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.

I ran into a couple of new job startups that caught my eye and wanted to provide some commentary on these ideas. First up is a site uniquely called JobsnoteSteve.com.

Not your average job board name but I like the play on words. Its creative. The site itself is built on Indeed.com’s API but it’s aim is to make IT jobs easy to find. The site does this by breaking out a variety of job titles in an A to Z fashion which is a nice touch. The site probably wont be a traffic magnet but techies looking for work may make it a niche site worth using. This is a good example of what you can do with a jobs API that all the big aggregators provide.

Next up is Job Poacher which got a nice writeup on TechCrunch last week. This is NOT a job board. Its a place where job seekers go to to anonymously state their “job wanted”. The site has literally no design which is strange but it does seem more like a feature than an actual business. First to be relevant they’ll need lots of candidates. And as we all know that can be expensive. I like the idea however even if its not much of a step up from the resume section on craigslist. If I were them I’d contact job board software providers about adding JobPoacher as a feature.

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Here’s another revenue opportunity for job board operators. This one is called CV Certify, a self-described ‘carfax for careers’ run by TJ Radtke. I asked TJ a few questions about this new service.

1. What is cvcertify?
CVCertify is like Carfax for Careers. We help companies find qualified candidates faster and cheaper. And we help jobseekers stand out from the crowd to get hired faster for free.

2. why did you create it?
Monster, Linkedin and the like mint money selling search into databases of resumes and its known that up to 70 percent of resumes contain mischaracterizations if not outright lies. It occurred to me that creating the world’s largest repository of validated career data might be extremely beneficial to both hiring firms and job seekers.

3. why should job boards want to partner with you?
The knock on the boards is that they produce lots of applicants in the form of resume submissions but that the quality is lacking. I think of this as the “janitor applying for the CEO position” problem. Job boards using CVCertify with their postings will yield qualified applicants for their posting customers.

4. what can job boards expect when they partner?
Board can ultimately expect more satisfied customers as using CVCertify will provide them with a competitive advantage versus other boards. CVCertify’s model is premised on “pay to post” which involves a flat fee associated with each posting. Boards can share in this revenue from CVCertify ($50 per posting) as they sell our services as an add-on for postings or they may choose to bake in the cost for their premium corporate accounts.

5. whats the benefit for job seekers?
Jobseekers will stand out from the crowd of resumes in the pile to get hired faster, for free. With CVCertify you will stand out to the hiring manager because you can provide evidence that your experience ties directly to the job requirements.

6. where do you see cvcertify in 5 yrs?
LinkedIn and some earlier career sites have paved the way for CVCertify with some outstanding features and accomplishments. These groundbreaking companies however suffer from a common tragic flaw in that they are all built upon databases of career information that is unsubstantiated and cannot be trusted. The opportunity for CVCertify is to do in the career social networking space what Facebook did to Myspace and similar early social networks. Within 5 years we will be an integral part of the career management and hiring ecosystem and it will no longer occur to people to create or accept a resume that is not validated.

Glassdoor is now letting its users connect with social networks like facebook. ERE has a writeup on it. They join a growing number of businesses trying to open up your job search in order to uncover connections at companies you may want to work for such as Branchout, Beknown, Jibe, Gethired, etc.

SimplyHired has been providing integration with Linkedin for many years so all these site have got me thinking about the future. It appears the trend is moving towards uncovering connections…whether most job seekers care about this is still up in the air.

I think it is a good trend for the overall job market. But in my experience I have found most job seekers are embarrassed about telling the world they are looking for a new job. No doubt some of them are too shy about approaching strangers, even if they have some kind of connection. So I wonder what the true value is for seeing people on facebook who work at a certain company. If I dont know them, it wont help much.

There will always be aggressive, more savvy seekers who will love these new features so it makes sense to add them to your job board. Even if the majority of them wont really use it.

So its a good bet to add these features. At least you’ll be prepared for the future.

PS….If I were a job board software company I’d also be thinking of ways to tap facebook/twitter/linkedin for those job seekers. Better get on it folks!

Our friends at Jobtarget have begun beta testing new mobile enabled sites. I got them to put my flagship site on it and so far I like the look and functionality of the new platform.

Experts say that making your site optimized for iphone/android phones will make them stay longer on your job board. I for one am looking forward to that!

I keep a close eye on the online recruiting space. There are obvious ways to do that such as google alerts for “new job boards“, but here is a list of sites that I visit each week to make sure I’m on top of this ever changing industry.

1. JobBoarders (I founded this site in 2007)
2. Recruitingblogs.com
3. Recruiter.com
4. ERE.net
5. IAEWS (employmentwebsites.org)
6. AimGroup.com (Classified Intelligence)
7. Onrec.com
8. Recruitingtrends.com
9. TLNT.com
10. Interbiznet
11. HRexaminer
12. Jobboarddoctor
13. TalentHQ.com

And of course you should read JobBoardSecrets.com!

Did I miss anything? leave a comment and let me know…(I do long for the days when cheezhead.com ruled the industry!)

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Yesterday I wrote about how to integrate adsense on jobboards. Well SearchEngineLand.com just published an article about putting too many ads above the fold. Its a must read so click here.

I recommend no more than 2 adsense units above the fold. Unfortunately Google still refuses to tell you exactly what they mean. Every time I login to my Adsense admin it says I’m missing out on chances to increase my earnings if I put more ads on my pages. So which is it? One division says one thing while the other says the opposite.

Anyway all I can say is use your best judgement and dont load up your pages with too many adsense units above the fold.

I stumbled across worktree.com the other day. Its one of the original job board directories that actually charges users. I remember seeing this site over 10 years ago. Its a remarkable feat that they are still in business. They must have a nice revenue stream of paying users to still be around.

Anyway you can submit your site to be included on their directory here.

http://worktree.com/Jobsite/JobSiteSubmission.cfm

GOOGLE+

With Google now making Google+ profiles into regular web results its probably a good idea to setup a page for your job board. You can do it here.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create

Keep an eye on this. One day these profile pages might be the top result in a search.

Here’s a page I found for PTjobs.com

After 13 years in the job board business, I think its time I explore selling AllCountyJobs.com LLC. Here’s a link to the Sell Sheet for interested buyers with some of the basic details.

UPDATE: 5/30/12: Buyer has been found, its Operations Inc (press release)

UPDATE: my video interview with Online Recruiting News

I started my first job board in 1999 and haven’t looked back since. During that span, I have created dozens of sites. Some failed, some made it big. It’s been an awesome ride to say the least. I work from home, have no employees and I’ve probably built the most efficient job board operation in history.

But I’m bored.

I’ve gotten ACJ to a point where its pretty much all automated. The sites run themselves thanks to the various technologies I’ve plugged into them. I can run the business with only a few hours of human input per day. So lately I’ve been dreaming of other things I could do in the online recruiting space.

Make no mistake, I am NOT giving up on job boards. On the contrary. I still believe greatly in the niche and local sites that provide tremendous value everyday to employers. (And if I do sell I’ll probably buy more of them)… It’s just…I’ve been there done that…if you know what I mean. Its too much of a routine for me and I’m looking for a bigger player who wants to add a nice cash cow.

What excites me these days is the mobile recruiting space. I have tons of ideas for job search and recruiting apps that will help connect job seekers and employers. I’ve built a few already like JobSpeek and the Hidden Jobs app. But I need the capital to build such a business. Thus, I want to sell.

However I want prospective buyers to know that is is no firesale. AllCountyJobs.com is growing at 20% per year since the job market lows of 2009. And I expect 2012 to bring much of the same. Last year I expanded into new markets and put a great deal of sweat equity into building the brand name through PR, getting backlinks, writing articles, etc.

13 year old job board businesses like this don’t come along very often. Especially ones with thousands of backlinks, a cadre of loyal customers and a six figure revenue stream built by one man. I expect to get a fair value for it, given the fact its become an annuity at this point.

All this makes me think now is the time to sell. The growth is there. Plus the job market is coming back which makes me more confident in their future. The timing seems right.

So if your company want to add to its jobs portfolio or you’re just someone with a big check who wants to get into the job board game, read the Sell Sheet and give me a call.

(serious inquiries only please)

Hello job boarders, here’s some tidbits from the online recruiting world that caught my eye.

1. Jobing bought another company. They acquired phoenix based Blogic which helps companies transform sites with wordpress functionality. Could Jobing be creating some kind of job board wordpress platform? hmmm. The founder of Blogic started a job board called OrangeSlyce a few years ago.

2. Vizify, a social tool for creating a great first impression online, has raised capital. They intend to be a more visual and data driven online profile service that syas they want to target job seekers as well. Article from techcrunch mentioned that. Their service is interesting.

screenshot of Vizify

3. JobKaster is now in private beta! Its some kind of new location based job board. We’ve seen these before with sites like JobCompass so I’m curious how they will look.

4. Other new launches include a site for mobile developers myappjob.com, and some mortgage sites powered by Adicio: www.mortgagecareers.org & www.caamp.org/. View their PR.