Business Week Article: Social networking challenging the job boards

The link above takes you to an article about the big 3; Monster, Careerbuilder and Hotjobs being challenged by a number of new players in the Web 2.0 world.

Niche job boards were always going to invade the generalists territory, if they were backed and promoted to capture a sufficient passive and active audience of specialists that were comfortable using the sites. If I am an engineering manager, I want a career site that is specific to me. Not one that tries to cover all industries.

In my own experience the biggest issue with the generalists is the privacy issue, with more and more human resource departments within companies using the same tools and monitoring web activity at work, it is a challenge for users to have an excuse to explore and submit their details.

Niche sites that have more than just jobs as content have a better chance of attracting the quality candidate. Positioning a great career opportunity alongside some research they are doing in their normal day to day work has a better chance of you coming back after work and following up on the opportunity.

Take that to a natural conclusion and social networks of like minded business people with quality profiles on their background, needs and wants. Is an obvious place for the promotion of career moves, as any good recruiter also knows it is good to fish where the fish are! Sites like Xing and Linked In have know created huge databases of talent with an open premise of networking for mutual business and opportunities.

It is going to take time to see the impact on the traditional job boards but you know it is serious when they are already trying to build social networking concepts into their own products. Why someone would build a social network linked to a job board, essentially pointing out you are not happy where you are, is yet to convince me. But my gut says they should stick to their knitting and ensure they have innovate ways of attracting candidates instead of trying to be something they are not.

The net result for us all, is that the use of social networks and the management of our personal and professional brands online are essential business skills. These skills should be taken seriously, take a look at our hints and tips to ensure you are making the most of the tools available.