Seek Advertising Rate Hikes

It’s that time of the year again, when job boards ask us to renew our subscriptions…and I get the concept of the price rise, I really and truly do. But how much is fair all round – fair for the providers and fair for the subscribers? That’s what I want to chat about today.See, I put my prices up too, and what I said about prices rises before, I meant. But I kinda expect perhaps a 5-10% rise…so when my friendly account manager from Seek emailed me about the impending rise, I was concerned to see that it amounted to nearly 20%, and then I was challenged – if I didn’t want to pay the extra, I could always trim the number of ads. available in my package – same bucks, in other words, with less bang.So here’s what I did. I decided to Seek out the costs of the competitors (sorry ’bout that one, couldn’t resist it). This is what I discovered:1. At my job level, Seek are now charging me $48 a job2. The number 2 job board, CareerOne would charge me $40 per job – a sufficient difference in price considering their reduced traffic compared to Seek.3. And here’s the good one. The number three player. MyCareer wants to charge me $50 a job!I guess it’s up to the individual recruiters to figure out which job board takes the cake as far as satisfying needs and all that goes, but on paper, I can’t figure out how the heck these prices are devised. Don’t tell me that we’re going to have a mirroring of the print situation, where prices just…keep….on….going….up, all for fewer and fewer applications.