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Lately my job board consulting business is getting calls from a particular audience: third party recruiters. Usually it’s a one or two person team that has been recruiting for many years who now want to broaden their offerings through a job board to serve whatever niche they work in. They also want to make more money which a job board can be good for in terms of a supplemental income.

I have always felt that a recruiting firm would benefit from starting their own board. At the very least it would help raise your profile in the industry you serve, attract more candidates to your database and earn you money from occasional postings. Plus an online service runs 24/7 and can become a passive income source depending on what niche you are in.

There is software out now that is cheap and easy to use and you can even combine a job board with a social component by utilizing services like Ning. In other words you can build a focused community with jobs in it that you can tap into for marketing. Simply combine it with a free job board service like Jobamatic and off you go.

Think about it. Companies are creating their own talent communities. Why cant recruiting firms create their own too?

Make no mistake, it will cost you time and money should you wish to start your own. You can create and launch a site fairly cheaply but you’ll need to invest in some marketing dollars to get the board off to a good start. You’ll also need to treat the job board seriously and give it the attention it deserves.

Remember anyone can start a job board but not everyone can make it work.

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There’s a post on Forbes entitled ‘Linkedin is about to put job boards out of business‘. Although I know the author Dan Schwabel and like him, he is off-base with his assumptions.

LinkedIn just announced a new feature that allows job seekers to ‘apply with linkedin’. Its a button that companies can put on their career pages and let job seekers submit their LI profile. Dan may be correct in saying that it will put the resume out of business. A profile is a much more valuable tool to sell yourself than a resume. I think eventually in 5-10 years the online profile will be the primary tool to job hunt, not the resume. If this new feature hurts anyone, I’d point to the ATS (applicant tracking systems). ATS’s are a bigger pain point for job seekers not job boards. This has the potential to become LinkedIn’s own version of tracking candidates for employers.

But LinkedIn is not a job board. They are the nation’s resume database. Its used to research information about people and companies. Its a vast treasure trove of business data.

Dan argues that only lazy recruiters use job boards. But its not just recruiters using them. Small business owners post a lot of jobs themselves. They dont have time to “source” candidates on a site like LI. They will always be reactive when it comes to recruiting. LI is a proactive tool. And ‘lazy’ recruiters will always exist.

Dan also generalizes all job boards into one solution when in truth there are many niche and local job boards that are continually proving their worth. He should have prefaced his post by naming the big job sites monster/careerbuilder. We all know they are the biggest target in our industry.

But now that LI is a public company they could evolve into more of a traditional job board. Especially if they acquire one of the aggregators as has been rumored. My money is on them buying SimplyHired. They’re both in silicon valley and very familiar with each other.

Being a public company now means they are beholden to their shareholders. That means they have to drive growth which is not always good news for recruiters or job seekers. LI will become more costly over time in order to satisfy the streets hunger. They’ll eventually get as expensive as sites like Monster. This will always leave room for smaller niche players like me to survive and thrive. So I’m rooting for LI to get big. The bigger they get, the better we look.

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