Hey, it’s the end of the year (almost) and time to take a look at what happened in 2012. Did anything? Well, actually, yes – quite a bit. Apart from an election, a (slowly) recovering economy, and a snazzy James Bond film, it did seem like 2012 was a busy year for online recruiting. Here are my picks for the most notable:…

Facebook launched its long-rumored job board offering last week. It was a bit rocky:

• “ It’s buggy and kind of janky looking.” – FB userMike Chapman (and thank you, Mike, for…

For years I’ve been writing about what I see as the evolution of job boards – away from the traditional ‘job postings and resume’ model, and toward something more social, interactive, flexible, and useful to both candidates and employers. Many factors are …

The folks at LinkedIn have been busy lately, rolling outnew features, connecting with their users at the LI conference, and busily expanding their empire in all directions. Some pundits are proclaiming that…

Being a full time consultant is wonderful – I have the opportunity to work with hundreds of interesting clients, tackle unusual and cutting edge projects, and yes, get paid for it. But there is a drawback – although I’m in contact with dozens of people every week via phone, email, Skype, and Twitter, I don’t actually see them. I’m here in Iowa, and they’re…well, all over the world.

Conferences are a great way to see your colleagues and…

As noted in previous posts, I’ve been thinking lately about what makes a job board good – or not. Below are a few questions to that effect – and yes, some employment sites have these features, but most do not. Maybe there absent features you’ve wondered about?

• Voice input for search: Hey, if you’re…

Are these really the dog days of summer? Maybe not, judging from the number of new job sites I’m seeing. Granted, some of these have been around in alpha or beta for a while, some have been flying under the radar, and some are simply new to me – but there seems to be no letup in the volume of start-ups in the online recruiting sector.

This is great, in my opinion. Startups force established players to rethink how they do business. They…

A few weeks back I posed the question“What is a job board?”. In the process of trying to answer that question, I mentioned LinkedIn as a prime example of something thatlooks like a job board, acts like a job board, butclaims not to be a job…

I recently had the privilege of hosting #HFChat – the HireFriday Tweet-fest organized by @HRMargo and @CyndyTrivella.  HireFriday is all about helping job seekers find work. Recruiters, HR professionals, and the occasional job board doctor pose and answer common questions about the job hunt. It’s a wonderful event for all involved.

My subject – surprisingly enough! – was “Making job boards work for you”. The conversation ranged from the basics (setting up job alerts, using job boards…

Almost every week I see another blog post or story about a trend, product, or development that will doom job boards. Let’s be honest – writing about the death of any institution, especially one used by millions of people worldwide, is a great way to gather eyeballs and readers.

But as I was considering my latest snarky…

In a recent presentation with Dr. Charles Handler, I discovered that although both he and I focused on the ‘quality of candidates’ – as does anyone involved in recruiting – we weren’t able to find much data on exactly which recruiting techniques delivered the best quality candidates, according to HR and recruiting professionals. As I was preparing the annual Online Recruiting…

As I mentioned last week, the results are in from the 2012 Job Board Industry Survey. With over 190 responses from every category of site, including aggregators, general sites, niche boards, and networks, I believe that there is  useful information for all. If you participated, you should…

I don’t know if it’s inevitable that age and experience brings cynicism, but theongoing discussion about social recruiting certainly brings out the skeptic in me. Social recruitment is about the…

Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler have been conducting the landmark CareerXRoads Source of Hire survey for over a decade. In my mind, that’s useful data. They’ve just come out with the 2012 edition, and it’s absolutely worth a look. The top four sources of hire include referrals (28%), job…

If you hire people, at some point you will have to hire for a position about which you know absolutely nothing.  Perhaps you’re hiring a chief technology officer, but your background is marketing and sales. Or you’re hiring a new accountant, and you only understand coding.

What do you do? Perhaps you turn to friends and colleagues who are more knowledgeable than you about a particular skill set. Or you figure out which certifications a ‘perfect’…

It’s that time of the month – time to glance back and see if anything really happened in the past 4 weeks. Surprisingly enough, it did. Here’s what I noticed:

• Monster partners with Ogden Newspapers: Monster adds to its bevy…

Another week, another ‘job boards are dying’ blog post. If I had a dollar for every post like this, I’d be a (moderately) rich man. Truly.

I try to avoid the ‘job boards are dying’ discussion because (a) it’s a flamer’s game (not unlike arguing with those who disbelieve climate change), and (b) those of us in the biz know it…

Last week I read a post about how social media killed job boards (yes, again!). Whether or not you agree with the argument (and as you can surmise, I don’t), the piece inadvertently brings up a larger issue: are job boards still relevant to job seekers? After all, this is all about the job seeker, right? Many social media evangelists would have you…

Per this week’s survey results from job boards, we’ve seen some changes over the past 12 months – not the least of which is increased optimism. Perhaps part of that is based on what HR and recruiting professionals are actually doing to find candidates. This installment of the …

I’ve worked with dozens of job boards over the years, and I often take a look at what the job seekers are saying to them. Since the onset of the recession (and honestly, before), it goes something like this:

“Why don’t you have any jobs in my area?”

“I’ve had my resume posted on your site for months and you haven’t called me.”

“I’ve been working in my field for twenty years but you don’t have a single job for me??”

There are lots…