Recruitment advertising giant Shaker, has quietly been moving into the job board business. As you can see from this graphic they have put together a network of regional job boards, no doubt for use by the very clients they sell to.

They got my attention last year when they scooped up a site in my backyard, CTjobs.com. For this site, they put together a coalition of newspapers in the state and combined operations. (Poor newspapers, they couldn't even build their own site...)

The other sites appear to be a mix of stand alone operations with no print support and some with print involved. After they took over CTjobs, I heard they asked clients who were paying a few thousand a year for unlimited postings to pay $24,000 instead. Thats no typo. Even a single ad on the site costs $300 and if you want print its $50 more. A little pricey if you ask me. At those prices you might as well use, ...gulp, Monster.

I found the ad for these sites in their latest newsletter but nowhere does it say that they're Shaker run sites. Its obvious that they are given the fact their press releases originate from Chicago, and the domains are registered to them.

Why the secrecy? Do they not want clients to know some of their money is going back to Shaker?

I guess Shaker wanted a way to deliver more value to their clients jobs since print is losing so much effectiveness. I'm sure revenue from creating display ads has tanked along with classifieds. But to me, Shaker is just another print to web wannabe. I mean they aren't even linking their sites to each other so I hesitate to call it a network. I would also give their sites an 'F' for search engine friendliness.

But hey, what do I know. I'm just a recruiting fly on the wall.

Labels: Job boards, Recruitment Advertising