Job Search Engine Guide

Is Anyone Home at HotJobs?

Two weeks ago, I posted HotJobs Rated Unacceptable for Semi-Active Job Search, and a month ago, in my post 8th Best Site for Active Job Search – HotJobs, I said: “So much potential – such poor execution.  Of the 10 sites in this comparison, HotJobs is the only site that disappointed me.”   

Strong statements; and yet, no response from anyone associated with HotJobs.  No emails asking for clarification, no comments posted in rebuttal … nothing.  I have to wonder, is anyone home at HotJobs?  Have they heard of blogs? Are they doing so well that they don’t care what is published about them? 

With up-and-comers like Indeed, Jobster and SimplyHired, continued pressure from Craigslist, and new entrants Google Base and Windows Live Expo, HotJobs can ill afford apathy.  Yet, they seem to have no direct social connection with the marketplace – no blog to create a dialog, no spokesperson posting feedback to industry blogs, and when was the last time a representative of HotJobs spoke at a major recruiting-related conference?

Joel Cheesman posits: “Typically, extinction is at the hands of a species smarter, more adaptive, stronger, etc. than those who came before.”

Jason Goldberg predicts “Within 3-5 Years, general job boards as we know them today will represent less than 2/3 of online job advertising spend; within 5-10 years less than half.”

Excellent points, both.  Sometimes though, market trends and evolution play minor roles.  Sometimes, simple neglect leads to an ignominious end.

HotJobs, is anyone home?

 

Top Ten Sites For Semi-Active Job Search

In Feed Week – Tools for the Semi-Active Jobseeker I wrote, “…you can setup ‘feeds’ on one or more job sites and then sit back while these job sites monitor their new content for jobs matching your criteria.  Then ‘bingo’ – all the great jobs come flowing into your email box or RSS feed reader.”

To test how well this works, I started with the following 10 sites – previously ranked for active job search:

America’s Job Bank

CareerBuilder

Craigslist

Google Base

HotJobs

Indeed

JobCentral

Jobster

Monster

SimplyHired

Each site was reviewed for options to receive job ads via email and RSS feed; and where possible, a search was saved on each site for auto sales jobs in Boston, MA.  The results from these saved searches were compared based on the number of matching jobs returned, and the percentage of the jobs that were in auto sales in Boston.  Bonus points were awarded to sites that made it easy to create and manage saved searches.

Of the ten sites reviewed, only Google Base failed to provide any option for saving searches as email agents, alerts, scouts or RSS feeds.  If the option is there, I failed to find it – even after reviewing the FAQ for references to saving searches.

So, although Google Base ranked as the 6th best site for active job search, for semi-active job search they receive a DNW – Does Not Work.  No doubt this will change in the future; and yes, Google Base is still in beta.  But how a company as successful as Google can release, even in beta, a database product missing such a core feature as saved searches is beyond me. 

No worries though – nine other sites do provide this feature, and in the coming days, I’ll be counting them down.

5th Best Site for Active Job Search – America’s Job Bank

This post is a tip of the hat to an old friend on life support. 

With 52% coverage of our test sample (see initial post for background), America’s Job Bank (AJB) clearly earned 5th place – delivering almost twice the coverage of 6th place GoogleBase (28%). Yet sadly, AJB’s days are numbered.

Since 1995, AJB, funded by the federal government, has helped the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) meet their mission of contributing to the more efficient functioning of the U.S. labor market.  Before Craigslist accepted job listings, America’s Job Bank was there to accept free job postings and provide a free national electronic labor exchange. 

Today AJB contains almost 2 million job listings, accepts resume postings, provides extensive labor market information thru partner site America’s Career InfoNet, and receives steady traffic volumes similar to Indeed and SimplyHired.   But with many low-cost options available to employers for advertising job openings, and with many free options available to jobseekers for active and passive job search, the federal government no longer sees the need for AJB.

For the past few years, the leadership within ETA has made it clear that AJB’s days are numbered; so it comes as no surprise that the Associated Press reported on Friday that in the 2007 federal budget proposed by President Bush, 141 programs will be cut or eliminated – including America’s Job Bank.   Projected savings are $15 million per year.  On one hand I wonder what a private company could deliver with a steady funding stream of $15 million per year; but on the other, I know only a portion of the $15 million was actually going to run AJB – typical of government accounting, multiple subprojects were included under the AJB funding umbrella.

Even though AJB is on life support, it is too soon to write off this veteran of the electronic labor exchange revolution.  Proposing budget cuts in Washington DC is always easier than achieving them.  So for today, and perhaps tomorrow, America’s Job Bank delivers 52% coverage for our hypothetical jobseeker, and is the 5th best choice.

6th Best Site for Active Job Search – GoogleBase

It’s a conundrum.  How does a classified site in beta, even though from powerhouse Google, place above all big three job boards as the 6th best site for active job search? 

As discussed in the initial post in this series, an active job seeker cares most about coverage of the job market – an ideal site, if one exists, covers 100% of the jobs advertised online for a selected geography.  So even though the big three job sites offer comprehensive services, including resume banks for passive search, career information, and referral services, GoogleBase jumps ahead for our hypothetical job seeker by delivering 28% coverage of the Eugene, Oregon test sample.  The big three ranged between 12% and 20% coverage for the same sample.

GoogleBase combines free classifieds (ala Craigslist without the community) with job aggregation from other job sites – CareerBuilder currently uploads their jobs to GoogleBase to drive additional traffic to the CareerBuilder site.  As a free service, and as an aggregator, GoogleBase faces the same content quality issues discussed in the Craigslist post – mixed in with the real opportunities on GoogleBase you may find ads for get-rich schemes, multi-level marketing programs that require upfront investment, and even ads phishing for personal information that may expose you to identity theft.

Beta products can change dramatically in a short time; but at this point, GoogleBase delivers 28% coverage for our hypothetical jobseeker, and is the 6th best choice.

Monster – The King of Cash

“King of what?”  That’s Joel Cheesman’s question in response to yesterday’s Monster Having the Last Laugh post.

Cash is king!  Is there a better proxy for the overall value of a service to a consumer market than the cash that changes hands?  When we look at revenue numbers, we’re looking at the market-clearing price/volume point at the intersection of supply and demand curves. 

Monster division revenue grew 38% to $818 million compared with $594 million in 2004.  Comparatively, CareerBuilder remained a distant 2^nd in revenue at $495 million for 2005, an increase of 75% over 2004.  Certainly CareerBuilder is on a roll – their revenue growth rate was double Monster’s, plus CareerBuilder maintained its leadership over Monster in both audience and job listings.  But why, if CareerBuilder is tops in audience and jobs are they still 40% behind Monster in annual revenue?  In terms of cash changing hands, CareerBuilder appears less valuable than Monster – the market is still saying Monster is king.

Joel points out that Monster’s decline in traffic has occurred despite spending millions on TV advertising.  Yes, Monster is spending millions on advertising; yet CareerBuilder outspent them during 2005.  According to Richard Castellini, CareerBuilder's vice-president for consumer marketing, “next year, the site will increase its marketing budget by 15%, to more than $230 million.”  It would appear then that CareerBuilder spent 40% of their 2005 revenue on advertising, while Monster’s overall marketing budget was less than 25% of revenue.

Free classifieds, by Google and others, will place increasing price pressure on Monster and CareerBuilder, just as the big three boards place price pressure on newspaper classifieds.  But free classifieds don’t imply a “free environment”, as Joel states.  The cost of placing an ad is just one component of the overall cost of hiring.  Free ads that produce a flood of unqualified candidates are no bargain.  Conversely, expensive ads producing quality candidates may be priceless.  There will always be room for a premium service.

Even though we have Google, Monster is still king!

Monster Having the Last Laugh

“Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying.  That's not just a catchy slogan.  It's the very essence of successful investing.” - J. Paul Getty

For the past year Monster has been sold short by the media.  While others focused on a decline in US market share, innovative upstarts (e.g. SimplyHired and Indeed), and low/no-cost job classifieds (e.g. Craigslist, Google Base, and Windows Live Expo), Monster focused on local leadership, invested in international expansion, and leveraged their multiple sales channels.   The results, released yesterday, drove Monster stock up 14% for the day, and Prudential raised their target price for Monster from $48 to $60.

Positive news from Monster included:

• 80,000 new business customers during 2005;

• 30% revenue growth in North America; close to twice that of the recruitment market overall;

• $1,005,000,000 to $1,045,000,000 projected revenue in ‘06, up 25% from a year ago at the mid-point; and,

• Reduced price discounting and the expectation of modest price increases during 2006.

Long live the king!

JobCentral – Searching for Relevance

JobCentral is searching for relevance – something they lost with the explosive growth in vertical job search sites (e.g. Indeed and SimplyHired) and with the emergence of free job classified sites (e.g. Craigslist, Google Base and Windows Live Expo).

A quick glance at the Alexa Daily Traffic Rank Trend for the past two years tells the story.  Note that DirectEmployers launched the JobCentral brand in 2005, and that most of their traffic moved to this new site.

This week, in a New York Times article, press releases (1, 2) and a clarifying memo by Bill Warren, Director of DirectEmployers and JobCentral, posted by Joel Cheesman (thanks Joel!), JobCentral announced a new National Labor Exchange (resume program) and a partnership “with SimplyHired to provide access to over four million job listings.”

No question that JobCentral will get an immediate bump in traffic from the news; but unless they find a niche, or invest heavily, they’ll remain irrelevant.  Here’s why:

1. Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs are far ahead of JobCentral in the resume market, and the big three will most certainly outspend JobCentral to attract jobseekers.

2. JobCentral’s search engine is less precise than Indeed’s and SimplyHired’s; and member jobs are listed before non-member jobs, further reducing the usefulness of the search results to jobseekers.  So, if all of JobCentral’s jobs are on Indeed and SimplyHired, why search on JobCentral?

3. Jobs from SimplyHired are searched separately from native jobs on JobCentral.  So although JobCentral now provides access to 4.5 million jobs, they force users to look at 10% in the initial search, and then ask users to click on a tab to see the remaining 90%.

4. Jobs from SimplyHired are displayed with less detail on JobCentral, making it harder for job seekers to identify the most relevant jobs.  Again, it makes more sense to go to the source.

5. JobCentral’s business model suffers from a free rider problem that makes it difficult to raise the funds needed to compete with successful firms in the job space that are driven by a profit motive.

Are there reasons why JobCentral remains relevant?  Will they gain back the market share they’ve lost?  Will job seekers, in mass, choose JobCentral over Monster, CareerBuilder or HotJobs for posting their resumes?  Let the discussion begin.

Google Base Jobs – Jump Pages Now Optional

Not every experiment works … that’s a given; but some experiments are a mistake from the get-go.  About three weeks ago Google Base began a navigation experiment where they inserted a “jump page” between their search results and the native content provided by other sites. 

In Google Base Jobs Experiments in Risky Territory, I pointed out a number of reasons why customers and data providers wouldn’t be happy with this strategy.  Primarily, it shifted advertising opportunities from content creators to Google Base.

Although Google Base made no announcement of the change on their blog, “jump pages” are now optional.  Jobs added to Google Base with link information in the “optional web page” field now bypass the jump page and users are directed to the appropriate source pages – as they should.

New York Times Muffs National Labor Exchange Article

Indeed just confirmed that while they are working with Direct Employers to include their job listings in the Indeed index, the article in yesterday’s New York Times of a four-way partnership to create a national labor exchange is incorrect.

Looks like the New York Times article falls into the category of “Oh, Never Mind” … but there is still the following quote from Bill Warren in the article:

"The benefit to the job applicant is that they can go to one place and basically see all the jobs on the Internet," Mr. Warren said. 

Sounds like a great reason to use Indeed or SimplyHired … not JobCentral.

National Labor Exchange at JobCentral.com – Hold the Presses

Well, maybe the reason that “On the surface, this partnership makes little sense” is because the New York Times story isn’t completely correct.  Just received information from SimplyHired that they have asked the reporter and JobCentral for clarification. 

SimplyHired did do some integration work with JobCentral, as they have done with others; and it is possible that JobCentral has setup feeds with both Google Base and Indeed.  But to state that “JobCentral, Indeed, SimplyHired and Google Base …are to announce that they are teaming up to create a national labor exchange at JobCentral.com”, as the NY Times did, seems like a big stretch at the moment.