Free job posting

Great post from Chad Sowash about how information/jobs will be free.  I won't steal the glory but you can read all about it via Chad's blog.

He refers to a presentation by Fred Wilson, Managing Partner of Union Square Ventures.  The presentation is entitled “Does Information Want To Be Free?”.

I am a big fan of the concept covered in the presentation; give the basic service away from free and charge for added value.  To me, Google is a perfect example of this and a job board should work on the same basis i.e. free to list jobs, pay for premium positioning as per Google Adwords or highlighted ads as per eBay.  The big horizontal job boards in the UK are getting carried away with their prices and will eventually come falling down once the likes of Freecruitment become seriously challenged.  They are currently the biggest UK job board with 317,000 jobs but are primarily agency jobs and allegedly supported financially by some of the big recruitment agencies.

What if a high number of niche job boards were launched, all offering a Google style pricing model.  How long would it take to surpass Totaljobs at 100,000 jobs, or Freecruitment with their 317,000 jobs?

What if it became technically possible to run this size of operation with such a small hardware infrastructure that the costs were so small almost every penny made was profit.  What if the distribution model were so simple and viral that proactive marketing activities were not needed. 

What if this was only a matter of days away?  Google Base already exists but they work with the job boards not against them - but what if Base only accepted direct adverts?

What if more people found jobs in Second Life?  The World changes fast, the job boards won't keep up!!  But then what?