Something for Nothing – a Gift or a Gaffe

    

Jobster joined the free classified club today – and Jason says “…the free posting plan makes Craigslist a near-term competitive target” (according to GigaOM). 

   

I’m probably in the minority when I say that free is the wrong price for job ads.  Frankly, I don’t believe that the best things in life are free … perhaps it’s my economics training and the concept of opportunity cost that gets in the way; or maybe it’s the adages that ‘if it sounds too good to be true it probably is’, or ‘there’s no free lunch’.  In any case, call me a free-skeptic.

   

What if I’m right?  What if …

   

… employers care more about access to quality candidates than they do about ad prices?  GoogleBase has been offering free job postings for over a year … with no significant buzz or impact to my knowledge.  Monster does over $1 billion per year in revenue (the opposite of free) by selling access to candidates … in January Monster had roughly 20 times the traffic of Jobster.  It would appear that employers are less concerned about the price than they are about broad applicant exposure.

   

… jobseekers care more about finding real job opportunities (open jobs advertised without spam) than they do about the absolute number of ads?  For all of the success of Craigslist, they’ve still found the need to institute fees for some ads in some markets to help reduce abuse.  And, at least at the outset, Jobster says that ads on their site will never expire … a sure recipe for a site that grows full of stale ads for closed positions.  So who will pay, if not employers, for the policing and pruning of inappropriate and old content?

   

Bottom line, I just don’t see how free ads improve the match experience for either employers or jobseekers.

   

Do you?  If so, let me know.

   

   

   

Update:  For a better post on Jobster's new business model, check out Andrew Marritt's thoughts on Resourcing Strategies.

   

Comments

[Rosie]

I agree. I've had a hard time finding much quality on Craigslist. It can be a good resource but if you've ever placed an ad on there, you get very interesting (albeit entertaining) responses. Just look at some of the "best of craigslist" postings and you'll find some very interesting ads people have placed.

It's interesting with the Jobster partnership with Facebook, you'd think they'd want to charge more for their spot in the market?

Thanks for the insight!

[bob wilson]

Thanks for the feedback Rosie.

I think there's a sweet spot for ads in the $25 to $99 per month range ... low enough to be easily affordable for most businesses, high enough to discourage bogus ads, and short enough duration to ensure that old ads are automatically cleared from the system.

Bob :-)

[Colin Kingsbury]

Bob,

We found our most recent hire through CL here in Boston, which is one of their $25 cities. The quality is inconsistent but almost every ad I've posted has received some quality responses, at less than 1/10th the price of a major board.

I also posted the same opening on Jobster. The traffic was not very high but I can give a pass on that for now, but the posting experience for me was very confusing. Maybe it's just me, but adding jobs and profile data was not as intuitive for me as I felt it should be.

[bob wilson]

Hi Colin. Thanks very much for posting about your experience with Craigslist and Jobster.

Bob :-)