In 1997 when I launched my first job board, you could put a handful of jobs online, call yourself a job board and attract attention. A lot of things were easier back then – Goto.com traffic cost just pennies and eventually when Google AdWords surfaced, it was dirt cheap also. No longer.
As monster.com and careerbuilder.com grew, important things began to change. The price of cost per click advertising rose quickly and the shine came off a niche job board if it did not overwhelmingly dominate its category.
I struggled on a regular basis with this question – how can LatPro thrive without the most Hispanic and bilingual jobs? Without the deepest and widest collection of jobs, how can we exist? Our answer, was quality and still we rely on lots of personal attention to quality. We hand review every company and every job posting. We watch how our customers use our database, etc.. We sometimes personally connect job seekers we know with recruiters when we see a good fit.
Those things are still important, but — today we are in a situation where increasingly every job is everywhere. As a result, if the right jobs are not plentiful on your board, you are no longer in the game. If you won’t display jobs from aggregators, your competitors will. Your niche competitor may even run Monster or Careerbuilder jobs. And your job board will not measure up with a small fraction of the jobs. This is a fact today. I’m talking about things we’ve experienced firsthand.
No matter what type of board you run, whether you use backfill or AdSense or not, job seekers are always leaving your website. Whether they are going to an employer’s applicant tracking system, an aggregator, or another job board, our job sites are just waypoints. The real question is, will our job seekers return?
I believe that job seekers will only return if you’ve got jobs.
In a nutshell, this is why we created JustJobs.com. So, if you are looking at how to supplement (backfill) the jobs on your board or are not happy with the current options, we may be able to help. Have a look at our export feed terms and conditions, data sample, and categories — if you like what you see, please contact us.
Please, note that it is not yet a revenue generator because we are not currently offering any CPC options at JustJobs.com. But, we are looking for ways to help you solve this dilemma in a minimally painful way.
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My brother was fired from his last job because he was going though a difficult divorce that he did not handle well.
Would I be helping him if I referred him to this site I saw on linkedin?
http://careerexcuse.com
**es** hard to tell if that’s a joke, linkbait or for real…
Hi Eric,
I am an avid follower of your blog and have been always motivated by your endeavors and successes. I recently launched a Talent matching site called http://www.mylatch.com. I was writing to you to get any feedback from you on the site. Your experience and skill set in this domain will be hugely beneficial to the growth of my site.
Mylatch is the only talent acquisition platform that leverages Branding, Social Networks and Video Technologies to create the best talent-employer matches online.
Any feedback will be hugely appreciated.
Sincerely,
Pratik.
**es** It’s interesting Pratik, but I don’t see how you can compete with the well-established boards… it isn’t enough to be a little bit better or little bit different.