Make millions with a job board?

Job board, job sites, recruitment websites come, rather like Heinz, in 57 different varieties.  There are the quality job boards, well established brands that have worked hard to build their brands and their candidate database and offer a solid advertising option for recruiters. And then there are new job boards.

Not a week goes by without whatjobsite being approached by a newly-launched job board.  Sometimes we are approached by new boards with a cracking idea and a niche that hasn’t yet been opened. Even I get that awful slap on the head moment of  “why didn’t I think of that one?” And dollar signs appear hovering overhead.

And, in talking to these job boards, you are instantly struck by the quality and knowledge of the people behind them. They know what they are doing. And you know that they just might make it.

Sadly, more often when I am approached by a new job board I get a rather different feeling. More stomach churning. A “Oh, God do you have any idea what you are getting into?”  kind of feeling.

People still think that job boards are a money printing machine. You can get a job board for under thousand  pounds  nowadays and be live in a couple of weeks. And then the money rolls in. Right? And then someone will buy you for squllions. Right?

Sadly no. There are few job boards that will launch and see a paying client in the first year to eighteen months. New job boards seldom consider this or seem even to be aware of it.

What’s worse is that few have given little thought to the post launch investment. While the platform might be nothing, the marketing of a job board is horrendously expensive. In talking to established job boards, or even a passing look at the cost of Google Adwords, once can see that registering a single candidate through Search Engine Marketing is going to cost you a lot of money. We have heard quotes of anything up to £40 a candidate.

True, that is the upper end of the spectrum. But even if you are budgeting for £5 to register a candidate you are still looking at an investment of £50,000 to register just 10,000 candidates on your site.  And, unless that is a very niche niche, it’s not going to be very impressive. And, let us not forget the uncomfortable truth that these are candidates are probably already registered on your competitors’ sites. And then there are salaries. And the cost of integrating with job posting services.

And what about the ROI on a single quality candidate for a job board.  Will a job board turnover £10 or £20 per registered user? What is the margin? 10%? 30%. I have never spoken to a new job board operator that has given this much consideration.

Unless you have a really clever team, and there are some really good new launches out there, it seems that only the big publishers can now afford to launch new sites. They have big pockets (although even their pockets are rather threadbare from the riffling they took in ludicrous purchases over the last number of years).

But one should never underestimate the power of hope. Obama got elected on it. But you shouldn’t underestimate the dangers of hope either. You can’t cash hope in any bank. But with hope and a job board you just write a lot of cheques and empty a bank account.