Remember Prodigy, Compuserve, and America Online - the Big 3 Networks that ruled the world before the World Wide Web. At one time they could do no wrong -- but today, they are names from the distant past with only AOL still hanging on.............  Today I ran a Hitwise report on the original "Big 3" job boards and I was amazed at the market deterioration in only the past 4 months. When we last visited these metrics in April they had a combined 28.9% of traffic share in the Hitwise Employment & Training Category. Today, August 13, 2008 that number has fallen to 22.7% -- a 21% drop in traffic share in about 4 months.........

So where is the traffic going - to job aggregators such as Indeed, Simplyhired, Juju, and Jobcentral...........

As I sit here typing this I am reminded of the network anchor who is ready to call a race on election night. All signs point to an election victory for the "job aggregator" party. While I am not calling the race just yet, industry pundits are weighing in to me daily and I must say it sure looks like the tipping point is about here. 

Oh forget that - the future is Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL -- at least thats what reps from these organizations told me daily --- that is until they stopped calling............  

        

How the market has changed in the last few months - one established brand has some explaining to do!!!!

Congrats to Careerbuilder & Yahoo Hot Jobs on their industry leadership......... but now tell me, how much of your traffic is really from folks coming to your front door?? or is it from other sources: aggregators, SEM, SEO, etc.

But that is for another post............

        

Career Eyeball minutes; unique visitors; hits; unduplicated traffic.  --  These are concepts the big board sales reps have thrown around in sales presentations, placed in marketing brochures, and geefully shared with the street on quarterly conference calls.  Let's finally take a look at the "Market Share" of these titans in the Employment & Training caregory of Hitwise based on Visits over the last 3 years.  (A $30K plus investment for such data - but well worth it).

My reactions:

• So the Big 3 has 26% of Hitwise Employment & Training category traffic - wow - based on the hype you would think it was more like 95%
• Good job Careerbuilder and Yahoo staying even - now if I could only afford your new pricing
• Monster - ummmm  -  what happened!!!  ( well those in the industry do know that answer)
• Indeed - congrats!!  you are proving that the Employment Search Engine model is growing and you are poised to overtake Monster in the months ahead........
• Next is what you don't see - a long tale of thousands of other sites that make up the rest of the story - OR should I say --- the real story that we should be paying attention to - but that is for another post....

 

 

        

This is from Wikipedia:

In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: "cutting out the middleman". Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate (such as a distributor, wholesaler, broker, or agent), companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet. One important factor is a drop in the cost of servicing customers directly.

Disintermediation initiated by consumers is often the result of high market transparency, in that buyers are aware of supply prices direct from the manufacturer. Buyers bypass the middlemen (wholesalers and retailers) in order to buy directly from the manufacturer and thereby pay less. Buyers can alternatively elect to purchase from wholesalers. Often, a B2C intermediary functions as the bridge between buyer and manufacturer.


Now, lets consider the online recruiting marketplace. I believe the future of "Jobs on the Internet" is via the "Employment Search Engine / Job Aggregator model" which connects jobseekers directly with opportunities at companies - no middlemen.. In fact, 2 years ago I was sitting with Dan Finnegan - President of Yahoo Hot Jobs, at the SHRM convention and he agreed! (maybe explains why he is no longer there - but that is another story).  The need for mega jobboards was once necessary and vital, but today - with thousands of corporate websites containing jobs - the new "employment search engine model" is far superior.

So, why has the disintermediation of job boards been so slow????  One big reason is a lack of market transparency to the online recruiting marketplace. A mythology exists in the marketplace that the "Big 3" represent 90%+ of employment traffic. This is supported by an uninformed media, multi-million dollar ad campaigns on the part of job board advertisers, and a lack of tracking of candidate sourcing metrics and understanding of Internet traffic metrics on the part of corporate HR / Recruiting.

So why is this such a problem???  Mainly because the strategy of the big board players is to suck your recruiting budget out of your pocket before you can begin to get started with any type of competing strategy. Sadly, I know many of my friends who have to pay hugh fees to the big board gods for "vapor advertising".

The job that we as leaders in the industry have to do is force more transparency and provide more education so the facts can come out.

This is going to be a fun year!

        

Found this online.... When the print ads start drying up you can be sure the online conterparts to these print publications will be coming up with new and novel strategies to get in your wallet. This is a time when we all must be very careful in our advertising spends. Look at your metrics, talk to your industry colleagues, demand solutions that meet your needs - and by all means do not be afraid to walk away. Remember - you have the power now!


http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=74025

Goldman Sachs Predicts Grim Year For Newspapers

by Erik Sass, Thursday, Jan 10, 2008 7:45 AM ET

NEWSPAPERS WILL TAKE IT ON the chin in 2008, according to analysts with Goldman Sachs, who warned Wednesday of a potential double-whammy, as the industry's secular downturn converges with a broader economic slowdown. Overall, they forecast a 7.9% decline in revenue, a much more substantial drop than their earlier prediction of just 2.6%. The predicted 7.9% drop is especially gloomy as it comes after several years of losses, compounding a 1.8% decline in 2006 and a roughly 8% drop in the first three quarters of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006 (fourth-quarter figures aren't yet available). As always, the collapse in classifieds leads the way. In a note to clients, GS said: "We expect the classified categories to be very weak with the real estate, help wanted and auto categories particularly sensitive to broader economic activity." All three categories are also suffering from intense competition from the Internet. The downturn in the housing market has led to a meltdown in real-estate classifieds in particular, with overall real-estate classifieds falling 24.4% in the third quarter of 2007, compared to 2006. Recruitment is down 19.7%, and automobiles 17.7% in the same period. As a result, GS cut earnings forecasts for the New York Times Company, McClatchy, Gannett, Belo, Journal Communications, and E.W. Scripps.

        

Kudos to Deloitte for their innovative Deloitte Film Festival. The video below is an example of one of the many works submitted by Deloitte Employees discussing "a day in the life" of working at Deloitte. This is so much more creative, energetic, fun, and real than traditional "Recruitment Branding Campaigns" - which I see as boring!!

Now, I just bet each of these Deloitte employees has their personal videos embedded in their own personal sites (Facebook, Myspace, blogs, etc.) - I sure would want to show off my masterpieces to my friends!  And I also bet that this has resulted in friends asking friends about opportunities at Deloitte....
 

        

I just received this following email talking about a new program from Careerbuilder. Let's see, If you are a major corporation, you can spend $2-3 million posting ALL YOUR JOBS to Careerbuilder and gain compliance OR join the DirectEmployers Assn. for $15K and get compliance and so much more.

We would like to announce an exciting new distribution mechanism that we can add to your existing cross-post product for no additional cost. Now, through our partnership with America's Job Exchange we can distribute your company's jobs to relevant state workforce portals or One Stop centers, giving your job postings more exposure!

As of August 2007, OFCCP requirements to comply with the Jobs for Veterans Act and VEVRAA were updated requiring America's Job Exchange to offer a service that accepts a feed of jobs from CareerBuilder.com. Those jobs are then redistributed to the relevant job bank or local employment office based on the state in which the job is located.

If you would like to add this feature to your existing account, at no additional charge, please answer the following questions and reply to this email:

1) Do you wish to have your jobs distributed out to the states via AJE? Yes or No

2) If yes, are you a Federal Contractor? Yes or No

Please note that only jobs for Federal Contractors will be distributed to the local employment delivery systems (e.g. One Stop centers). For employers who are not Federal Contractors, your jobs will be distributed to the following states' job banks: NY, NJ, RI, KY, and NV.

        

2008 is the year where we have finally reached the tipping point. The point where the promises of these past Net recruiting solutions are shown to be out of favor with new methods emerging as forces in the marketplace. To those of us in the online recruiting strategy role this change has been underway for a few years now, but has yet to surface in the mainstream press in a big way. Plus we must face reality: the online recruiting marketplace is a multi-billion dollar business that feeds not just the employees of each online entity, but also the self-proclaimed gurus and media who are fed via speaking fees, advertising, etc.  It is in the interests of several key groups to keep the multi-billion dollar recruiting industry beast fat and full of corporate cash.


Here are some of the factors which I believe will finally force the change:

1. The results are so bad on many web 1.0 technologies (due to interstitial ads, bad candidate treatment on part of job boards and corporations) that no amount of spin can compensate. Corporate America is dropping the big board mega contracts.
2. Tracking is here, and unlike the 90's, employers can more accurately calculate ROI
3. There are other more cost effective choices - Indeed, SimplyHired, JobCentral Network to name a few and the traffic to the aggregators is rising 100% a year.
4. The promises to Wall Street of mega profits by several players forces them to once again raise prices on a declining industry - even HR folks eventually "get it" that they are being had.
5. The recruiting 1.0 folks have lost their cache with the Sr. Leadership of Corporate America - today the buzz is about Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn - not some job board created in the prehistoric 90's.
6. The Employers are talking - not to their Recruitment Ad Agencies - But To Each Other! 

I and many of my industry colleagues look forward to having a very public discussion this year of just how poor several of the the top branded sites work....

        

Word has it that prices on the Big Boards are going up in Jan. by 10% or more which just makes sense based on the "stellar performance" of these sites over the past several years...... I must admit - I did not get an MBA, so can someone in the Blogesphere explain to me the economic principals whereby the prices rise when the traffic decreases..... Fact is, the interest today is in tapping other sources, like LinkedIn...

        

Just before the holidays I had a chance to drop by Indianapolis and visit my friends at the DirectEmployers Assn. 2007 has been a great year for our Association as we partnered with the National Association of State Workforce Agencies to replace Americas Job Bank, launched Vetcentral, and experienced 100%+ growth. I dropped by to see the new office expansion, meet several new team members, and spend a few minutes to plan 2008 strategy. Here are a few pictures I snapped (I tried to catch "The Chad" in action, but he eluded my flash).


Bill Strikes a Pose 




Welcome Brad to the Sales Team




Shannon, Tom and Nancy

Christy and Patti - can you believe it - they have been supporting Employers since the early 90's