Want to make your site mobile? check out JQUERY, it lets you create a mobile site with an online wizard. You can see an example on my wind power job board located at m.jobsinwindpower.com

NEW JOB BOARDS

Remarkablehire.com is some kind of sourcing/matching tool to recruit IT and Engineers. They got an article in the Washington Post.

LocalWork.com has launched for the Phoenix market. Thats Jobing’s territory so they face an uphill climb. Read their press release.

Recruitingdatabase.com is a directory of online recruitment vendors launched by Jason Davis (former owner of recruitingblogs.com). You can add listings to your job board and get a link back.

Strangely named ApplyApp.ly is launching as yet another “matching” site for seekers. (read the PR)

This post is free. Want access to my 3+ years of content? Join here.

With the existing Jobamatic interface it only allows you to enter Adsense on the header and footer. But what if you wanted to put it on the left column? Well I tasked my webmaster Jody to set it up on site for user interface jobs.

http://www.uxuijobs.com

A reader asks: I’d like to put adsense on the left side below the ‘job type’ group. Can you give me advice on what code to use in the header? Thanks!

Here’s the code to add to the header section:

Here’s the code to add to the footer section in the Jobamatic configuration tab:

<!– adsense to left bar –>
<div id=”adsense_sidebar”>
ENTER ADSENSE CODE HERE
</div>

<!– put the ads in the position –>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
$(‘#job_filter’).append($(‘#adsense_sidebar’));
</script>

If not you should be.

Why? well first of all social media is free advertising. Who doesn’t want that? Secondly, its a way to engage your users and let them FOLLOW YOU.

Thirdly its a way to promote your listings on social media and drive traffic to them. Not a ton of traffic but enough to make it worthwhile.

Fourth its also good for SEO. By having accounts on Facebook, Twitter, G+ you can show up in more search results. For anyone following you its kike subscribing to an RSS feed.

So how do you set up your twitter account to take advantage of these benefits? Here’s how;

1. Take your XML or RSS job feed and set up an account with Twitterfeed.com. It will auto feed all your listings. Be sure to add hashtags like #jobs and whatever other keywords important to your niche.

2. Your twitter account should have a branded background image. Check out mine for allcountyjobs. Think of it as a splash page.

3. Stuff your twitter profile with keywords and of course link back to your website.

4. Add “Follow Us on Twitter” links to the header or footer of your job bboard. Make it easy for people to follow you.

5. Finally and this is most important. Dont just feed your jobs and ignore the account. Retweet other users and put a human behind the twitter account. You dont need to spend hours on it, just a few minutes morning-noon and night will suffice. Retweet job hunting articles and become an advocate for both employers and job hunters.

Do these things and your twitter followers will increase over time. Plus if you ever want to sell your site having an active twitter account will make it more valuable.

BONUS TIP: Create an account for just jobs like @talentzoojobs does. This way you can seperate out the jobs for those only wishing to get that content. That will free you up to use your main twitter account for engaging with your fans.

Here are some of my other twitter job board accounts if you want to follow them.

https://twitter.com/#!/jobspeek

https://twitter.com/#!/jobsinsolar

https://twitter.com/#!/jobsinsustain

Another year, another set of conferences to go to.

Last week I flew to San Diego to attend the IAEWS job board conference which was held alongside the ERE expo. Both events were well attended with the IAEWS having around 100 job board professionals in the audience. It was great to see old friends and meet some new ones.

As I flew home I jotted down some of my takeaways and other tidbits overheard on the expo floor.

1. Best insight: “Monster will sell for only 1x” by Mike Tansey CEO of onTarget Jobs.

2. Job boards are adding more social features…don’t miss the boat.

3. Best opportunity for job boards right now: employers need better ways to pre-screen applicants. Build tools to help them cut down on applicant clutter.

4. John Sumser spoke on social media technology as it relates to recruiting. His take was that its still early in the game. We’re only 16% of the way there to full adoption.

5. Mobile is the 7th “mass media”…aka the 3rd screen.

6. Video slows down the recruiting process. If your new video interviewing/resume/screening tool doesnt make it faster, more efficient for recruiters, it will fail.

7. Best quote: Chris Forman of Startwire…’provide solutions not just postings’

8.  Rumours: JobFox is not doing well…(I cant believe they’ve hung around for this long)

9. Interesting statistic I saw: unemployment rate for college educated in US is 4% while those without is 8%

10. 9 out of 10 job seekers say they are more likely to apply for a job IF they know they will get a response from employer (startwire)

11. HR budgets are still decreasing. Recruiters still doing more with less.

12. companies dont need more traffic to their career sites, they need more qualified candidates

Some things that caught my eye last week that job board owners should pay attention to.

* Google is going to start penalizing sites that are “over-optimized“.

http://searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google%E2%80%99s-working-on-an-%E2%80%9Cover-optimization%E2%80%9D-penalty-for-that-115627

* Want to get into the job board software business? Xpanded Media is selling their classified software business.

https://flippa.com/134350-classifieds-software-company-for-sale-established-profitable-business

* Health care job board for sale.

http://flippa.com/auctions/2707765/site

* IAEWS congress is this week. I’ll be in San Diego to meet my fellow job board peeps!

http://www.employmentwebsites.org

The other day on ERE they had an announcement of another job site for veterans. Recently a site here in Connecticut got funding called Combat2Careers. These join a long line of military/veteran job boards already out there.

Though their goal is a noble one, I think there may be too many of these sites to make them all viable business opportunities. I’m sure some of these are non-profit type entities and some may even be more localized programs. But if you are planning to go up against the bigger sites like VetJobs or Military.com you will face a long uphill battle.

It’s a crowded niche to get into. Having said that, there may be “sub-niches” you can target such as ones with a local focus (ex. “Hire Florida Vets”) or specialty (ex. “Ex-military pilots”).

If your job board’s feed goes into SimplyHired, they have a cool badge to promote that fact. As I have mentioned several times in the past, you need to leverage the aggregators to your advantage, even if you consider them as a competitor.

Badges like this help establish trust among employers. Use it or lose it.

http://resources.simplyhired.com/simply-hired-badge.html

Jobs syndicated to the Simply Hired Network

Before you purchase a web host for your job board use this quick tip to save money.

Go to Retailmenot.com and type in the name of the web host you want to use.

Press the search box and see what discount codes are available.

Recently I put a new job board on MyHosting.com. As I began to signup for a simple VPS hosting package I saw the discount box so I quickly searched Retailmenot and found several usable codes to save as much as 20% off!

TIP: just type in ‘web hosting‘ to see what other providers they have coupons for.

I havent sold AllCountyJobs yet. Still working with a couple of firms on a possible deal but its a slow process as you can imagine.

In the meantime I’m looking to see what interest there is in some extra sites and boards I own that have gathered dust in the recent years. I’m willing to listen to any and all offers on the sites & domains below. No reasonable offer will be refused.

JOB BLOGS

Secretsofthejobhunt.com: my job hunter social network built off the Ning platform. Has over 2400 registered users gets 3,000 monthly uniques.

Blogforjobs.com: not sure how much trafic it has since I took stats off it a while back. If I had to guess 500 monthly visitors. I’ve just been using it for search engine optimization, etc.

Hiddenjobreport.com: gets around 600 monthly visitors but i dont really use it much.

GREEN JOB BOARDS

I’d like to sell these as a package since they all link to each other. In total they get around 15k monthly uniques and generate around 40,000 monthly page views. They all make money (contact me for details). The solar site has attracted 3 postings in February for example. And of course backfill revenue. Each of them rank well for their industry terms. Most them have twitter accounts with 500+ followers.

All Powered by Jobamatic

Jobs in Wind Power
Jobs in Green Building
Jobs in Solar Power
Jobs in Biofuels
Jobs in Geothermal
Jobs in Recycling
Jobs in Sustainability
Jobs in LEED

TECH JOB BOARDS

I bought many of these sites recently and all have made money. The guy I bought it from had made $5k with it in less than a year and after I took them over I was able to market the sites to recruiters and have been successfully getting new postings.

http://www.javaforhire.com/
http://www.uxuijobs.com/
http://www.phpforhire.com/
http://www.rubyforhire.com/
http://www.hiringmobile.com/
http://www.hiringdotnet.com/

NICHE JOB BOARDS

http://www.adminjobsfinder.com/
http://www.hvacjobsnow.com/
http://www.cnajobsnow.com
http://www.cncjobsnow.com
http://www.audiojobs.com

For the tech and niche blogs I’m looking for $250 each.

JOB DOMAINS (make an offer)

Gigjob.com
Flickjobs.com
Greenjobbank.com
Greenjoblot.com
Hiringjava.com
Hiringphp.com
Jobsinhtml5.com
Streamlinestaff.com
Talentspeak.com
Westernpennjobs.com
Workinsolar.com
Jobhunting101.com

If you are starting a new job board (or any website) you absolutely NEED a professional logo.

There’s just no excuse for NOT having one. Services like 99designs.com are an awesome way to get one for around $500 bucks.

Last week I posted a project to get a new logo for what will hopefully be my next startup, CareerCloud.

Within 24 hours of submitting my specs I had dozens of top quality logos to choose from by designers all over the world. And I was able to make my decision quickly. I chose the design below. It met all my aesthetic requirements. Clean, simple modern looking with a great color scheme.

Your logo sets the tone for how visitors to your web site will view you. A great logo like the one above goes a long way in determining the trust a website earns. It says to visitors that hey, this is a professional website that is worth MY TIME in checking out.

Those of you that fail to invest in a logo and good web design will regret it in the longrun.