Archive for June, 2009
The End of the Big Bloated and Expensive Job Boards
Posted by Barak in FindAJobAlready.com, Job Boards on June 29th, 2009
The real reason that I created FindAJobAlready.com is to be a real alternative to the big bloated and expensive job boards. When people ask me, “how come it took you a year and a half to build the site?”, my answer is because this is a real alternative to the expensive paid job boards on the Internet right now. There are a lot of throwaway free garbage job boards on the Internet right now. When we talk about the number of 50,000 plus job boards out there, most of them are really useless. Either at they are pulling data from Indeed.com and just throwing it out there to make it seem like there are a lot of jobs. Or they’re using some white label application that anybody could buy for $50 or $500. Or it’s some type of affiliate program where they make a percentage by putting a job board automatically on your blog or your website. If it is just a matter of inserting some code and voilà you have a job board, sure anybody can do that.
FindAJobAlready.com is not that. It is a real alternative to Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com or any of the other paid job boards out there. My challenge of course, as I mentioned in a previous blog, is getting the masses to come use my site. It’s just a matter of time. What I want to address here is that the paid job boards that are currently online are only continuing to survive because of the sheer mass of people that are using the sites. It’s not because the sites are such good quality. It’s not because people are happy with the user experience. It’s simply that if you lost your job, G-d forbid, and you have a family to support and bills to pay, all your concerned about this finding another job (already!). And if Monster.com has millions of jobs available, by golly, you’re going to post your resume there. The same in the other direction, if your an employer, and you’re looking to hire and Monster.com has 50 million plus resumes, where are you going to go? Of course, you’re going to go to the big bloated expensive job boards. Eventually though, these big job boards are going to go the way of the dinosaur. The reason they don’t, however, is simply because of the sheer mass of people that use it.
So how can I predicting the end of their big bloated expense of job boards? By saying that the free alternatives will eventually outpace them. Right now, everybody likes to talk about LinkedIn. I have over 10,000 connections on LinkedIn, so I know how powerful of a tool it can be. There’s definitely a level of magic about LinkedIn. You can find the most amazing people using it. However, not everybody is receptive. Some people find you annoying, especially the more influential people. And also, even though everybody talks about finding passive candidates there, what about the people who aren’t passive candidates? What about the people who want to be contacted, who are looking for work? Those people there are going to go to a job board.
I really believe that humans are creatures of habit. Job boards have been around forever, and there is no reason for them not to stick around forever. I think they will! And not just that, I think that they will get better, more efficient, faster and… cheaper. I think eventually the get so cheap that they are actually free. I think that’s the direction the Internet is heading right now. Free. How many people want to spend money? Nobody wants to spend money! Sure, people say they would rather spend money to get a quality product rather than not spend any money and have a garbage product for free. But what if you get a quality product for free? Then there’s no reason to spend any money.
And that’s where FindAJobAlready (http://www.findajobalready.com) comes in. I plan on building this site into one of the most effective and efficient recruiting tools on the Internet and offer it 100% for free. The version that’s already out there is fantastic. I have a whole roadmap of where I want to take the site. First I have to get the jobs on the site. Then the resumes will come. Then begins the end of the big bloated and expensive job boards. Because once you reach critical mass, and you’re offering the same high quality product for free, there is no reason for the big bloated and expensive job boards and more. Its just a matter of time.
It’s just a matter of time: My thoughts on marketing FindAJobAlready.com
Posted by Barak in FindAJobAlready.com, Marketing on June 8th, 2009
I knew this day was coming. Here I was working on the site for the past year and a half, sitting in my little office, doing my thing, knowing I was creating a fabulous site. But now I face the challenge at every startup faces… how to get traffic to the site.
It’s funny, I posted a press release with PR Web. In their little YouTube video they say “You’ve created the world’s first solar toaster! And now you want to tell the world about it.” Yeah that’s pretty much it. This of course isn’t a solar toaster, but it is something that’s unique, and something that I want the world to know about. So I sent out a press release, and it did bring a lot of links back to the site. For that it was worth it. I also had a write up on a fairly popular blog for recruiters and that brought me some traffic. I set up a Facebook group and a LinkedIn group. I have over 10,000 connections on LinkedIn and I contacted 5000 of them. I’m working on getting ahold of the other 5000. There’s definitely been some traffic to the site. Just not enough, yet.
I know it’s a matter of time before people will discover the site and it will spread word-of-mouth. What I’ve learned from past experience is that really “you get out of it what you put into it”. If I were to just buy some $100 job board script it would never go anywhere. But when you take your own ideas and breakdown what’s already out there, and then take that and build something completely new eventually people will see it.
Years ago I started a website called ABClance.com. It was a freelance site based on scriptlance.com. Back then, they were selling their script for $100. So I bought it. And I took a template from templatemonster.com integrated the two, and voilà I had a brand-new site. I actually had about 10,000 people signed up for it at the time that I shut it down. The problem was that it was nothing unique about. Sure people signed up but the only way that I ever made any money was if somebody posted a project and I made 5% of the project. Very few legitimate projects were posted. Most of them were complete garbage. I also had people that were trying to launder money through the site. It became a nightmare in short. In retrospect, had the site been focused on the specific niche it might have done okay. For example, graphic design jobs. Although there are plenty of freelance sites just for that. But also I was using a script that hundreds of other people were using. And there was really nothing unique about.
However, this site, even though there are a lot of similarities to other sites, is a completely unique creature. And the fact that I gave so much personal attention to the design and the functionality and programming means that eventually it will become apparent to people how special and unique this site is. It’s just a matter of time.