Moustache

Too many job boards

This is a post I've been sitting on for a while, but with this week's announcements of a new gig board at 37signals and then the new Cameron Moll-run job board "fire sale", I decided I couldn't take it anymore. With each new niche job board that charges $250 for a 30 day ad it is becoming increasingly clear that the people who build these job boards don't care nearly as much about "connecting companies with talented _______ (fill in blog's target market here)" as they do getting a piece of the easy cash cow that is online job recruiting.

The job market for web people is extremely good right now. In contrast to a few years ago anyway, it seems that all the good designers/developers/pm types already have good jobs leaving the market for good job candidates pretty dry. At my company we've been trying to hire a Sr. User Experience Designer for at least 6 months* with no success. During that time I think we've had maybe a half dozen qualified candidates. I'm sure that other companies are in the same boat. We have placed an add on the 37signals board, excited about the possibility of getting some applicants who actually follow what's going on and at least remotely adhere to the similar principles we do. After the month was up, our job inbox was flooded with 0 applications. If it were my $250 on the line, there was no way I'd try a niche job board like that again. But these boards are counting on the fact that for a large portion of the ads, the people who post them aren't paying for them out of pocket but expensing them to the HR department.

Additionally, does anyone think that the readership of 37signals, Techcrunch, Cameron Moll and GigaOm are really so different that they require their own job boards? Is there a single person who reads Authentic Boredom but does not read Signal vs. Noise or A List Apart? I'd be really surprised. Mike Arrington recently posted about how when he was launching CrunchBoard he tried to partner with Om Malik and 37signals. Apparently both turned him down, and I think that is the biggest reason these will all end up failing. If they had combined into some sort of tech A-list job board it would have been much harder for people to duplicate their formula. But with the setup they have now, if you have a free afternoon you can have a niche job board for your site. While it obviously does not make sense for someone like myself to offer a job board, what about someone like Khoi Vinh, Christopher Fahey, Vitamin (oh wait, they already do), or even 9rules or digg? Where does the law of diminishing returns kick in on something like this? I'm going to guess that the sustainable market for a system like this is one or two job boards per niche. We are already way past that in some fields, and the market is barely half a year old. It feels like the million dollar homepage all over again where there is one great, simple idea and a flood of people rushing to cash in before the jig is up.

* By the way, if you are an awesome ux designer, you should totally come work with me.

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Posted by Mark Allen on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 Comments (16)

16 Comments »

  1. Hey Mark,

    Your thoughts mirror the exact same one I posted yesterday. It's a basic business lesson though that a market will continue to grow until the average breaks even. With that in mind, it looks like we have a long way to go.

    Comment by Scrivs — September 27, 2006 @ 10:06 am

  2. As a job seeker this was a huge frustration as you can spend all day long checking different job boards... and they say to only spend about 15% of your job search on boards! But how do you decipher them all, and figure out which ones are worth it?

    I can't imagine how frustrating it is as an HR person to try and figure out which boards are "worth it" and which ones aren't.

    I doubt the number of real job boards are going to go down (there somewhere around 40k right now) - they are too easy to put into any ol' site (as you've listed above). The value of Monster seems to be going down with daily rants and slams.

    Perhaps the only thing that will take power away from job boards, and discourage people from creating new ones, will be business models like H3.com (there are others like them, that is the only one I can remember off the top of my head). Or, maybe this model will simply encourange more boards ;)

    Comment by Jason Alba — September 27, 2006 @ 10:47 am

  3. [...] Moustache: Too many job boards “With each new niche job board that charges $250 for a 30 day ad it is becoming increasingly clear that the people who build these job boards don’t care nearly as much about “connecting companies with talented _______ (fill in blog’s target market here)” as they do getting a piece of the easy cash cow that is online job recruiting.” [...]

    Pingback by Daily itzBig Links 2006-09-27 - The itzBig Blog - Serving the Unserved – Recruiters, Job Seekers, Quiet Working Professionals — September 27, 2006 @ 11:05 am

  4. [...] Enter the niche board. When niche job boards started to pop up, the candidate and recruiter communities hoped that their problems might finally be solved. They wouldn’t have to spend wasted time wading through pointless postings or countless resumes anymore, IT folks wouldn’t get lumped into computer sales jobs, and writers might even be able to find a gig that actually involved, you know, writing. Almost every industry would be represented and every candidate would finally find the perfect place to work and recruiters would finally find the perfect candidate to present to their perfect clients. Ah, the niche boards were going to be like some kind of beautiful dream. Well, let’s just say the dream hasn’t quite come true yet. Many niche boards have simply become more specialized sites that present almost all of the same problems as their “general” counterparts: “With each new niche job board that charges $250 for a 30 day ad it is becoming increasingly clear that the people who build these job boards don’t care nearly as much about ‘connecting companies with talented _______ (fill in blog’s target market here)’ as they do getting a piece of the easy cash cow that is online job recruiting.” (From Moustache) [...]

    Pingback by The Niche Job Board: Friend or Foe? - The itzBig Blog - Serving the Unserved – Recruiters, Job Seekers, Quiet Working Professionals — September 29, 2006 @ 3:59 pm

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  10. I doubt the number of real job boards are going to go down (there somewhere around 40k right now) - they are too easy to put into any ol' site (as you've listed above). The value of Monster seems to be going down with daily rants and slams.

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