products that come to Britain always seem to bomb such as indeed.co.uk and Careerbuilder.co.uk. Do you think this is the case for British products trying to make an impact in the US ? I.e would you see us struggling over there ? Simplyhired have started their UK site but again no one really cares or respects them over here. Any thoughts ?

**es** yes, watch out for indeed -  they are super talented folks and might struggle at first but I would not count them out! I do think jobserve has struggled here... why don't you talk to them? I do think the level of competition is extremely high here and you will need some lasting significant competitive advantage. Seems quite risky to me considering the level of VC investment in vertical search here.