Are job boards becoming obsolete? Monster doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, the original member of the job board triumvirate bought out Yahoo HotJobs for $225 million last week with plans to continue running their ads for the next three years. In a post-recession environment where companies are re-evaluating their talent acquisition strategies and questioning the effectiveness of the “Big Three” (now the “Big Two”), why would Monster buy-out the competition? Why wouldn’t Monster look to re-invent the model? 

After announcing a significant 27% loss of Q4 revenues, Monster had to make a move. By acquiring HotJobs, Monster hopes to become the leading job board and push out some of the up-and-coming job board aggregators. Monster has also taken action to enhance its search capabilities by announcing 6Sense- a semantic search technology that will help organizations identify candidates. But are these improvements enough to put Monster in a leading position? It is unlikely. Organizations are ready for change.

Over the past few years, organizations such as 7-Eleven became disgruntled with the major job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs) after spending exorbitant amounts of money and seeing little results. They were spending over $500,000 per year and costs were increasing. As a result, the retailer began to seek out alternatives for sourcing strategies such as search engine optimization and social media strategies to identify top talent. After years of depending on job boards, they are now looking for new options. They are not alone…

What Went Wrong?

Not too long ago, job boards revolutionized the recruitment industry. Recruiters now had a one-stop-shop to post jobs and find candidates. So, where did it all go wrong?

·        Options- Organizations now have options for sourcing candidates including job board aggregators (Indeed, Simply Hired), search engine optimization (Jobs2Web), and social media strategies (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). These tools can help organizations save cost, reduce time to fill and improve quality of hire.

·        Employer Branding- Organizations are abandoning the “post and pray” model of job boards in favor of strengthening their brand to attract top talent. No longer a marketing initiative, talent acquisition professionals are taking an active role in influencing the public image of the company and looking for sourcing strategies that help them achieve this goal.

·        Quality of Hire- In the past, organizations were most concerned with time to fill and cost per hire. Today, more organizations are measuring quality of hire and its impact on retention and employer branding strategies. Job boards are not an effective way to find that passive talent that might be the right fit for a job. They also do not foster a positive candidate experience since they do not engage job seekers with organizations.

What Does The Future Hold?

Despite the fact that many high-performing employees are now out of work, at the end of 2009 recruiters began to find more interview-quality candidates outside the boards – through social media, conferences, job fairs, etc. So, what can companies expect in 2010? In our research, we found that organizations are not yet ready to abandon their job boards altogether. They are looking at a mix of sourcing tools that include job boards but will focus more attention on more effective alternatives. The HotJobs acquisition may impact the fate of CareerBuilder more than it impacts Monster as they fight to compete with less job postings and an overlap of candidates. We will continue to cover this topic in-depth in 2010 and would love to hear from you…