Firstly, we’ll see a reduced amount of business model innovation compared to the last few years in the job board space as entrepreneurs become more risk averse. We may also see a reduced pace of product development from the major players as CareerOne waits for the implementation of Monster, MyCareer finds new IT, Product and Marketing teams in Sydney and SEEK focuses on its bottom line.

Secondly, there’ll be a shift in the market segment focus for job boards. The SME market is going to be dead in terms of hiring in a downturn, so I’ll disagree with you that SEEK will focus its attention in that space. SEEK has been chasing the SME market for 8 years now anyway. If anything, I would expect them to slow their efforts in this area and concentrate on customer retention and relationships among the volume recruitment firms which is an area that many recruiters feel has been neglected in the last few years.

All job boards especially SEEK may also be tempted to pursue the corporate / direct market more aggressively, because employers will be looking to cut recruitment fees out of their HR budgets when they need to hire – HR Managers are more likely to go directly to SEEK in 2009 than they are to recruitment firms and SEEK will undoubtedly be taking the opportunity to foster those new relationships.

SEEK also has the most to lose in the volume end of town in the 2009 market while others have the most to gain because of the price differential and the fact that jobseekers are likely to be more desperate and therefore shop around the other sites as well.

Thirdly, I would expect all job boards to enjoy record traffic statistics in 2009 as the unemployment rate rises, and candidate shortages will ease up in many areas for recruitment firms. Translating these traffic gains into revenue is going to be tough: the main game is going to be about getting advertisers and employers to advertise and employ through your job board or recruitment firm.

At number four, a large number of small recruiters will go to the wall and this will compound the decline in ad volumes on job boards.

At number 5, my bold prediction is that job ad volumes on SEEK and CareerOne will halve during 2009 and MyCareer will drop 75%. SEEK Executive and The Big Chair will also struggle to justify their existence as middle management gets cleaned out in the economy and price becomes a major factor in advertising decisions.

At number 6, many of the new model online employment players will not gain the customer support they need to survive, which is a shame as there are some interesting new ideas out there.

At number 7, we’ll see the end game for the enfants terrible of the job board space JobX and Jobsjobsjobs. Hippo will also fold. Byron will survive as ongoing background noise to the industry. Many niche players will fold.

At number 8, social Networks may make a reappearance in the recruitment space after a somewhat discredited relevance in 2008 because everyone will be making their availability known on social networks to a much greater degree as they become more desparate for the next career opportunity. This is going to be particularly true for those who are made redundant where there’ll be no disincentive to publish availability. Some employer brands are going to get tarnished on the social networks as they shed employees.

At number 9, my boldest prediction is about Fairfax’s MyCareer which will be forced to hook up with someone else in Australia.

Rupert Murdoch already publicly excluded the MyCareerOne option at the AGM last year, and the Monster deal has closed that door for Fairfax. SEEK remains an option but its hard to see what SEEK would actually gain except the demise of a competitor and that demise is probably not in their interest since it would strengthen CareerOne as a clear number two and they can probably do nothing and have MyCareer go away anyway.

That leaves CareerBuilder as the best possible saviour for Fairfax’s rivers of gold as MyCareer’s spiral into irrelevance to advertisers increases. I’m reliably informed that they’re already offering $1 per ad deals out there which is the strongest desperation signal sent to advertisers since iProfile offered recruiters equity in return for patronage in 2008.

Fairfax is therefore likely to put all its employment advertising efforts into domain.com.au, their print products and New Zealand’s TradeMe which is a very strong number two player in that market for employment and number one for everything else. They might as well outsource their Australian efforts to Careerbuilder which is a strong players who knows what its doing, have a strong track record of gaining market leadership using online/print hybrids, are well funded and have strong incentives (and public statements of intent) to pursue market presence in Australia.

The partnership with MYOB should help them get a leg up.

Geoff, agree with you on your SEEK prediction, and like your MyCareer prediction.

Not sure I see the referral sites getting traction that quickly, it may be that they need to piggyback off someone who already has relevant traffic to get going. Could be someone like LinkMe , but then you risk competing business models

You looking for a tech support job?

Good luck in ’09 Riges.

Riges Younan
CEO | 2Vouch

Interesting to see what HooJano’s twist is….

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HooJano is alive and kicking. We stayed in beta while finalising some commercial arrangements and associated dev, then hit the Christmas lull. Expect announcements next week around our official launch on Jan 12. There will be a nice twist that will back up my confidence that we’ll be around for quite a while longer.

Mike Wilkinson, HooJano.