Archive for the ‘Niche Job Boards’ Category
Hiring Predictions for 2010 Reflect the Impact that the US Recession has had on Hiring Patterns
A whitepaper’s – The ninth Source of Hire report from CareerXroads – key findings report that, on average, 41 of the country’s larger businesses filled just over 50% of their job vacancies in 2009 by internal transfers and promotions.
That’s the greatest percentage since CareerXroads first reported the information in 2002.
Predictions for 2010
Regarding 2010, however, 48% of the participating businesses believe they will hire and hire aggressively. The prediction is for a 29% growth in hiring. Only 10.8% of the interviewed employers anticipate hiring a lesser number of employees in 2010. Compare those percentages to the Source of Hire Report issued a year ago and you will discover that 100% of the businesses forecasted they would employ fewer employees.
The reports authors, Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler attitributed this to an increase in internal movement resulting from the US economic downturn, thus effectively obscuring many other sources of hire. They expect internal movement (promotions and transfers) to return to more typical levels in 2010.
HR’s Disconnect with Contingent Workforce
Another key finding – and something recruiting managers and Human Resource professionals need to quickly get a handle on – is that 30% of the respondents were unaware for the size of their contingent labor force.
Amazingly, the survey preference selected from the 30% was that we “do not really know and can’t even guess” the size of the contingent employed pool. Of those who did report a size, the average was 13.6% of the labor force was considered contingent.
Another very interesting thing discovered is that forecasts call for these businesses to increase their contingent staff size to as much as 25%-35% in the coming years. If that is correct, this only serves to point out that the HR and recruiting staff professionals have a very big ‘disconnect’ that has to be resolved.”
It should be pointed out however that the majority of the reports results deals with the source of employment of full-time staff.
Sources of External Hires
As Crispin and Mehler have reported for the last eight years, referrals are the largest supply of external hires. Not only were 26.7% of the external hires produced from recommendations from their workforce (who are the reason for the largest share), vendors, alumni, customers, and the like, but referrals are a powerful applicant resource.
A side note: If you’re reading this summary report, and are an active job seeker, this is a big, big clue on how to bypass the traditional recruiting application process and get recommended by an insider. What, you don’t know anyone? There is a strategy for getting past that hurdle, but that’s part of what I coach my candidates on how to do. You’ll need to contact me for that level of advice.
Just how effective is the referral system” “The yield for referrals is one hire for each 15 referrals, making this category essentially the most effective source by far and away,” say Crispin and Mehler.
Close to referrals, company job sites, at 22.3% of the total external hires, produce the most hires.
This is likely due to the fact that job seekers find the organization website from elsewhere; probably from the search engines or perhaps a employment post website link or an email from a friend.
Add these two top percentages together and you discover that 49% of all external hires come via referrals and the company website.
You’re probably wondering where job boards weigh in on source of hire. The report indicated that job boards averaged 12.3% of all external hires.
Now the total for all three sources are 61.3%.
That leaves almost 39% of hires from other sources. Part of the difficulty in reporting on the 39% of external hires can be attributed to HR’s poor tracking systems, a portion of it is traceable, but attributed to a host of smaller sources. One of the emerging sources is social media, but the ability to track that is still being developed.
An additional observation
LinkedIn accounts for 60 percent of all hires attributed to social media. Now, again if you’re a job seeker this is a big clue you must utilize in your job search. The problem is, very few job seekers really know how to maximize LinkedIn’s effectiveness beyond the obvious. For those that do, it is a treasure-trove of job opportunities, often yielding job opportunities with little or no competition.
Where Have All The Jobs Gone?
In a July issue of BusinessWeek, corporate recruiter Elisa Bannon of US Cellular in Chicago was quoted as saying, “I use to spend up to $4 million a year to post jobs through three of the big job boards – Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo! HotJobs.” Not any more!
Her 2009 budget was slashed to $1 million and with 2,500 openings to fill as Director of Talent Acquisition, she left these big boards and moved to the social networking site LinkeIn. Now instead of spending $4 million she spends $60,000 and feels like she has a high quality of job candidate by tapping into more passive job candidates. This has extremely critical implications for your job search!
If you think you’re conducting an effective job search by relying on the big job boards and networking with a few current and past colleagues, you would be wrong. You’re missing out on job opportunities that now appear on the social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to name a few.
Finding Unadvertised Jobs
There are also a number of jobs that can also be classified as “unadvertised”. There is a way to uncover those jobs, but you won’t do it by using conventional methods 
and relying on the big job boards. This fact is supported by an article in the April 13, 2009 issue of Fortune magazine.
Finding these jobs will take more work, but when you find those job opening gems using unconventional job search methods, you will also find much fewer candidates who will be your competitors for these jobs.
Bannon also reports not only is she saving money, she has made one hire per day in the previous 30 days for a position that has normally taken six months to fill. This points out how much quicker you can be hired when discovered through these alternative job search methods.
Smarter Job Hunting Skills Are Required
It takes some newly acquired skills to understand just how to conduct an effective job search using these new methods, but if you’re up to the challenge, I can show you just how to accomplish that. If you’re already using some or all of these resources, you’re likely not working them at peak efficiency. Because I’ve been in the recruiting and employment world for over 40 years – see my bio here – I know colleagues who specialize in teaching you just how to pull this off and you can start now.
Here’s How To Acquire Those New Skills
I can connect you with information that not only shows you how to really take advantage of these social networking sites, but they also have some super sleuthing methods of find unadvertised jobs. These methods are worth a fortune in career success for those willing to spend the time and effort to utilize these new strategies.
See also my related post about Twitter, Face Book, LinkedIn and using social media for find jobs by going here.
More Jobs Being Shifted Away From Job Boards
Many jobs, especially with larger US employers are being moved from poorly performing job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder and YahooHotJobs.
TalentSeekr is playing a part in making this happen. Large companies such as IBM and GE are examples of companies who are talking about shifting large online recruiting budgets away from poorly-performing job boards.
TechCrunch reported this trend in a September 10th blog post by saying, “that is the idea behind TalentSeekr, which is essentially an ad network for jobs.”
“Companies fill out what jobs they are trying to fill in what locations, then TalentSeekr creates and tests multiple ads across the Web—social networks, blogs, forums, search engines, you name it.”
“Based on the response rate and quality of the applicants that come through the ads, TalentSeekr optimizes the mix of ad types (banner, text, video, creative elements) and placement. (Watch the video below to see how it works). If more qualified applicants are coming in through LinkedIn than Facebook, it readjusts the mix. (In fact, LinkedIn makes a lot of money through recruitment ads on its own site in much the same manner. TalentSeeker is attempting to apply the same principles in a more distributed manner across the Web).”
This is the same trend that I’ve been reporting for some time. As mentioned previously, I began to see this trend several months ago, but its only beginning to be discussed more openly in the press. I was able to spot the trend early because of the corporate recruiter training certifications that I do.
What this means for the Job Seeker
If you’re relying mostly on job boards, you’re just plain missing out on where many of the best jobs are listed.
If you’re not too lazy to really use some advanced techniques to ferret out some of the best hidden jobs, I have the information on how to make that happen.
If you want to get ahead of your competition, just email me using this link and I’ll get you the information you want. This is for the serious job seeker!
The Number of Green Jobs Growing Quickly
It pays to know how to conduct a job search for emerging job markets like those associated with green jobs. Just search online using terms like green jobs and/or green job conference (or use one of the terms listed below) and you’ll discover a lot of activity.
Green Job Growth Stats
There’s good reason for all this activity and interest. Jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent vs. only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007,.
By 2007 more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia accounted for more than 770,000 jobs, despite a lack of sustained government support in the past decade.
What This Means For Job Growth
Well-paying jobs for people of all skill levels and educational backgrounds have been created within the emerging clean energy economy in every state. This new business market is predicted to continue its rapid expansion which is being driven by increasing consumer demand, the infusion of venture capital funds, and federal and positive changes within most state regulations.
When the private market sector begins to view the clean energy economy as a good investment, this starts the economic engine within that market. Generally, larger companies then begin to move into the sector and these employers will have larger sums to invest and will also begin acquiring some of these smaller venture funded companies.
The Pew Charitable Trust reported the following: “Venture capital investment in clean technology reached a total of about $12.6 billion by the end of 2008. In 2008 alone, investors directed $5.9 billion into American businesses in this sector, a 48 percent increase over 2007 investment totals.”
This means job growth.
Where To Find Green Job Opportunities
While time will not permit an exhaustive report on where the jobs can be found, here are a few suggestions to get you started.
One job board catering exclusively to green jobs that has made the news recently is GreenJobsFree.com and the reason I mention this one is because the site offers employers and recruiters the opportunity to post their green jobs at no charge. This free offer is sure to create more and more job postings. Check this one out.
Another great way to find other job boards that specialize in green jobs within areas such as: Biofuel, Engineering, Solar, Wind, Geothermal, etc. is to use your favorite search engine and enter terms like those in the list below. Please use exact match to these terms vs. broad match. This just means to put your search term inside quotes like this: “green jobs” or use the advanced feature to specify you want a phrase match.
Here are some of my favorite terms besides the root word green jobs.
- green job boards
- green jobs online
- green energy jobs
- green engineering jobs (substitute your own occupational term for engineering)
- green jobs network
- green collar jobs
- green-collar jobs
Here are a few more job board sites that cater to the green energy market.
There are many others, so it you’ve got a favorite, just leave a comment below and share your job site with everyone.
Employers Begin to Target Niche Job Boards
If you’re primarily using the big job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo Hotjobs to conduct your job search, you’re missing many of the better job postings.
While the big job boards still offer many job postings, they have likely reached their peak in terms of sales and usage by both employers and recruiters.
Employers continue to value candidates with very specific job skills and they are finding they can find these candidates more easily with job boards that target a “community” of professionals with background, and experience and education within a specialty.
With the big job boards peaking there has been another type of job board that has increasing become more popular with employers and recruiters. This type of job board is typically referred to as a niche job board.
There are literally hundreds and probably thousands of job boards on the Internet, most of which would fall into the niche category. Finding the right job boards is where the difficulty lies for the job seeker.
Here are several additional reasons that I believe will continue to drive the increased use of niche job boards.
- Niche boards are more tightly focused: that is, they deliver targeted job seekers with specific credentials that close match a much narrower skill set.
- Financial considerations: niche job boards tend to be much less expensive for employer and recruiter ad postings.
- More specialized job board settings: a job board that deals with a narrower set of job skills can put more effort into building their job board so that it does a better job of classifying candidate skills. This in turn will result in better and quicker matches for candidates and recruiters/employers.
- Social Networks: many employers are beginning to use popular social media sites for recruiting and several of these sites have begun to incorporate job matching within their sites. The best example would be LinkedIn.
- Ability to focus on hard to fill positions: this is related to reason number one above, but deserves its own place on the list. Harder to fill positions result from either a large demand and low supply of a specific skill or perhaps a new skill that is evolving quickly, but for which few people have had the opportunity to become qualified. Employers are much more likely to find these critical job skills in a specialized job board setting.
- Job board aggregators: sites like Indeed.com and simplyhired.com collect thousands of jobs from all over the internet and bring them together in one place. Job seekers, employers and recruiters alike seem to gravitate to this “one stop shop” to conduct their recruiting activities.
That’s one reason we took the time to compile our 500+ job website ebook. While many of these sites will be invaluable to your job search, finding them can often be a bit elusive. Go to our 500+ Job Sites Page for more information on how you can benefit from our ebook on niche job boards.
