We started the Job Board Awards project in December to recognise excellence in online recruitment. 

Given time restrictions, the original plan to have the public (advertisers) vote for their favourite job boards did not materialise fully. In the end, a panel of judges selected winners in five categories.

Finally, we present below, the job boards who stood out (and we think deserves your attention) in the last 12 months.  Read more...

We are introducing the first Job Board Awards to recognise the contribution of job boards in sourcing talent. In particular, we wanted to recognise companies who excelled in the area of online recruitment. 

We will honour the best in the following categories: 
- Best Job Board (Generalist)
- Best Job Board (Niche, Profession) 
- Best Job Board (Niche, Demographic)
- Newcomer of the Year
- Best Talent Database  Read more...

Take a good look at The Loop, it has all the characteristics of a job board, but it also embraced the ideals of social networking by allowing users to connect and collaborate. In fact, it is promoting itself as a networking site for the creative industry.

What doomsayers fail to recognize is the ability of  job boards (or the business model) to evolve with the times. Be prepared to see more blending of the traditional with the new.

SMH did a piece on The Loop (Pip Jamieson and Matt Fayle are Co Founders).

My good friend Jeff Dickey-Chasins (aka Job Board Doctor) recently released the results of a study – Job Board Future Survey – he conducted between August and September. At 275 participants, the sample size is not overly large, but it’s unique in that three different demographic groups – job seekers, job board owners and recruiters – participated in the survey.

Though the report relates to the US marketplace it throws up interesting insights on why job seekers and recruiters use job boards.  Read more...

Will job seekers ever shell out money to gain access to job related content? Lisa Watts CEO of ArtsHub, a fee-based membership portal for artists, contemplates a future where job seekers paying to access job content could be the norm rather than the exception.   Read more...

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.  Read more...

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.  Read more...

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.  Read more...

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.  Read more...

To many observers, job boards are passé; relics of a bygone era. Carey Eaton, CIO of SEEK, Australia’s largest job board, thinks otherwise. Here’s his take on the current challenges and future opportunities for job boards.  Read more...

Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin, wants the company to be synonymous with ‘talent’ just as ‘Internet Search’ is for Google. In an interview with Techcrunch, he talks about past achievements and sheds light on future plans. Not surprisingly, Linkedin’s recruitment products are the largest and fastest growing part of the business. However, Jeff is careful to differentiate Linkedin from job boards. Here’s his take:  Read more...

It pays to be #1.

Seth Godin, in his books (first in the Ideas Virus and in The Dip), often referred to Zipf’s Law which basically asserts that the most widely used word in English is used ten times more than the tenth most popular word. In other words, the #1 player in any field get significantly more returns (revenue, web hits, exposure …whatever you are measuring) than those ranked below.  Read more...

The 2010 Job Board Report is ready for download here. Here are four observations from the report:

The Competitive Landscape
The wrath of the downturn spared no one; industry revenue dipped by 21%.  However, the industry grew in numbers even in the midst of falling revenue. We recorded 270 jobs boards, an increase of 14% from last year, and many more are still in the woodwork (we counted around 50). Convinced that the print industry has no long-term future, job boards are buoyed by the fact that spending on print media still amounts to an estimated $400-600 million every year.  Read more...

Growth of Job Boards: Serving a 2.4 million strong workforce, the NZ job board sector is comparatively smaller in size, but nonetheless as vibrant and colourful as its Australian counterpart. We monitored 89 online destinations which qualified as being a job board. The actual number is likely to be much higher.  Read more...

Frost & Sullivan released new data on the Australian Online Classifieds market.  I asked Phil Harpur, Senior Research Manager, five questions.

Q. Revenue in the Australian employment classifieds market dropped by 21% in 2009.  Why is the drop so drastic?
A maturing market strongly linked to macro-economic factors.  Of the major online classifieds segments, employment has proved most vulnerable to economic conditions, with the volume of adverts directly linked to employers’ willingness to hire staff. Employment was by far the worst hit segment by the GFC.  Read more...