Job board?

Jun 17, 2008

clueless A reasonably sophisticated friend (working on his Ph.D.) admitted to me recently that he has never heard of Monster or CareerBuilder.com and that got me thinking about the word 'job board' -- how many people actually know it?

I've been working in the job board industry for 11 years and come to realize 'job board' is not in the dictionary nor in Wikipedia. So what would the Wikipedia page for 'job board' look like? Maybe something like this:

A job board is a website that publishes job ads and is dedicated to matching employers with job seekers.

Contents

history
jobseekers
employers
employee referral job boards
generalist job boards
matching job boards
niche job boards
recruiting vendor management job boards
SEO and direct employer job boards
social networking job boards
vertical job search engines

History

The first job board was a nonprofit organization launched in August 1992, by Bill Warren and was called the Online Career Center (OCC). OCC was sold to TMP Worldwide (now Monster Worldwide) in December 1995 when OCC was renamed Monster.com. Bill Warren also co-founded another very early job board called E-Span which was started in his basement as “Adnet”.

Jobseekers

Job boards are usually free for job seekers though there are some exceptions mostly in the realm of upper management and executive jobs.

Job ads can usually be found by browsing or through search on keywords, job type and location. Other services commonly offered by job boards for jobseekers include the following:

job agents that alert jobseekers by e-mail to new job postings that match specified criteria
career advice such as resume and interviewing tips through blogs, newsletters and articles
resume editing
job-search coaching
virtual and real job fairs
personality and vocational testing
information about universities and degrees

Employers

Employers usually pay a fee to post job ads although exceptions include the upper management job boards which charge jobseekers. Most job boards also offer employers resume database access for searching out candidates that match specific criteria. Additional services offered by job boards to employers often include:

job agents that alert recruiters by e-mail to newly published job seeker resumes that meet specific criteria
virtual and physical job fairs
brand building advertising with e-mail campaigns, banners, buttons and company profiles
recruiting advice and tips through blogs, newsletters and articles

Types of job boards

Job boards are commonly broken down into the following categories:

Employee referral job boards - Employers offer cash rewards to employees for referring their friends, "better to pay $10,000 to an employee than $50,000 to a headhunter", for example:

Free job boards - basic services are free for both candidates and jobseekers, examples:

Generalist job boards - attempts to serve everyone, "all things to all people", examples include:

Job board networks - companies that build lots of job boards, "domains are cool", examples:

Matching job boards - focus on profiling of positions and candidates for the right match, "eHarmony of jobs", examples

Niche job boards - targets job functions, industries, demographics, and geography, examples include:

latpro.com (Hispanic and bilingual jobs)
idealist.org (volunteer positions)
recruitingnevada.com (Nevada jobs)

Recruiting vendor management job boards - helps employers manage relationships and contracts with third party recruiters, "spend less for recruiting because it's really just a commodity", examples: