Job boards - hits to hires.
The job boards of course will tell you they deliver loads of value and that they have many customers who have made many hires from their job board; can't say who or how many but they know it's true. Why else would the customers keep on advertising? (Good question of course!) They then go into number quoting, unique visitors, registered users, CV's etc etc but never how many damn hires.
To quote one today: 'How can you not hire someone from 500 applicants - we have nothing to do with how many hires - employers never get back to applicants anyway'. Hmmm, great sales strategy.
Or, to quote another: 'We need to speak with you on more strategic issues rather than focus on less important tactical issues such as number of hires'. Really, I am obviously missing the point on this one.
Now, I am the first to accept that customers do not always share this information with the job board. They either do not have it, what they have is inaccurate or, if they tell the job board up goes the rate. So it is a double edged sword. But to accept the status quo just leaves the door open for competition and new ideas to be developed. Over the last few years job board rates have been going up and no longer online a 'cheap' advertising channel. Masses of applications cause extra work just to find a few suitable applications. Employers are building their own career sites (job boards) and a lot of them have a strong brand which drives traffic - even more so for retailers who also sell online. Search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN are starting to offer free online classifieds sections (jobs, houses, cars) and performance based marketing such as Google Adwords allow the employers to only pay for what works.
So, watch this space as I reckon 2006 is going to be pretty interesting!
