Job Boards Revisited 2

(Jan 27, 2009) The job boards are often maligned, mismanaged and misunderstood. Several recent tidbits create an opportunity for a review. The December Comscore rankings tell a big story. Monster’s database was hacked again. The questions about the value of job boards are increasingly loud (see here and here)

This table (from Comscore) is the first leg of the story.

                                                 Total Unique Visitors (000)
                                             Dec-2007       Dec-2008  % Change

    Total Internet : Total Audience          183,619        190,650         4
    Job Search                                12,445         18,826        51
    CareerBuilder.com Job Search               5,132          9,121        78
    Yahoo! HotJobs Job Search                  2,282          5,605       146
    Indeed.com Job Search                      2,712          5,106        88
    Monster.com Job Search                     4,131          3,776        -9
    Simply Hired, Inc.                         1,188          3,104       161
    JOB.COM Job Search                           731          1,237        69
    MSN Careers by CareerBuilder.com
     Job Search                                  593          1,004        69
    AOL Find a Job by CareerBuilder.com
     Job Search                                  504            856        70
    Jobs.net Job Search                          350            368         5
    Jobster.com Job Search                       186            365        97

Here are the key takeaways:

• The job search category grew by 51% year over year.
• Meanwhile, the overall American Internet Audiece grew 4%
• Job Search was far and away the fastest growing category.
• Monster’s market share decreased by 9% while the category showed spectacular traffic growth.
• Indeed and SimplyHired have exploded on to the scene with traffic growth around 150%
• Properties controlled by CareerBuilder were responsible for half of the growth in traffic.
• Relative newcomers Indeed and Simply hired accounted for most of the rest of category growth.

There is much to be learned about the job board business. Jobster, after years of looking for traction, is starting to pop up in the rankings. The job board business is a difficult, insiders game. If you don’t know the market and the customers, you are at a disadvantage. Jobster learned this expensively. Monster’s new management is absorbing the same lessons in a very public way. At about $9/share, MWW is trading near a 10 year low.

Built on old fashioned newspaper models, the job board industry is cyclical in a weird sort of way. Traffic goes up whenever the advertising inventory goes down. People want to hunt for job information when they need jobs. That’s exactly when there are fewer listings (and lower  revenues) on the job boards.

The result is a perpetuation of the perception problems that the newspapers always had. Employers viewed job advertising in newspaers as a primary source  of hires. Job hunters never saw it as such. Both views were precisely true.

When job hunters flocked to read the relatively empty listings in a down cycle, it pumped up newspaper circulation revenues (which suffered from a simultaneous shortfall in display advertising.) Having classified advertising was good for the newspapers even when it wasn’t good for the audience.

Online job board companies have to build without this cyclical counterbalance.

Next: Monster’s fumbles spell trouble for the industry.

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