Are Job Boards past their use-by date?
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Google knows everything. Your data is everywhere. Every mouse click you make is being
tracked by at least one company Every. Single. One.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]These days, data is worth big dollars. What you do, what you like, sites you visit and even what you buy is being tracked – not because you’re being spied on (believe it or not, you’re probably not that interesting) but because that data allows businesses to more effectively market to you.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]The ads you see when you’re surfing the net are no accident – they’re specifically targeted to you as a user because the data trial you leave indicates what is best suited to you. It’s called Big Data and it’s big business. So why are we so behind in the recruitment industry? Why are we still using job boards – the offspring of even older newspaper classifieds – that do not much more than spread job noise to everyone in job cyberspace?[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]An interesting conversation last week with one of recruitment giants uncovered their focus now on data (although we’ve already been doing that since we started). And it’s well overdue.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]People are now sophisticated users of technology. And we’re getting very discerning about what we want. Now, it’s now all about me. I can use Twitter to follow the people I like.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Apps like Spotify and iTunes allow me to listen to the music I want – tailored just for me – without all the other stuff I don’t. News sites like Flipboard allow me to customise my own news feed with the thing I want to hear about – and nothing more. There’s so much noise out there these days – and we don’t want it any more.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]The internet has allowed us to indulge our narcissistic sides – just tell me what I want to hear, and nothing else – but most in the recruitment sector haven’t “got” that yet.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]So it’s time job boards realized that people do not want to spend hours on them (and they do) and that the noise doesn’t cut it any more. But to do that, of course, you need know about your users – something that most job boards still don’t. While they sprout things like “it’s all about a great jobseeker experience” if they spent any time on their own sites as a jobseeker they’d know that the experience they deliver is anything but.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]You only have to ask – and we have, multiple times – to see that jobseekers hate the whole job board experience – but I’m not about to give away the details. The big guys are going to have to work that one out themselves – while we continue to give jobseekers what they DO want.[/font]
[font='Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Job boards will either change drastically or my prediction is that they will die because the recruitment disruptors will and have realized what they yet haven’t. Recruitment is getting personal.[/font]
