Job Boards

Image via CrunchBase

An employment website is a web site dealing specifically with employment or careers. Many employment websites are designed to allow employers to post job requirements for a position to be filled and are commonly known as job boards. Other employment sites offer employer reviews, career and job-search advice describe different job descriptions or employers. Through a job website a prospective employee can locate and fill out a job application or submit resumes over the Internet for the advertised position.

It is reported that over 40,000 employment sites are in existence, the largest of which are represented by The International Association of Employment Web Sites, a trade association for the global online employment services industry. These sites range from broad all-purpose job boards, to niche sites that serve various audiences, geographies, and industries.

A job search engine is a website that facilitates job hunting. These sites are more commonly known as job boards and range from large scale generalist boards to niche job boards for job categories such as engineering, legal, insurance, social work, teaching as well as cross-sector categories such as green jobs, ethical jobs and seasonal jobs. Users can typically deposit their résumés and submit them to potential employers, while employers can post job ads and search for potential employees. The category job search engines below is a list of specific search engines with details about them.

A recent trend in job search engines is the emergence of vertical search or metasearch engines, such as Indeed and Simply Hired, which allow jobseekers to search across multiple employment websites. Some of these new search engines primarily index traditional job boards. These sites aim to provide a "one-stop shop" for job-seekers who don't need to search the underlying job boards. In 2006, tensions developed between the job boards and several scraper sites, with Craigslist banning scrapers from its job classifieds and Monster specifically banning scrapers through its adoption of a robots exclusion standard on all its pages while others have embraced them.

Other job search engines index pages only from employers' websites, such as LinkUp and Hound, choosing to bypass traditional job boards entirely. These vertical search engines allow jobseekers to find new positions that may not be advertised on the traditional job boards.

Employer review websites are also used for job searches. They enable jobseekers to find and read reviews about experiences of working for a company or an organization. Although employer review websites may produce links to potential employers, they do not typically list vacancies.

Venture capital, mergers and acquisitions have been active in the job board industry for more than a decade. In 2008, several private equity firms started the process of piecing together large job board networks while other firms attempted to expand through acquisition.

The success of jobs search engines in bridging the gap between jobseekers and employers has spawned thousands of job sites, many of which list job opportunities in a specific sector, such as education, health care, hospital management, academics and even in the non-governmental sector. There are reportedly more than 40,000 employment websites in existence today, the largest of which are represented by The International Association of Employment Web Sites, a trade association for the global online employment services industry.

Many jobs search engines and jobs boards encourage users to post their CV and contact details. While this is attractive for the site operators (who sell access to the resume bank to headhunters and recruiters), job-seekers should exercise caution in uploading personal information, since they have no control over where their resume will eventually be seen. Their resume may be viewed by a current employer or, worse, by fraudsters who may use information from it to amass and sell personal contact information, or even perpetrate identity theft. Another danger is the false claim of being free. Many sites are free for some users, some employers but not all. Some charge employers only, some charge applicants only and many more advertise as free but are only free for a short period of time or a short number of searches or postings.

Job wrapping is a term used commonly to describe a process by which jobs can be captured from employer website and posted to the job boards that the employer wants to advertise them.

Corporate recruiters and HR professionals who send job listings to multiple Internet employment sites can sometimes delegate those chores to the employment sites themselves under an arrangement called "job wrapping". Job wrap ensures that employer job openings and updates get wrapped up regularly and posted on the job boards that they have designated.

The term "job wrapping" is synonymous with "spidering", "scraping", or "mirroring".

Job wrapping is generally done by a third party vendor .

Information on some popular Job Sites

CareerBuilder.com was founded in 1994 by Rob McGovern. It is the largest online job site in the United States, with more than 23 million unique visitors each month and a 34% market share of help-wanted web sites in the United States. CareerBuilder.com provides online career search services for more than 1,900 partners as of March 2008, including 140 newspapers and portals such as America Online and MSN.

Careerbuilder is jointly owned by the Gannett Company, The McClatchy Company and the Tribune Company. A 2007 deal was completed, in which Microsoft will acquire a minority stake in the firm and continue its relationship through 2013 with CareerBuilder as the exclusive content provider for the MSN Careers channel.

Yahoo! HotJobs, previously known as hotjobs.com, is an online job search engine. It has been known as Yahoo! HotJobs since being acquired by Yahoo! in 2002. Yahoo! HotJobs provides tools and advice for job seekers, employers, and staffing firms.

Job seekers voted Yahoo! Hotjobs the (2002, 2003) "Best General Purpose Job Board for Job Seekers," and recruiters voted Yahoo! HotJobs the (2003) "Most Recruiter-Friendly General Purpose Site" in a survey conducted by WEDDLE's.

Monster.com is an employment website owned by Monster Worldwide. Monster is one of the 20 most visited websites out of 100 million worldwide, according to comScore Media Metrics (November 2006). It was created in 1999 by the merger of The Monster Board (TMB) and Online Career Center (OCC), which were two of the first and most popular career web sites on the Internet. Monster is primarily used to help those seeking work to find job openings that match their skills and location.

Today, Monster is the largest job search engine in the world, with over a million job postings at any time and over 150 million resumes in the database (2008) and over 63 million job seekers per month. The company employs approximately 5,000 employees in 36 countries.

• Access Iwebslog Job Boards- Get Hired

• Freelancer Job Portal- Jobex (Job Exchange)

• News from the Job Industry

Permalink