Yahoo's online job division, HotJobs, plans to announce today that it has taken the bold but controversial step of finding more job listings for its users by copying them off the Web sites of employers.
This new service first got attention last week, with a smattering of mixed reviews.
Joel Cheeseman says, "The job board model as we know it today doesn't work." Dave McClure, Director of Marketing at SimplyHired, also likes the direction of the new Yahoo!Hotjobs offering, but in the comments to Joel's post, he disagrees that this is the death knell for the big Job Board business, "I don't believe that Monster or CareerBuilder are going away anytime soon."
My own boss, Marc Cenedella (president of TheLadders.com -- the definitive source for executive jobs) weighed in with a couple posts:
-> "It is all well-meaning, but mostly misses the mark. This is not the death of job search engines, but is the death of HotJobs business if taken to its logical conclusion."
-> "Isn't it colossally difficult to get people to pay for the exact same something you're now giving them for free?"
-> "I feel bad for the HotJobs salesforce because it won't take long for recruiters to wonder 'why the heck am I paying for listings when I can them for free?'"
And be sure to check the comments section on this post from John Battelle's SearchBlog. With posts from Cheeseman, Cenedella, McClure and Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com), it's a can't miss who's-who of job search gurus. The key comment there is from McClure, "great search is about RELEVANCE."
Overall, I'm not quite sure I like the new HotJobs offering. The relevance is lacking (thousands of paid listings appear before more relevant web results in many cases), and the threat to the core business must have the sales folks squirming in their seats. Tough to run a business if the heart and soul of the company isn't behind it.
Has anyone heard from the HJ sales force? How are they taking the news? Are any of the stars even there anymore, or have they read the writing on the wall?
hey Andrew -
ReplyDeletejust to be clear: my comment about "liking" Yahoo's offering was based on them pretty clearly following our lead in vertical search, although i'd still say i "like" ours better ;)
but thanks for making me a "who's-who" -- guess it's time for me to go ask my own boss for a raise!
regards,
- dave mcclure
www.simplyhired.com
(ps - tell Marc we said 'hi', and thanks for the nice blog post about our new MyJobs feature -- you guys have been doing some pretty cool stuff too :)