Greetings! 

Welcome to the whatjobsite online recruitment newsletter for August. This month we announce the launch of the whatjobsite Blog. We also tell you about Zombie job boards and why you should avoid them. We profile a number of new job boards on whatjobsite. We then bring you the latest job board news and research. We've got another bunch of cracking offers from our job board partners. And we've got our July online Poll results.

If you have any comments or feedback about our newsletter or you would like to discuss your online recruitment needs, don't hesitate to contact me. 

Editor

Whatjobsite Announcement

We launch whatjobsite.com/blog

After many years thinking about it, we have at last taken the step of starting a whatjobsite blog. There have been a number of developments at whatjobsite over the last period which have made us decide to launch a the blog. First of all, as part of our online recruitment consulting we are learning more and more about how job boards are used and we'd like to share what we learn with other online recruiters.

Secondly, an increasingly important part of our activity is research into online recruitment and job board advertising. While we publish much of this research on whatjobsite as guides and articles, we wanted to provide a more interactive place for people to comment and give us feedback on our work.

Primarily, therefore, our blog will be a place for us to discuss our research and online recruitment experiences. We hope you find it to be of interest and we look forward to a lively debate. Go to the blog

Feature Article

Beware the Zombie Job Boards

It's not a title I'd ever thought I'd write when looking at online recruitment. But, times have been hard for job boards over the last twelve to eighteen months and this has given rise to the phenomenon of Zombie Job Boards.

Zombie Job Boards are job boards that have all the appearance of real live breathing and kicking job boards - they have jobs, and adverts, and content and offers - but like rather like zombies, they are really dead or dying.

A Zombie Job Board continues to appear like a real job board because it still carries up-to-date jobs on the site. But don't be fooled. While these jobs are real and live, this does not reflect the true state of the job board. Indeed, its vitality is an illusion.

The reality is that these Zombie Job Boards are linked into job posting services. These are services which allow recruiters to post jobs across multitudes of job boards with one simple click. If real zombies eat brains, then zombie job boards eat job feeds.

Most of the time Zombie Job Boards even have to offer free advertising in order to get recruitment agencies to post any jobs on their site. if rec cons had to pay for the service they wouldn't bother at all. So, nor should you.

What's wrong with Zombie Job Boards?

Effectively, they are businesses that are out or are going out of business: they just haven't admitted it yet. There is no activity or energy put into the candidate attraction or recruiter support. Now, while you might, by chance, pick up a candidate from such a job board, paying anything for this slim chance is not advisable. Go with real live job boards.

How to spot a Zombie Job Board

There are a couple of ways of quickly spotting Zombie Job Boards. Firstly, they tend to have lots of jobs from just one or two recruitment agency clients which they get from the job posting services. In that way, the job site appears to be vibrant and vital but isn't. Make sure the job board you are advertising on has lots of jobs from lots of different clients, both recruitment agency and direct employer.

The second way to identity a Zombie Job Board is to try and ring it up. If you can't find a telephone number, then stay well away from it. If you do find a telephone number and it goes to voicemail, or a telephone answering service, or just isn't answered then stay away. Again, it's a Zombie. No real live job board would let a single client get away in this current economic environment.

For more information on online recruitment and job board advertising visit the whatjobsite Recruitment Advice area. To comment on this topic go the whatjobsite.com/blog

New Job Boards on Whatjobsite

Taxation-jobs.co.uk

Taxation-jobs.co.uk is a leading recruitment website specialising in jobs in taxation. With a monthly average of over 6,000 vacancies, and over 3,300 jobseekers visiting the site per month, Taxation-jobs.co.uk is the right place to advertise your tax vacancy... see job board profile

TotalRewardsJobs.co.uk

TotalRewardsJobs.co.uk is your online source for the best employee benefits, payroll and pensions candidates. We work in partnership with you to help you recruit the right employee benefits, payroll and pensions candidates for your vacancies online. TotalRewardsJobs.co.uk is brought to you by the publishers of Pensions World, Pay & Benefits and is a LexisNexis company... see job board profile

News and research from job boards

CWJobs - Fantasy Football League back again

After a successful season last year, CWJobs has decided to run their Fantasy Football league exclusive to the IT recruitment industry again for the 2009/2010 football season ...read more

Jobsite products to increase candidate reach

Jobsite.co.uk has announced the launch of a new product which enables their clients to have extensive reach to their target audience through advertising across the A&N Media/digital portfolio ...read more

Jobsite sign as main sponsor Portsmouth FC

More exciting news from Jobsite.co.uk who have announced that they have signed as the main club sponsor of Portsmouth Football Club ...read more

Whatjobsite online poll

How have your recruitment costs changed since January?

With a view to the increasingly competitive recruitment market, we wanted to find out how this had translated into recruitment costs. So, in July we asked our audience 'How have your recruitment costs changed since January?'

48% of our users said they had seen a decrease in recruitment costs. Another 29% said that costs had remained the same. 15% said they had seen an increase in recruitment costs. The remaining 8% responded 'Don't know'