Much of the buzz surrounding blog based job boards has been positive thus far among most in the recruiting industry. But here's someone who has a different take. After reading his post I must say it does have some merritt.

Whereco says:

1. As a developer who might want to look for a job, it is a very big pain to try to go to all of the various boards to see what is posted. There are too many of them.
2. It is true that most of these boards are syndicated, but still I don’t particularly want to have 10-15 feeds going all the time just to look for a job. And I don’t want to have to try to search out all of the appropriate blogs.
3. Each board on it’s own does not have a lot of postings from any one area. The areas with the biggest number of posts are New York and California, which is not a surprise. However, for the area I live in (Atlanta) I see maybe 1-2 posts per month. This is not a very good selection if I am actively looking.
4. The whole idea of “passive” job seekers seems pretty bogus to me. I simply don’t think the employers will end up with any/many resumes coming from people who are not actively looking. I don’t look at the job ads on the blogs… unless I am actively looking. I don’t even bother skimming the headlined job on the main site.
5. I don’t think the ad will be seen by more eyes this way, since most of the blog readers don’t actually read through the associated jobs. Most of the blog readers are, well, there to read the blog. Just because the ad goes across multiple blogs, it’s still primarily being seen by people that aren’t there to read the ads.
6. Pretty soon now these blog-based services will be overtaken with recruiter ads, in which case this will all be a moot point. There are no restrictions on these services for direct-post only, so it’s just a matter of time. Think what happened with Craigslist.

While services like Simply Hired's Job-a-matic will certainly create more exposure for job listings, it remains to be seen if the value of that exposure will result in more quality hires. Theoretically it should. But if one were to visit Cheezhead for example, how would one even find those jobs? The only link to them is in the dropdown list under each of his posts. So unless the 'blog boards' give these jobs some premium exposure on the homepage, the value to the advertiser isn't as great as you think.

Labels: Job boards