Traffic, Size and Advertising – these are the false gods that lead some job boards to lose focus on what matters most – producing market efficiency in the labor exchange.
Employers need to quickly and easily find the best candidates (active and passive) for specific positions, while jobseekers want to quickly and easily find the positions that satisfy their needs and leverage their skills. Job boards create value when they act as matchmakers, speeding, simplifying and optimizing the connection between these market participants.
Why then did reactions to my Irrelevance of Job Boards post include:
- Improving relevance will cause traffic numbers to decline
- There is money to be made from the inefficiency of search
- Size matters more than quality
The answer is simple – many (perhaps most) job boards aren’t in the labor exchange business at all! No, these chameleons are really advertising publishers, intent on maximizing revenue from preferential exposure. Rather than selling a ‘labor exchange solution’ these publishers encourage an advertising ‘arms race’ among competitors for talent. The more inefficient the market, the more profitable it is for the publishers.
Google, and AdWords, epitomize this business model. Per Google: “Google AdWords ads connect you with new customers at the precise moment when they're looking for your products or services.” This is all well and good, but if Google’s search engine provided fully relevant organic results, then sellers wouldn’t need to pay Google $6 billion per year for preferential exposure. Clearly, there is a great deal of money to be made off the inefficiency of search – and very little motivation for advertising publishers to improve relevance.
Thankfully, organizations like TheLadders, Jobster, and JobCentral are building successful businesses by improving the labor exchange. If you’re an employer or a jobseeker looking for a true ‘matchmaker’ in the labor exchange process, then these three organizations should be at the top of your list.
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