Don’t just whine about job boards - Do Something! » Confessions of an Executive Restaurant Recruiter

Don’t just whine about job boards - Do Something!

December 7th, 2006 by Chief Executive Restaurant Recruiter

Screen shot of the biggest job board, Monster I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. Reading blogs from hither and yon, many of them discussing the problems that companies, recruiters, and job seekers are having with job boards. Four days ago, I wrote an article about a comment on TechCrunch. The comment was from Jason Goldberg of Jobster. (You can read his and my comments here) Anyways the article ( Online Job Hunt 10 Years Later - Still Sucks) on TechCrunch generated a rather lively discussion. [Editor's note - that was followed up by another story posted by Jason Davis at Recruiting.com and more lively comment while this post was in draft stage because I was developing the survey to go along with it.]

I thought to myself that if so many people find that job boards suck, then why isn’t anyone doing anything about it.

Job boards, which apparently everyone hates, seem to need changing or fixing in order to become useful. So how do we fix them? What has to be added, what has to be left out? How do we get companies and job seekers matched up better? Everyone knows that there has to be a profit motive in order for companies to provide a service, so what is an acceptable way for companies who run job boards to make profits? Is advertising OK? Is just charging for job ads OK? Should they charge job seekers, and for what? How would you make money if you were the job board owner? If you were a job seeker, why would you use a job board, or would you? If you were a hiring company, would you use a job board, and for what? If you were a recruiter, how would you use a job board? There are so many questions it is hard to organize it all.

In order to present questions and collect answers in an organized fashion I have created a survey. The survey will open a new browser window and collects the answers with automated acknowledgement and reporting. I will keep the survey open for a reasonable length of time, probably as long as it gets responses, and report the results in a future post. I have also left the comments open on this post so that you can suggest changes to or additional questions. Feel free to invite friends, family, business colleagues, heck even your postman to participate…the more interaction the better.

The survey will ask for your contact information when you are finished. That is done for several reasons - so we can send you a copy of your answers, so we can notify you of the results, and so we can contact you about future surveys and to notify you of other items of interest here at "Confessions of an Executive Restaurant Recruiter." I have also listed the questions in this post (below) so that you can know ahead of time what we will be asking and get prepared.

[Click here to take the Job Board Improvement Survey]

Survey Questions

General Section

1) What are the worst things about job boards?

2) What are the best things about job boards?

3) Is advertising (other than job posts) OK?

4) Are interstitial advertising pages OK?

5) If you could add any feature to a job board to make it better, what would that feature be?

6) Is there any feature of a job board that you would leave off that would make it better?

7) If there were a very high traffic, industry specific [your industry] job board, would you be more likely to use it, than the larger more costly boards?

Job Seeker Section

5) As a job seeker, what job boards do you currently use?

7) As a job seeker using a job board, what feature is most important to you?

10) As a job seeker using a job board, what feature is least important to you?

15) As a job seeker using a job board, would you be willing to pay for premium features?

    If YES - List the features that you would be willing to pay for.
    If YES - Pick the monthly fee that you would be willing to pay.
    $4.95 $9.95 $15.95 $19.95 Other ______

Recruiter Section

5) As a recruiter, what job boards do you currently use?

11) As a recruiter using a job board, what feature is least important to you?

As a recruiter using a job board, what feature is most important to you?

13) As recruiter who posts job ads to a job board, what is a fair price to pay for a posting?

14) As recruiter who posts job ads to a job board, would a pricing plan with unlimited postings for a flat fee be of interest?

If YES - Pick the monthly fee that you would be willing to pay.
$49.95 $99.95 $159.95 $199.95 Other _____

Hiring Authority Section

9) As a hiring authority using a job board, what feature is most important to you?

6) As a hiring authority or recruiter, what job boards do you currently use?

12) As a hiring authority using a job board, what feature is least important to you?

13) As hiring authority who posts job ads to a job board, what is a fair price to pay for a posting?

14) As hiring authority who posts job ads to a job board, would a pricing plan with unlimited postings for a flat fee be of interest?

If YES - Pick the monthly fee that you would be willing to pay.
$49.95 $99.95 $159.95 $199.95 Other _____

Click here to take the Job Board Improvement Survey

3 Responses to “Don’t just whine about job boards - Do Something!”

on 13 Dec 2006 at 5:37 pm bob

Do what I do when something doesn’t work for me. I don’t complain, I just don’t buy it! If everyone hates job boards, just cancel!
on 07 Jul 2007 at 1:09 pm Trevor Smith

What ever came of the results of this survey?
on 09 Jul 2007 at 8:27 am Chief Executive Restaurant Recruiter

Trevor, not sure if it was crappy survey software or that people just didn’t want to participate, but the results aren’t publishable since we didn’t get any completed surveys.

My gut tells me that jobseekers don’t like advertising and aren’t willing to pay very much for a job board regardless of features. Hiring officials will pay, but they want a continuous supply of great candidates that are hirable.

So, I don’t think we learned anything new here. -Carl