Posts Tagged ‘Job Boards’
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.
Executives Optimistic, Preparing For Growth, Study Says
BusinessWire – Executives are optimistic and preparing for growth, according to the Ninth Annual Forbes/Gartner C-Level Executive Study with C-Level and senior management executives.
More than 650 executives participated in the study, “Preparing for Growth in the Current Economy,” conducted between April 21, 2009 and May 6, 2009. The complete study is available at http://www.forbes.com/adinfo/research.html.
- Seven out of ten respondents said they were confident about their organizations’ prospects for revenue growth in 2010 (26% were very confident and 44% were somewhat confident).
- Large companies (those with 1,000-plus employees) were the most optimistic – 78% were somewhat or very confident in 2010 revenue growth.
- Small businesses (under 100 employees) were the least positive, with 67% expressing confidence in 2010 growth.
- Looking beyond 2010, 87% of executives were very (46%) or somewhat (41%) confident in their prospects for growth through 2012. More than 92% of large-company executives expected revenue growth to occur before the end of 2012, with more than half (53%) being very confident.
Executives Planning For the Upturn
- More than half of large-company executives (53%) said they are preparing strategies to be ready for the economic upturn, compared to just under half of midsize businesses (49%) and 41% of small businesses.
- Large companies are investing for growth in 2009– including technology, new products and services, and marketing initiatives.
- Small businesses, meanwhile, are putting more emphasis on increasing their marketing and advertising expenditures.
On the technology front, executives see digital marketing and communication as the best tech investments for business growth, followed by customer relationship management and digital collaboration technologies.
What This Means For You
You should be optimistic, yet this growth will be slow to spread into more jobs. For those so inclined, the prediction for more state and federal job opportunities will offer some of the quickest growth.
If you search using Google job opportunities, you can expect to find more and more employers moving their job listings into the broader aspects of the Internet and social media sites vs. use of large job boards. Niche and specialty job boards will continue to do well in the near term and as a job seeker you can expect to find some of the best jobs listed there.
I was also somewhat surprised this week to see that there is a correlation between the number of Human Resources – HR – professionals looking for job opportunities and the number of recruiting job opportunities available. I read one report this week that over 108,000 jobs were available in US within the HR/recruiting profession. These jobs covered everything from entry level and support positions to very senior recruiting executive positions.
Typically when you begin to see a significant number of jobs in the recruiting profession open up, it means there are plans for more aggressive hiring in the near future.
Finding A Job Using Twitter and Social Networks
See if you can answer the following multiple choice question.
In order to find new experienced employees, do employers:
a)use social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
b) primarily use major job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo HotJobs
c) use their own career websites as the primary advertisement source
d) use niche job board sites that cater to specific communities
e) focus on getting their jobs found with a Google type search
f) spend time getting their open positions listed on SimplyHired and Indeed
g) all of the above
If you answered – (g) all of the above – you’d be correct.
If you can’t be found in all of them, you’re only exposed to part of the available jobs. Even with this list, only about 95% of all available jobs are listed in traditional places you’d look. In other words, the unadvertised job market is about 95% of all the job market.
How do employers learn how to do that?
Employers turn to a couple of trusted experts to teach them how to get their jobs found in places other than the big job boards. In an upcoming post I will discuss why employers have begun to migrate away from big job boards and I’ll reveal how you can reverse engineer this process to take advantage of the same expertise to find jobs.
In other words, these same experts who teach employers how to use these other less traditional job advertising and posting methods, have made available what they’re teaching employers. They’re doing that to level the playing field and at the same helping their clients by educating job seekers to find the employers in a more specific and narrowly focused way.
A true story
A rapidly expanding, small technology employer that provides tools for testing computer networks, was seeking a Marketing Director with some social media experience. They used Twitter to find their ideal candidate. The job was never made public anywhere else.
If you are a Marketing professional and weren’t actively using Twitter, you never had a chance to get this job because you never knew it existed.
By the way, if you’re thinking they only used Twitter because the job required social media experience, you’d be wrong. The company does much of its recruiting through such sites as Twitter, Cragislist, Facebook and LinkedIn. This story was reported in the September 2009 issue of Fortune Small Business magazine.
Another reason employers value these sites are not just because it allows them to find talented employees efficiently, but they get to know the person behind the blog post, profile page or tweet and that adds to their intrigue and interest.
If you don’t know how to use these tools, it is imperative to learn how. If you’d like more information on how to make this happen, just leave a comment and I’ll see about getting into more detail in future posts.
You’ll also want to review my post on this topic which can be found here.
