Vertical job search engines - the list

I wrote some articles last year regarding this, addressing some of the issue on my blog-

Monster vs Vertical Search
http://trueloveofcoffee.com/technicaldisaster/?p=16

Copyright “Fair Use”- Is stealing jobs accepted?
http://trueloveofcoffee.com/technicaldisaster/?p=20

There are a lot of questions that this stuff begs us to ask... and I don't know if an answer has ever really been given. When I approached the topic earlier, a few comments arose and then everyone just quietly looked the other way.

Eric,
Here are some of my thoughts...
Employment Vertical Search Engines (VSE)- Who do they compete against for job seeker eyeballs???

Corporate Employment websites... Possibly, if the job seeker knows exactly who they want to work for... but then again, if that was the case, they wouldn't be on a Vertical Search Engine, or a Monster... they would have just typed in Ibm.com, and browsed to the career center... so I guess they aren't competitors.

What about Niche Job Boards?
Niche job boards focus their marketing efforts on their niche. They also use SEO and SEM and VSEs to further market to their members and association members. As Peter Weddle, http://weddles.com, often demostrates, many of the Niche job boards are often Professional Associations, whose websites contain lots of content for the Passive Job seeker.

My view is that truly effective niche job boards are effective because they are part of the day-to-day life of the passive job seeker. The passive job seeker isn't going Indeed or SimplyHired on a daily basis, weekly, or monthly basis, as part of their day-to-day processes. However, if you are an HR Manager, you might be visiting SHRM.org every couple of weeks... and while your there you get the thought... "Oh yeah, I hate my boss... I wonder who is hiring?"
... So Vertical Search Engines don't compete against Niche Boards...

What about the Big 3?
Let's look at the short-term results... Vertical Search Engines (VSE), every job board seems to be posting content there. I would bet that Monster and CareerBuilder are seeing a big drop in the cost of job seeker acquisition. In the short-run the Big 3, might be loving it... lots of profit. They have a lot more job postings than individual companies, or most niche job boards. So, the Big 3 are getting lots of Free job seeker traffic from the VSEs, at little to know cost.... which means reducing the cost of acquisition and therefore, short-term profits.

What about Long-term...
Well, the cost of job seeker acquisition would normally be dropping, because the VSEs don't really charge at this time. At the same time, the number of candidates responding to jobs should be increasing, because the corporate job postings are being seen by more people.

So, what does this mean? More resumes. More unqualified candidates... This also means, more work for the recruiting departments, sifting through the ATS searches, the piles of resumes, etc.

The immediate short-term winner... Applicant Tracking Software Companies.

Come on... It has to affect the Big 3 somehow... Well companies might realize they can purchase the job seeker leads through a different mechanism, ie PPC, or through lower cost aggregators who ships all the content to the same VSEs. If this is the case, the companies will spend less with Monster and CareerBuilder. I don't see this happening for a lot of reasons. One thing the HR Market constantly forgets about is this... It's Easy to purchase and recruit with Monster and CareerBuilder.

You can't get fired for doing it. It's low risk! It's HR favorite buying decision. They have big sales teams and big support teams, and although lots of people want to complain about their results... THEY WORK... (not for all positions, etc, but they do work).

I cringe as I write this, because I'm a principal of a "horizontal" job search engine myself - www.insourced.com - but it's fairly clear to me that the "vertical space" within the job search space (for those keeping score, that's a "space within a space") is the future. Not that Monster, CareerBuilder, et al are going away, but the verticals are the sites that will chip away at them, I believe. There are many reasons for this, but among them I would say are: 1) Verticals can focus their content much better - "Laser focus" it, if you will, so they can naturally create content, aside from their jobs, that is more interesting to their core users. 2) They don't have to be all things to all people with their jobs, so quality of jobs is more likely, or at least more easily attainable. 3) They will likely get loyal followings, especially within the IT/tech industry, where techies are quick to reject the behemoths and move onto smaller, "better" options.

JobsinHubs.com is a top quality job search site for English speaking professionals seeking employment in mainland Europe. Visit the site at www.JobsinHubs.com

** ejs ** well done Hugo, nice use of top quality domains!