Credit Crisis: The rise of the Zombie job board

It sounds more like a movie title than something to do with online recruitment. But, unfortunately, the story is not fiction; it’s real: the recession is causing real devastation across the UK job board market.

Whatjobsite is currently conducting research into the job board market. We are doing this by running an anonymous survey for job board operators in order to get a real feel how the market is. However, at the same time we are also conducting our own review of UK job boards. It is in this latter research that we have been surprised by what we have found.

As part of our research we reviewed approximately 200 job boards. These were job boards that we had first included on whatjobsite when we launched back in 2007. These job boards included generalist and specialist, independent and media-owned, top tier and second tier sites, and, in our view at least, were all reasonably good sites at the time. How times have changed.

Beware the Zombie Job Board

Over 15% of the job boards that just two years ago were vital and vibrant are now dead or dying. Unfortunately, and what’s more worrying for recruiters, they are still trying to maintain the illusion of life – hence our term ‘Zombie job boards.’ Zombie job boards have all the appearance of life: they have jobs, they have adverts, but a little examination reveals them to be dead or dying job boards.

There is no doubt that the recession has caused real difficulties for many in the online recruitment sector. Both job inventory and revenues have fallen. Recruiters have tightened their budgets and are being more careful with their spend. They simply don’t have the money to spend like they used to nor do they need to spend money across every nook and cranny job board to attract candidates. There is a glut of candidates. Posting a job ad on a top tier site will in all likelihood cause an inundation of candidates. Perhaps because of this, the second and third tier job boards are no longer getting a crumb nevermind a slice of the recruitment cake. They go on, therefore, without any real purpose as Zombie job boards.

How to spot a Zombie Job Board

It’s not too hard to spot a Zombie job board. Its job inventory tends to come exclusively from the job posting services. Indeed, without the job posting services it’s unlikely that these job boards simply would be able to maintain the illusion of life. The Zombie job boards will have job ads that come from one or two recruitment agency clients. Page after page of agency jobs. The only reason the jobs are on there is that someone ticked the box on Broadbean or Idubu.

Naturally, for employer recruiters these job boards should be avoided. Unlike the recruitment agency recruiters which may be able to get free trials on them, employers won’t.

Yep, I never thought I’d say it of online recruitment:  ‘Beware of the Zombies Job Boards.’

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