Comment by bill josephson on February 5, 2013 at 9:59am

Job boards are the old Sunday Help Wanted section of the newspaper.  Designed for a terrible jobs market plucking the low hanging fruit drawing some quality laid off or concerned about being laid off candidates.  As long as we have the generally awful jobs climate we have now they'll be fine, as they've been since 2002 when private sector corporate jobs began shrinking in the US while being created overseas--offshore outsourcing.

When we ever--and there's no certainty that will ever happen--we have a robust jobs market we'll all have to swat away the cob webs we encounter on the job boards when perusing them.

 

They were meant for the jobs creation times we're in at present--moribund.

Comment by Penelope on February 5, 2013 at 11:58am

Hello Bill,

Thanks for your comment, and I'd like to congratulate you on your creative turn of phrase. Having re-read what you've written a few times, I realise that there's more in common with what we're saying than I first thought.

I believe, however, that job boards would do well to "swat away the cob webs" now, rather than waiting for a more auspicious employment climate. If I'm not mistaken it seems that you do not?

Again, thanks for your opinion. Fingers crossed for a more robust market!

Comment by bill josephson on February 5, 2013 at 12:40pm

Hi Penelope,

The best people, IMO, expect to be recruited. They realize they lose leverage applying to positions whereas have greater leverage being represented, or sought out.

The jobs boards and company Talent/Acquisition thrive in a poor jobs market. That corporate in house recruiter looks like a genius when responsible for a manageable number of requisitions. But in the 1990's they might have 70 requisitions. With most employed in a good economy and a fight for talent no one's looking at the job boards and in house recruiters can't devote their time to all their reqs.

Again as long as the economy in general, (as I realize some disciplines, not mine in defense engineering, are doing well) er sucks the boards will be alive.

If people are employed doing well, they aren't looking at job boards.

Comment by Penelope on February 6, 2013 at 4:19am

Love your comment, Bill, however I totally disagree with what you're saying.

Firstly, I think a wise candidate (and indeed, a wise recruiter) spreads their net as far as possible. Even in the best possible economy, "luck" comes most easily to those who are proactively out there looking for it. Those looking for success need to deploy every possible weapon in their arsenal to achieve it.

Secondly, you can’t make a truly informed decision about your value in the workplace until you’re in possession of all of the facts about supply and demand of human capital (a bit of a Keynesian point of view, I admit). Job boards are another vital way – I do not suggest they should be the only way – of passing on information about the labour market.

Living as we do in the information age and in an increasingly globalised world, we can no longer rely on personal contacts and call-ups from recruiters to tell us everything we need to know. Job boards offer us another tool (and one that we can’t lose anything from trying) so why wouldn’t we use them?

Thanks again, and perhaps we can agree to disagree on this one. Sorry to hear things in your sector are not going so well! If you ever decide to write a blog entry extrapolating the points of views you've expressed here, please let me know - I would love to comment on it  ;)

Comment by bill josephson on February 6, 2013 at 8:15am

Be happy to.  My comments tend to be provocative often evoking heated/passionate discussion as my experience/perspective is a bit different than some of the others--perhaps because my Defense Engineering sector has been hit so hard over the past the Obama years, and previous to that my I/T discipline was crushed in the early 2000's due to offshore outsourcing to primarily Bangalore, India.

My take is that perm full time employment is on the wane.  Part time/contractors on the upswing.  Companies will pare back their payroll numbers excluding the rain makers driving the business, everyone else is expendable as contractors or temporaries with everyone becoming their own corporation living as transient nomads for 6-9 months at a time, migrating city to city for work much as people did thousands of years ago.

In the US with Obamacare there is positively zero incentive for companies to add to payroll.  Insurance premiums to cover the uninsured will skyrocket for those insured starting this year in anticipation of next when it kicks in.  Small companies will stay under the 50 person threshold to avoid the Obamacare mandate.  Other taxes/mandates/regulations will discourage perm hiring with many companies either paying the penalty not providing insurance, or dropping insurance coverage altogether.

 

We're becoming a truly "you're on your own" workplace for a job, and benefits.  The few who are a company's staple will always do well--everyone else, it's a literal dog eat dog world.

 

I've been 3rd party recruiting since 1980.

Comment by Penelope on February 6, 2013 at 10:02am

Provocative comments are often the best kind. Coming from different continents/sectors, we're also naturally going to be coming from different perspectives, too.

Although I do agree that the old "a job is for life" school of thought is trending out, as you say.

Let me know when you write that article!

Comment by bill josephson on February 6, 2013 at 10:07am

I shall

Comment by Steve N Odell on February 6, 2013 at 12:03pm

We have been in business for 40 years and have tried everything. We know where and how we got every candidate and job order. 40% of our placements last year were from Job boards. But we can't fill some of our "hot" jobs/industry with postings. Your clients can do the same but will not have any better luck than we do. So 60% of their positions will go unfilled if that is their only source. We post to multiple niche boards. It cost a lot of money to do that. Most clients don't want to spend that kind of $ without any guarantees of success. We fill most of our positions the old fashioned way. Smiling and dialing. Therefore we have access to candidates that our clients don't have. I think they call that recruiting. :) 

Comment by bill josephson on February 6, 2013 at 12:11pm

The goal is access to candidates companies don't have--passive/invisible candidates.
It's why I don't see how recruiters stay in business depending on the Boards as all of my clients are technologically savvy enough to find all the Boards people themselves.
If the economy were better and they were overwhelmed, I might have a chance. Maybe my clients are just far advanced than others' successfully using the Boards and I need to find companies with technically inept internal recruiters.
They work with me specifically cause I DON'T recruit off the Boards not causing conflicts with the same candidate.
I agree------on the phone calling, the staple of our business.
..

Comment by Amber on February 6, 2013 at 12:23pm

We use any resource we can to find candidates, including job boards. Even clients who could and do use boards cannot "find" people. I don't know why, but I suspect it's often a time issue. And sometimes I use them to get referrals to those who might not be on a job board. Or to find companies to target in cold calls.

Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page