the gig board / and job boards
Posted by Ian Holsman
in the recurring theme of job board discussions I seem to be having I thought I would continue it a tiny bit.
37 signals just announced a generic job board called gigs (note to jason: the page it points to isn’t the one I’m thinking you wanted it to point to ;-)
If you want to post on 37signal’s job board it is $250 for 30 days. gigs is $100 for 3 weeks. This should tell you something about the competitive nature of generic job boards, and the lack of competitive advantage 37signals brings to this arena.
While I wish them all the success in the world, I don’t think they are offering anything new or exciting in this field. I can’t actually see the site, as it isn’t up, so I could completely wrong about it.. but any innovation they bring on the site will be easily copied by their competitors anyway.
I still think the only way to do a truly awesome job board is to make it social and network based.
The best jobs are usually offered to friends/people in your network of known associates.. a job board should reflect this fact if they want to separate themselves from the pack.
Thanks for your concerns, Ian. But so far the numbers doesn’t seem to carry the gloom. We’ve been online with the job board for some four months now. Our sales have only gone up as a myriad of competitors have come on the scene.
There’s certainly no guarantee that it’ll last, but it may be that job boards thrive not on features but on audience. If that’s the case, I think we’ll be fine.
DHH no.. you misunderstand .. with ‘jobs’ you have an advantage.. and I have no issue with.
‘gigs’ on the other hand is a different story.
ps. I’m glad to see it working now
How is gigs any difference from jobs in this regard? You’re looking to hire people for the short term. More important than any thing must be the audience of potential hires watching your ad. Just like with jobs. Audience over features.