When a job board falls sick, who do you call? The Job Board Doctor, of course. We touched base with Jeff Dickey-Chasins (aka The Job Board Doctor) to discuss the challenges faced by job boards.

Q. What’s your diagnosis of the job board landscape in the US, are the best years for job boards over?
The job world is changing; as with all change, there will be winners and losers. I’ve said before that job boards must evolve or perish. The advent of social media has put both performance and price pressure on the traditional job board model. At the same time, the ongoing global recession has forced HR and recruiting departments to rethink how they locate and land new employees. The core function of the job board is still very much needed – employers must have a way to find the right candidates, as efficiently and effectively as possible. Thus, those job boards that continue to perform that function will do very well.

Q. Who/what do you think are the biggest threats to the survival of job boards?
The biggest single threat to the survival of most job boards is their own inaction in the face of a changing market. The challenges are quite clear. HR and recruiting departments are under extreme performance and cost pressure to do more with less. At the same time, other platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn are competing for recruiting mindshare. The technical demands also continue; it’s no longer adequate to talk about site traffic and job views. Employers expect a higher level of accountability and integration with their internal tracking systems. But in the end, these are business problems – and if job boards tackle them, they will survive.

Q. There’s little doubt social media/networks are disruptive, in many ways, for job boards. How big a threat is social media for the job board industry?
Social media is a threat to the job board industry in a couple of distinct ways. First, it has grabbed the attention of recruiting professionals – it’s the ‘new thing’. Thus, companies are trying out social media – usually at the expense of some other recruiting expense, such as job boards or career fairs. Second, social media is a broad term for a variety of technologies and platforms, each of which perform at different levels of interaction and complexity. It’s a catch-all for a range of approaches (in a way, you can argue that job boards are social media!). I encourage my clients to embrace and integrate those parts of social media that deliver recruiting results – to make social media part of their sites.

Q. What role do you think job boards will play in the near future?
Job boards will continue to play the same role they’ve played for the past 15 years: they will provide a cost-effective flow of candidates to employers. In particular, niche sites are growing more popular because of their focus on particular locations, industries, or professions. Job boards work because they can concentrate job seeker audiences and motivate them to respond to job ads. That’s the bottom line for most employers.

Q. What must job boards do to survive?
First, job boards must evolve. The world has changed since 1995 – but many job boards haven’t. Time is running out for those sites. The recruiting world is always looking for a faster, more efficient, more effective, and less costly way to find quality candidates. Job boards have to invest in themselves to meet these needs. If they do, they’ll survive – and thrive.

Q. At Destination Talent we have a favourite question – what problems do you solve.  Can you shed some light on what you do?
In a nutshell, I help job boards and career sites reach their goals. Sometimes that involves improving the acquisition of job seekers and/or employers; at other times, it may mean adding new marketing channels such as Twitter or LinkedIn. I’ve been involved in the job board and HR world since 1998, and worked with over 30 different job boards across the globe on everything from launching a new site to acquiring other businesses. My background is primarily in marketing and sales, but I’ve also done print publishing, e-learning, numerous new product launches, and copywriting.

Jeff Dickey-Chasins, a veteran of the job board, publishing, and e-learning industries. Jeff was the original marketing director for Dice.com, growing it from $7 million to $65+ million in three years. He has worked with numerous job boards and HR-related sites over the past 20 years. Jeff has fought through countless site revisions, marketing campaigns, and challenging sales environments. He can be reached at www.jobboarddoctor.com

Personal branding in its simplest form is the application of marketing principles and tactics to promote an individual as a ‘brand’, with the expectation of gaining visibility, recognition and better career prospects. Since Tom Peters coined the phrase ‘brand you’ in the late nineties, the concept of self-promotion has taken off significantly. Today, it’s hard not to encounter material on personal branding; a Google search alone returned thousands of links on the topic.

Two main things (amongst many) seems to drive the popularity of personal branding. Changing work norms and low employment tenure means that job seekers need to engage in self-promotion fairly regularly. Secondly, the tools to self-promote are readily available and becoming easier to use.

Our survey found that executives are highly aware of the concept of personal branding. The vast majority (90%) think that it is important to promote their personal brand as opposed to the company they worked for.

Q. How important is it to build and promote your own personal brand separate from your employer’s brand?

What will happen in a world where everyone indulge in self-promotion?

These are early days and it’s hard to figure out the implications, other than the fact that people are by nature interested in self-promotion and will continue to invest in building their ‘personal brand’. In this scenario, what works in social media’s favour is it provides the tools and the environment for self-promotion. Perhaps, job boards will be at a disadvantage because they are not really equipped to help job seekers beyond presenting them with employment opportunities.

What’s certain is the ability for someone to find someone else will be enhanced significantly. Given that our whole industry is about finding someone, the rising phenomena of ‘personal branding’ will impact all in ways we cannot yet fathom.

SEEK Limited revenue grew by 35%, registering a net profit of $89.5 million, a 62% increase from FY 2009. 

SEEK Employment’s (the job board business)  revenue grew by 1% from 170.9 in FY09 to  172.8 million in FY10, which is a small percentage, but it’s an impressive performance considering it is generated in the midst of the GFC. Revenue from SEEK Training grew significantly. SEEK Learning, in particular, performed very well with revenue increasing by 45%. Again the GFC has probably a hand in this, with many choosing to retrain and invest in education during the downturn. Overseas investment are also starting to pay dividends too.

Overall it’s an impressive performance, it’s almost as if SEEK can do no wrong.

So, what’s next for SEEK?

SEEK is banking its continued growth on the demise of print. Yes, all signs are advertising dollars will continue to migrate from print, but what’s left of the industry is proving to be quite resilient. In fact some sectors even preferred print to online. If print media, currently worth around $400 million, further bleeds its market share SEEK is unlikely to be the only beneficiary.

Besides competition from other job boards, social media and LinkedIn in particular is looming as a potential threat. If the view that job boards attract mainly active job seekers is strengthen further, then SEEK (and other job boards) will have a fight on their hands.

Networking sites will be less of a threat if the market decides that job boards have ‘reach’ beyond active job seekers. In this scenario, large resume databases will become critical. I believe SEEK’s working to revamp their resume database. The value of a resume database has less to do with technology (though important) but more to do with size. The best technology have little value if there are only a few resumes to search. With about 1 million plus Australian members, and the benefits of networking and referring built in the system, LinkedIn is in a good position.

In the near future, my call is job boards will have to go ‘social’ in some way or the other. Will SEEK go social? Time will tell, but it’s not too far-fetched to imagine that SEEK will adopt the Internet’s (perhaps a partnership with Facebook?) new found ability to connect and engage. SEEK has brand recognition and traffic, if any job board wanted to dabble with social media, they are the best equipped.

So the road ahead will have bumps. Which is not say SEEK Ltd is in dire straits. It has insulated itself from risk with an investment in education, a perennial recession proof sector. A stake in the international student market, the second largest export industry for Australia, will insulate the company further. Online recruitment is yet to mature in many Asian countries, so I’ll not be surprised if new acquisitions are made overseas.

SEEK have deep pockets. If anyone can find other income streams, it is well equipped to do so. What they do will have immense bearings for the job board model and the industry as a whole.

Online Advertisement Grows
Australian online advertisement has reached $2 billion, according to the latest IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) report. The figures for employment classifieds are not made public, but the whole classifieds section (which includes motor vehicles, recruitment and real estate) grew by 9% to $470 million.

Online Job Vacancies Increases
Good news on the job board front. The DEEWR’s Internet Vacancy Index (IVI), which measure the number of job vacancies on SEEK, MyCareer, CareerOne and Australia Job Search, grew by 6.2% in July. In annual terms, the index is 13.2% higher than in July 2009.

Weather at the Top – CEO Survey
PWC’s latest survey revealed that CEOs are concerned about the negative economic implication of an ageing population. They also concluded that the war for talent never really went away, and focus should be on employee engagement and retention.

Plight of the Artist
Majority of Australian artist earn less than $10,000 a year, widening the gap with the general workforce. A new report titled ‘Do you really expect to get paid’ explores the challenges faced by the 100,000 strong arts community. A slightly different report – What’s your Other job – analysed the demographic breakdown and nature of the arts community.

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How do executive recruiters navigate the evolving sourcing landscape? Paul Jury (Head of Executive Recruitment) sheds light on Talent2’s experience.

Talent2 was founded as a high-touch executive recruitment business focused on middle- and senior-level permanent and contract appointments. It has an experienced team of recruitment consultants who are recognised as leaders in their specialist areas. While our brand proposition might not traditionally be associated with the use of job boards, we strongly believe they can be utilised to greatly compliment high-quality executive level recruitment assignments.

In challenging markets it is essential that recruiters examine all sourcing channels when filling the requirements of their clients. While a specialist executive level firm such as Talent2 utilises search (from both research and consultant networks) advertising is also a crucial part of what we do. Both broad and specialist job sites offer access to substantial numbers of candidates who are both actively and in some cases more passively looking for new opportunities. This access comes with an immediacy that is a useful complement to the more time intensive processes of research, network search and traditional print advertising.  For example, 69% of permanent roles worked on in the last year by Talent2 utilised job boards to build their shortlists.

As the fundamental shift from print advertising to job boards continues, most active candidates will use job boards during their job search. It therefore becomes imperative that advertisers, both corporate and recruiters make it as easy as possible for candidates to find their ideal job posting. The key is to stand out from the pack and whilst there are a variety of upgrade options to enhance the prominence of your ad and catch the job seekers eye, there are some basics which need to be followed. It is imperative that ad copy is well crafted to both tell and importantly sell the story. Motivated candidates want to be both excited and informed. Interestingly, the basic principles of the more traditional employment display advertisement still ring true.

On-line job seekers focus on salary levels, the location of the role and the job title. Where ever possible we advocate the inclusion of salary details, doing this will maximise the search experience and ultimately the matching process. It is easy to get lost in the ‘noise’ of a generalist job board, especially as most job seekers only have short grabs of time to search the sites (often only 20 minutes here and there). A safe guard for all parties, especially job seekers, is to ensure they have targeted job alerts updating them on the latest and greatest jobs that fit their search criteria. The effectiveness of job alerts is often underestimated. Seek in particular send millions of job alerts and this email process creates
enormous value.

In this current recovery phase where new jobs and job seekers are more evenly balanced, job boards are a cost effective way of sourcing candidates, as is the Early General News sections of the major newspapers with the later particularly well suited to mid and senior level executive appointments, albeit with a significantly different value proposition.The big challenge for job boards and newspapers will be the re-emergence of talent shortages in Australia. In the short to medium stages of the recovery there will be growth in advertising volumes as many corporations and recruiters do what they have always done and advertise their roles (we are already seeing this happen).

The experience from the later stages of the boom years in 2006 and 2007 was that the quantity of responses to ads began to decline and over time the quality of applications followed. We predict the next phase of candidate shortages will be even more competitive and those doing the hiring will not be able to first and foremost rely on job boards alone.

Talent shortages will once again place pressure on the effectiveness of both online and press advertising. It’s all about return on investment and as the employment market tightens the quality and quantity of applications will become variable. As the supply and demand change many hiring managers will increase their usage of head-hunters to search the market for executive level talent.

Many larger organisations have been adapting and are already a lot savvier about how they engage with future talent including employee referral systems, employee value propositions, their own searchable talent pools and effective marketing communications. Many of the larger corporations have established in-house careers centres or partnered with recruitment process
outsourcing firms, including Talent2, to provide these services. While they use job boards as part of the process they have developed other strategic sourcing channels.

So who and what job boards will win out in this competitive employment market place? SEEK will continue to be the market leader and dominate. Niche boards with content and/or strong communities of regular users should prosper i.e. an e-financials. All other sites that are predominately only a job board will fail unless they are able to reach out, connect and build
relevant communities who regularly come to their site to engage on all range of matters including job postings. There still remain clear opportunities for job boards to offer and market searchable databases that are effectively monetised and LinkMe is well placed. That said, we may already have a clear winner in the contest to build the best database as there
are now over 1 million Australians on LinkedIn. We can all network with like minded professionals including introductions and referrals to jobs. The job boards, recruiters and corporate who most effectively connect and/or source from the LinkedIn networks will have a competitive advantage.

While the best job boards will be pieces in the talent acquisition jigsaw puzzle it is LinkedIn that may well become the centre piece. Meanwhile, hiring managers will be forced to cover as many bases as possible, executive recruiters will do more searches, while job seekers work out just how quickly they want to embrace online networks rather than just job boards.

Paul Jury is inspired by the Talent2 vision to create success with organisations that acquire, manage and optimise their human capital.  As the Head of Executive Recruitment with oversight for A/NZ he thrives on the value of finding the right person for the right job. Interestingly, his first days in recruitment were as a talent scout for the Essendon FC – once he got the bug for finding talent he was hooked for life!

An abridged version of this essay appeared in the Job Board Report 2010.