How the Real-Time Web Changes Job Search: The Internet as One Giant Job Board. A Quintessential Careers Annual Report 2010

In 2001, as a service to our readers, the staff of Quintessential Careers began to conduct an annual review of the state of job-hunting on the Web. We sift through published news and trends about Internet job-hunting from the past year and synthesize our findings. You can read previous reports here: Quintessential Careers Reports on Internet Job-Hunting.

When we left off last year, we were sounding the death knells for job boards. Evidence we've gathered in the subsequent year still points to, at the very least, significant evolution and change in job boards, and probably eventual extinction of their current form. But even as the job-board realm continues to contract and consolidate, new wrinkles have emerged, such as plans by Direct Employers to build thousands of new job boards using the .jobs domain. More about that later in this report.

Here are the major trends we've observed about Internet job-hunting in the past year:

The real-time Web is changing job search. "Real-time Web" seems to be replacing "Web 2.0" as the characterization du jour of what's happening on the Internet; Mashable's Pete Cashmore cited the real-time Web as one of the top Web trends of 2010.

At the same time, neither job-seekers nor hiring decision-makers are limited anymore to finding what they need on job boards. "Think of the Internet as one big job board," said executive recruiter Sandra McCartt in a comment on a blog. Combine that notion with the fact that Google, the most popular tool for navigating the giant job board of the Internet, now offers real-time search, and you can grasp the power of real time for job search. You can find job postings and information about employers as soon as they hit the Web. (To access real-time results on Google, look for a small link that says "Show Options" at the top of your search results. Click that link, and you'll see "Latest" as the top option in the second set of options.) And the real-time Web is also profoundly affecting online job search. "Nowadays, a tweet job search via twitter will reveal what's going in the job networking world for a given skill set right now," writes "JustinB" on The Job Seeker Blog, "as opposed to a job posting that's 10 or 15 days old." He continues:

The same concept applies to LinkedIn and Facebook[;] job seekers can connect with employers in real time with respect to current job openings or upcoming employment opportunities. A huge plus for employers is that even if a job seeker prospect doesn't appear to be a good fit, the employer can ask for a referral from the declining job seeker which most job seekers will happily provide.

Think about it -- each month, on Twitter alone "more than a million tweets about job openings go out every month from 6,000+ employers and 7,700+ job channels via TweetMyJOBS.com, write the authors of The Twitter Job Search Guide, Susan Britton Whitcomb, Chandlee Bryan, and Deb Dib. This is job information posted in real time that you can access right away. Indeed.com calls Twitter the No. 1 fastest-growing employment-opportunity marketplace. Ryon Harms on GreenlightJobs provides a five-step process for a real-time job search.

The real-time Web boosts brand-building -- the information about yourself you can push out there onto the Web so that employers notice you. Career Rocketeer offers an article on how the real-time Web can elevate your personal brand.

Especially in the current economy, hiring decision-makers are increasingly deploying low-cost methods for finding candidates. Craigslist and job boards that enable employers to post jobs at no cost (such as Google Base) are the fastest-growing sites for advertising job openings, based on figures from eQuest, a company that distributes job postings.It's foolish, says CollegeRecruiter.com founder Steve Rothberg for employers to pay several hundred dollars "for a posting that may or may not work when they can post the same job to an Indeed, SimplyHired, JuJu, TopUSAJobs, or CollegeRecruiter.com and pay only when the candidate has pulled up the ad AND either clicked through to the employer's web site ... to apply or has applied using the job board's application form."

Another low-cost technique entails search-engine marketing -- buying keywords on search engines like Google. On the Wall St. Journal's site, Sarah Needleman describes a search-engine marketing campaign by UPS in which the delivery service, using keywords like "seasonal jobs," generated a huge number of job-seeker applications at a much lower cost than with previous methods.

The professional networking site LinkedIn offers job postings at lower cost than the major job boards. When HR manager Marty Brack conducted an experiment to gauge the effectiveness of posting a vacancy on LinkedIn, he discovered that the LinkedIn posting generated fewer resumes but a higher yield per posting of qualified candidates -- thus a much lower cost per resume than, in this case, CareerBuilder.

A technique called "direct sourcing" can carry a lower cost than advertising on job boards. Definitions vary for direct sourcing; Michael Homula of Bearing Fruit Consulting defines the process as "going after candidates who have not applied or might not apply to your company unless contacted and compelled by a relevant opportunity via phone, email." HR thought Leader Dr. John Sullivan contrasts direct sourcing with the approach that most "most large corporations use" -- a "'you find us' approach that involves broadcasting their job vacancies," while with direct sourcing, hiring decision-makers "identify, reach out to, engage, and convert" only the highly desirable candidates, Sullivan says. Social-media sites are among the venues from which candidates can be direct-sourced at low cost. But, for all the buzz about social media in the job search, though, few people have actually been hired through social media as yet. Out of 176,420 2009 hires scrutinized in CareerXRoads' 2010 Source of Hire Study, only about 500 can be attributed to social media. "Social Media, while rapidly expanding as a strategy, is still in its early stages vis-a-vis attributed hires," write CareerXRoads' Gerry Crispen and Mark Mehler, adding that "corporate staffing is poised to expand social media initiatives rapidly in 2010 as the recession ends."

Use of social-media, the fastest-growing recruiting method, is expanding overall (not just for job search), and niche social-media venues are emerging, the same way niche job boards emerged. Even a year ago, Nielsen Online reported that one in every 11 minutes spent online globally is accounted for by social network and blogging sites. Facebook, now with more users than the US population, has become a significant player in directing Web traffic to major portals, prompting Benny Evangelista to write on SFGate.com: "Some experts say social media could become the Internet's next search engine." Imagine, for example, that you tell your friends on Twitter or Facebook about an attractive job opening and provide a link. That link will likely receive significant traffic by way of these social-media outlets.

"We are seeing the power of social networking in recruiting growing faster than any other segment," wrote Kevin Wheeler, president and founder of Global Learning Resources, Inc., on ERE.net "Candidates are able to substitute their social networking profile for a resume at some organizations." While lower costs comprise one reason employers are increasingly recruiting using social media, they are not the only impetus. "Social networks will become the ultimate sourcing and screening tools," Wheeler said. "Recruiters and particularly hiring managers will be able to see a more 3-D version of a person and get a much better sense of their past accomplishments and capabilities."

The economy and weak job market affect job-seekers' use of social media. Tech Crunch reported in 2009 that visitors to LinkedIn increased 22 percent during a a one-month period in which many companies were downsizing. One obstacle to using social media to recruit employees is that most social venues tend not to focus on specific professions or even interests.

Employers are thus being urged to to develop what Raghav Singh calls "communities of interest." Singh, a partner at The A-List, a Minneapolis-based staffing-services provider, cites Sermo, a community of doctors, as an example, characterizing the venue as "a close-knit group whose members are willing to share a lot of very specific information about themselves, their skills, and abilities." That's the kind of information that is of great interest to employers. Wheeler notes that not only will job-seekers gravitate to social-media venues that focus on specific industry segments and professions, but that they'll eventually find and participate in organization-specific venues.

Job boards are increasingly integrating social-media functions, and hybrid job-board/social-media venues are emerging. Given social media's cost-effectiveness and rapid growth for recruiting, it was inevitable that job boards would take on social-media characteristics. In fact, Rothberg notes that "Job boards which shun social media and continue to plod on as if the world will never change ... will fail to survive and, given their unwillingness to adapt, that's probably a good thing." Career expert Teena Rose agrees: "Jobseekers need social networking functionality ... as part of the job-search experience - not a separate entity, but an inclusive entity."

Here are some examples of the merging of social-media and job-board functions:

• The venerable Monster.com offers communities focused on 17 professional interests -- Monster Communities. Each community provides both job postings and discussion boards.
• JobVite, which powers company job boards "allows candidates to link to their LinkedIn profiles," Wheeler wrote. "Jobvite also provides an organization a button to place on their career site that lets prospective candidates see the people in their network who already work at that organization." See an example of both features on the careers page of one of Jobvite's clients, Advent Software.
• Similar to Jobvite's button is Simply Hired's "Who Do I Know?" feature that enables job-seekers to discover members of their networks among the employers that turn up in a search of job postings, says a press release. A "Share" feature enables users to share job openings through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and e-mail.
• PaidInterviews is a career network that connects job candidates with employers using social media, matching technology, and a unique model that pays candidates when hired. The venue also offers a "Watercooler" feature in which candidates can share their past employment experiences (thus helping other prospective emoployees learn what a given organization is like). "It's like Amazon product ratings, but for companies," the site proclaims.
• LinkedIn has been a pioneer in merging social and job-board functions. Employers post jobs on LinkedIn, and job-seekers can not only apply through LinkedIn, but also ask for a referral to the employer -- a member of your LinkedIn network who can introduce you to the hiring manager or someone who knows the hiring manager. LinkedIn Answers has for several years provided a way for job-seekers to show off their expertise and raise their online visibility by answering questions. LinkedIn's Company Buzz and Company Profiles features enable candidates to prepare for interviews and more by learning about various employers.
• Noddle Place bills itself as a social network just for job-seekers. Users can construct a profile with the two-fold purpose of promoting the candidate's experience and highlighting areas in which he or she may be able to assist someone else in their search. The site also offers forum discussions, specialized groups, advice from a certified job search coach, and more.

The opposite phenomenon is also emerging; as job sites add social-media functions, social-media venues are adding job features. "Expect to see more existing social hubs integrate job search into their sites as a service and revenue source," notes Jeff Dickey-Chasins, the Job Board Doctor (See his sidebar to this report, What Does the Future Hold for Job Boards?). "Another path will be the growth of career-centric social hubs, which offer job seekers not only jobs but site memberships, insurance, and so on," he says.

The job-board realm is simultaneously contracting and expanding. One of the year's biggest headlines in the world of job boards came in early February 2010 when Monster announced it would buy Yahoo! HotJobs, a move that experts like John Zappe predict will push Monster ahead of the other big job board, CareerBuilder. Monster has also won praise from hiring decision-makers for an improved resume search, called Power Resume Search, and has developed new tools for job-seekers. (See Zappe's description of and comments about Monster's newer features.)

Even as the Monster purchase of Yahoo! HotJobs represents job-board consolidation, and even as job boards continue to go under, a huge new influx of job boards joined the fray in the last year in the form of 25,000 boards with the .jobs domain. As Zappe reported, DirectEmployers Association, non-profit recruiting consortium, plans to launch tens of thousands of recruitment sites, a move that Zappe regards with considerable concern and skepticism. Peter Zollman of aimgroup.com reported that "most will be geographic domains, including sites for every community over 5,000 population in the United States." Read more here about the rollout of these new sites.

Whether or not job boards die, some of their most ubiquitous products will probably die. "One of the dirty, dark secrets of the job board industry," Rothberg writes "is that about 90 percent of the boards generate about 90 percent of their revenues from two dying products: job postings and resume searching." Because of aggregators like Indeed, SimplyHired, and LinkUp, employers will have little reason "to pay to post their openings on job boards or anywhere else," Rothberg says. Job-board databases of resumes that employers can search are fraught with problems, particularly for job-seekers, Rothberg reports and as we've chronicled in all of our past Internet Job-hunting Annual Reports. These issues include the threat of identity theft and job-seeker exposure to spam and scams when companies purchase access to these resume databases so they can sell something to the people behind the resumes. Zappe reported on a case of stunning job-board arrogance in 2009: a British newspaper whose job board was hacked advised its half-million users whose information may have been accessed to buy identity insurance and notify credit reporting agencies. Job-hunter scams ranked No. 5 on the Better Business Bureau's Top 10 Scams and Rip-Offs of 2009. Since job boards can't defend or apparently police these shady practices, job-seekers may eventually shun the boards.

One harbinger of the way job boards will likely evolve and address the problems that have plagued both job-seekers and employers since the dawn of the boards is the site LinkUp, a job search engine that lists only jobs taken directly from more than 20,000 company Web sites. LinkUp's approach is intended to address the problems of stale openings (LinkUp claims its listings are always current), as well as fake postings, work-at-home scams, and listings by recruiters, or staffing agencies (LinkUp promises all its postings are from real companies). LinkUp also doesn't list the same job multiple times from different sources.

Face-to-face job-search techniques are more important than ever. Beginning with our first Quintessential Careers Internet Job-hunting Annual Report in 2001, we have emphasized the importance for job-seekers of stepping away from their computers and getting out and networking with warm bodies. Back then, job boards created the illusion that online job-hunting was tantamount to actually doing something productive toward landing a job. Today, not only are many job-seekers fooled into thinking that posting resumes and applying to job-board ads is an effective use of their time, but they are also being told that significant participation in social-media venues like Twitter and LinkedIn will get them a job. Job boards and social media are just two of the tools in the job-seeker's toolbox. "The type of social networking that will save you or your job in a recession was, is and will always be the off-line kind," writes Jason Falls on Social Media Explorer. Falls goes on to describe how he got a job in 60 days by making phone calls to hiring decision-makers.

As personal-branding expert Dan Schawbel asks: "Would you want to hire someone you saw on a job board or someone that was recommended to you by a friend or colleague?" You are much more likely to get recommended if you have face-to-face contact with your prospective recommender. Schawbel continues: "[W]e get jobs through people ... and hiring managers and recruiters are freely accessible on online social networks. It all comes back to a relationship-driven system, instead of a job-board-driven database."

Online social media, however, can work hand-in-hand with face-to-face networking by greasing the wheels for personal encounters. Online and face-to-face are complementary strategies because, as career blogger "JustinB" points out, "[S]ocial media networking is people oriented, whereas job boards and job search engines are object oriented... People prefer to engage with other people..."

The Twitter Job Search Guide's Whitcomb, Bryan, and Dib point out that not only can job-seekers find job listings on the microblogging service, but they also can connect with career experts who offer advice, employers, recruiters, and members of their networks. All these contacts pave the way for deeper -- and sometimes face-to-face -- connections.

Final thoughts: At a time when the entire Internet can be thought of as one giant job board, no single online tool is the ultimate key to job-search success. In many ways little has changed since our first Internet job-hunting annual report in 2001. We continue to recommend:

• Deploying a combination of techniques in your job search -- not just job boards, not just social media, not just face-to-face networking, but a combination of these and other techniques.
• Remaining vigilant about the downsides of job boards and learning how to use them most effectively.
• Developing awareness of the ever-growing roster of tools and resources out there in cyberspace to assist your job search. See our sidebar, Tools and Resources to Rev Up Your Job Search on the Real-Time Web.

Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.

Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author, and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers, edits QuintZine, an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling in the job search at A Storied Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press), as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Study Skills (Alpha). Visit her personal Website or reach her by e-mail at kathy(at)quintcareers.com.

Go to the directory page of the Quintessential Careers Annual Reports on the State of Internet Job-Hunting.