A presentation on the Australian Job board landscape. Email me at info@destinationtalent.com.au if you want the presentation slides.

Some of the most effective job boards don’t focus on jobs alone. Instead they concentrate on building a strong community, often on a platform of quality content. Media Bistro, a content rich community site which also moonlights as a job board for media professionals, is a case in point. Of course, it sold for $23 million.

In Australia, Artshub is taking a similar trajectory. What started in 2000 as a simple email newsletter morphed into one of the most established niche community sites in the country. By providing relevant content and catering to the needs of the creative community it is able to create a thriving hub where like-mined individuals can connect, and ultimately look for jobs.

As far as we are aware, it is the only job board which successfully charge a fee to candidates (for access to jobs) and employers (for posting jobs) alike. Though we are not sure about charging for content as a long-term strategy, Artshub members doesn’t seems to mind. Instead, the site has gone from strength to strength, reaching an estimated 50,000 creative professionals and 600 plus organisations.  Recently they branched out to the UK and US.

In a time when job board software can easily be bought off-the-shelf, quality content and a singular focus on connecting and catering to the the needs of a particular community is a recipe for success that can be mimicked. For the smaller job boards in Australia, it may well be a good strategy which can insulate them from the threat of cannibalisation by the larger generalist job boards, or from a possible economic downturn.

The series so far:

• Where there is a community there is a job board - Part 3
• Where there is a community there is a job board - Part 2
• Where there is a community there is a job board - Part 1
  

SimplyHired, a US based jobs aggregator, launched its Australian operations yesterday. Already 200,000 Australian jobs are listed on their site.

Jobs aggregator sites have been around since 2005, and the Australian market is well served by a mix of overseas players and local startups. Recruit.net, based in HK, is one of the first and most established companies to serve Australia. UK based Careerjet and local players like Jseekers and myspider are also gaining traction.

At the core of an aggregator’s service is collecting jobs from all over the Internet - company career portals, recruiters websites, blogs, job boards etc , and put them in one searchable database. It delivers value to job seekers by providing a one stop platform to search for jobs. Of course, not everyone like their jobs to be indexed (SEEK is an example) and debate continues on issues like copyright infringements and data ownership (more of this in a later post).

It is too early to gauge how well SimplyHired will perform in Australia. The market looks crowded. However, innovations like its jobomatic service, which allows jobs to be easily syndicated on websites and blogs, will make SimplyHired stand out from the rest. Their collaboration with Linkedin will also go down well with the Australian recruiting community who has embraced Linkedin with gusto. Besides, it is a global operation with deep pockets.

We expect job aggregators to stay, the benefits they give job seekers, convenience and unparalleled  information, is different from those offered by conventional job boards.  For employers, it means their jobs can be distributed to even more places and get more exposure.

History, however, is not kind to American companies who enters the Australian market. Monster and Hotjobs failed to make any dent in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and ultimately quit the market. Only time will tell if Simplyhired will be any different.  Watch this space.

Problogger is one of the most popular blogs in Australia. On any given day the site amassed well over 65,000 readers. With a loyal and active readers base(one post registered 600 plus comments from readers) it is understandable that Problogger runs a lively job board, charging $50 per job posting.  Recently another popular marketing blog gave birth to a new job board - Socialmediajobs.com.au.

The explosion of personal publishing tools essentially allows anyone to become their own media company and develop a community of followers.  Blogs in particular are effective in conducting conversations and build relationship with a focused pool of readers. Hence, blogs offers a lot of potential as a platform to advertise jobs and target candidates.

Already, services like Jobcoin and Jobamatic allows jobs to be syndicated to thousands of blogs. Meanwhile, Job board templates for popular blogging software WordPress are raising their heads. It is increasingly easy to run your own job board on your blog.  We expect to see a lot more innovation in this space in the near future.

Still, job listing on blogs are only a small fraction of those on mainstream job boards. But it is clear that a blog can be an effective channel to reach out to potential job seekers, especially the passive types. Blogs will increasingly be recipients of advertising dollars, and in the process will enlarge the pie spent on online classifieds advertising.

Every 30 seconds a new social network is created on Ning. Since it launched two years ago, close to 500,000 social networks has been created on Ning (see graph).  Of course, Ning is not the only player in this space, other white-label social network platforms abounds.

Ning’s, and white-label social network providers, stratospheric growth gives one an idea on where online communities are heading. At this rate, there is likely to be a social network for every niche imaginable. At the core of this growth is the ease with which anyone can create a social network, and the basic longing for everyone to be part of a community.

The explosion of online communities offers both opportunities and challenges for recruiters. For one, it will be easier to identify and reach out to a focused pool of talent (Need accountants anyone?), at the same time monitoring conversations across a large number of networks will prove to be a challenge for most recruiters (How many social networks can you participate in?).

It is not difficult to imagine job listings to become a standard feature on social networks. Already, job listings are a regular features on some popular social networks. Very soon, the jobs listings themselves will be the draw card for signing up with a particular social network.

It’s not clear how social networks will affect the status quo in terms of job listings and talent acquisition, but online communities are here not only to stay but to prosper. As Seth puts it in his new book Tribes, ” Go down the list of online success stories. The big winners are organizations that give tribes of people a platform to connect.”

250,00 0 registered users, 15,000 daily visits and thousands upon thousands of conversation threads are just some of the big numbers chalked up by  the Whirlpool (not the white goods manufacturer) forum. The forum is probably one of the largest Australian online communities where people (mostly IT professionals) congregate and passionately talk about technology on a regular basis.

Where there is a thriving community, job advertisements usually follows (Mainstream job boards take the reverse route of listing jobs first and try and build a community, some do both at the same time).  As Kevin Kelley points out   “wherever attentions flows, money will follow”

Already, hundred of jobs are advertised on the forum. A job posting is free for employers and forum participants (professional recruiters are not allowed to participate), but it is easy to see that commercialisation is the next logical step for Whirlpool.

As social animals we all participate in one or another community. The Internet just makes it a lot more easier to foster connections, amplifies interaction among like minded individuals and allows for communities to be created quickly.  The proliferation of online communities means the definition of a ‘job board’ will be redefined.