Job Boards -- What can they do
Posted by Ian Holsman
as a follow up to my dissing of job boards
I thought I would put a few notes on what I think they could do to actually ‘add+capture value’ for themselves.
the first thing you need to do in these kind of situations is look how they can differentiate themselves for each other and from other potential new entrants.
so what could makes CrunchBoard different than jobs.gigaom.com ?
well.. lets go through what isn’t different:
- technology.. both do the job well enough so that this isn’t an issue
- the jobs themselves, although crunchboard seems more ‘businessey’ than gigaom’s currenty, this isn’t the intention by the looks of the categories they have on the site.
so far.. nothing even which sets them apart from monster (besides a better look and navigation)
ok.. so lets analyze who these people (Michael Arrington and Om Malik) are, crunchboard gives a hint on their site.It’s the electronic version of the ultimate insider’s network.
These guys are insiders. They know people, they have access to information that us mere mortals merely dream about.. cool parties.. the VC groupies, and more importantly access to the senior officials in most of the startups and VC firms.
These guys live on whispers, and rumors.. they need to make their job boards more like that.
They need to remodel their “job” businesses like that of a typical recruitment agency, not a job board. They know when people are ‘looking’, they know the people in the ‘biz’ inside out. A job board is for when you have no knowledge of the people.. a mass market sledgehammer so to speak.
So instead of making their network contacts post jobs on a board, they should thinking of who in their extended network could fill that position. Use those networks..keep the secrecy that startups love.. thats their competitive advantage. They know the right people.
I know it isn’t web 2.0, and it doesn’t require a web site, just a couple of HR recruitment specialists to do the interviewing/weeding… but on the flip side they could then charge 10-20% of the salary (thats the going rate I believe) which is much more than $200/post.