Job Board Traffic Update

According to Nielsen//NetRatings Australia, CareerOne’s traffic as of 25 May 08 is at 1,046,351 unique browsers (UBs). That’s 162,333 UBs ahead of MyCareer and over 1.3 million behind Seek.

MyCareer’s latest TV campaign seems to be a fizzer and not propelling them into second place over C1, as they would have hoped.

CareerOne’s sitting in its dream position – pity it’s your dream position too, MyCareer!

Head Hunter – Sneak Peak

In January I reported the strategic co- branding alliance between MyCareer and Jobfox.

It appears MyCareer are only a few pizzas away from launching the initiative called Head Hunter. See test URL: mycareer.com.au/headhunter

If you have a spare twenty minutes or so to sign up, answer a series of questions and you’ll end up with your own personal Head Hunter page. See mine here.

Nowhiring – Counting The Bucks

Last week, niche job site network Counting Jobs paid an undisclosed sum for the Now Hiring group of sites.

What this means, beside the fact that Now Hiring founder Brett Iredale can concentrate on his JobAdder business, is that this may kickstart the attack of the niche job boards on the top three players.

Now, I don’t have a doctorate in business, or anything scholarly like that, so shrug me off if I’m singing an overplayed song here (and don’t you just hate it when radio stations flog a song?), but it seems that, in their genesis, industries thrive because of broad-reaching, generalised competitors. But as that industry develops, niche players are required.

Indeed, the online recruitment industry will benefit from niche job boards in a few ways. Firstly, they offer the job-seeker more targeted content, and the converse is that advertisers and others who wish to disseminate information get themselves a specific audience.

Secondly, they’re more efficient to run – and to use. I’m a huge fan of not having to click around too much on a site to find what I’m after.

Sure, they attract a smaller amount of traffic, but if they’re well-marketed and reach the people who they need to reach, what does that really matter.

Thirdly, because they’re generally less expensive to run, they’re also less expensive for advertisers to use.

Whilst the major job-boards all have their niche catagories, there’s nothing like the experience of having experts in specific fields find candidates and some folks like to support independant players – it’s an ethical kinda decision, if you like.

Upgrade To The SEEK Learning Site

April has been a good month to launch some site enhancements. The Big Chair launched some improvements to its job search. The team at Seek have been busy little bees over the long weekend. Today Seek launched an upgraded user interface for their SEEK Learning site, and, in partnership with IT certification training partner, SkillSoft, the UK counterpart.

Version 2 looks to have a better layout than the last with more strongly backed career content – in the form of both “career facts” and real-person interviews. Also, as expected there is better integration with Seek’s job search.

Before:

After:

This week might also see a glimpse of the new MyCareer – JobFox initiative called Head Hunter and the JobX Recruitmenow site promises a launch by May 1st.

Recruitment 2020

I’m all inspired by Rudd’s 20/20 Conference. As most of you have heard my anti-meeting rants, this might seem surprising – as this was really just one huge meeting.

But I also reckon it’s great to be future-focussed, and to map out some sort of inspired plan for how we want to shape things. I can’t guarantee the likes of Cate Blanchet – I look crap in a skirt…this should prove interesting all the same.

I’ve got my ideas, but today I’d like to chuck a Rudd and throw it out there to you. What do you see are the major issues for recruitment in the coming years and how can we as an industry adapt and overcome some of the forseeable obstacles.

And in case you’re sitting there like a lump of lard, staring at the screen with not even one heck of an idea by way of response in your head, here are some questions to spur some internal thoughts. If you come up with anything decent, be sure to share…

What will the recruitment industry look like in 20/20? Will it be regulated, for instance?

What role will technology play in finding staff? Will everything be automated or will the ‘human touch’ of recruitment consultants still be required.

What measures do recruiters need to take to deal with the shortage of skilled labor? And will the shortage get worse or are we taking adequate steps to deal with it?

Will Job-boards exist or will jobs be found via aggregation from the sites of individual companies?

Friday Funny

Is China really ready for the 2008 Olympics??

Don’t Worry, Be Happy :-)

I’ve coped a bit of flak of late for not being positive in my blogs. Folks, it’s not as though I set about to be a knocker or put people down. My vision for this blog is to provide a critical analysis of the online recruitment workspace. I want to improve it – really, I do. But not one thing will change unless we discuss what we do in an open and productive way…and sometimes that means proffering opinion that makes me – well- let’s just say a bit less than popular.

Let’s put it another way – I ain’t gonna win a Logie this year…and I certainly wouldn’t stand a chance in the Big Brother house.

So…in the interests of keeping a balance, and being “nice”, I thought I’d pay a little visit to The Happiness Institute. This is an organisation whose aim is to increase the status of happiness as a social construct. Positive psychology is a sexy topic at the moment and it’s set to have a pretty big impact on how we organise our work life. Anyways, whilst I was having a browse of the website, I ran into an old friend of mine…Job X.

Seems job X is jumping aboard the happiness train by sponsoring a happiness at work index. This will be provided in conjunction with the Happiness Institute, and will allow companies to measure the happiness of their employees, and also to “quantify the connection between happiness and the bottom line”.

Great stuff and kudos to Job X for sponsoring such an initiative – news of it certainly put a smile on my face.

JJJ Coming To An Elevator Near You

In an effort to “lift” its application rates, Jobs Jobs Jobs, is offering job advertisements in elevators in Sydney and Melbourne, starting next week.

Why stop there? Why not “raise” the bar and whack the job advertisements on the back of public toilet doors or on toilet rolls?

This is pun city. And I apologise for such. From a recruiter perspective, and this I will not apologise for, this seems like a ploy to make advertisers pay for JJJ branding. Who’s gonna read a job ad whilst standing alongside their colleagues and bosses in a lift?

(Toilet roll image, R.I.P.)

Seeking A Saviour

Who could potentially knock Seek off their perch?

Virgin could use their powerful brand and marketing expertise and create Virgin Jobs.

Mycareer and Careerone could each create a new brand and finally ditch that outdated word ‘career’. They would need to invest about $60+ million into some innovative rebranding and marketing per year. Read more

SimplyHired – LinkedIn API Integration

Jobs aggregator, Simply Hired, have realised the power of using LinkedIn’s network to their advantage. Jobseekers who do their seeking at Simply Hired will now be able to see who from their network has a connection to the employer posting the job. You know the old adage about getting a job being more about who you know than what you know? Well, this has never really been truer.

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