Generalist job boards slammed_2

General sites are "little more than a clearinghouse for jobseekers and hiring managers"

Online job boards are “little more than a clearinghouse for job seekers and hiring managers”, the chief executive of a passive candidate search operation told a London audience on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Online Recruitment 2007- the year ahead conference, Jason Gorham of the US-based CareerMetaSearch.com said that generalist job boards fail to secure the right candidates for jobs posted online. In 2005, market leading job boards CareerBuilder, Yahoo! Hot Jobs and Monster together filled only 28.4% of actual 188,062 mid-level postings in the US, Gorham said. He also gave the example of a vacancy for a financial analyst having drawn responses from cashiers.

Next-generation technology, on the other hand, will allow recruiters to better target the candidates they want, according to such factors as geography, online behaviour and current organisational affiliation, he said.

In response to a question from the audience, Gorham acknowledged that niche, or specialist, job boards deliver better results — but the challenge for them, he said, is to drive up traffic to their site. Also, he said, “it’s a matter of employers being able to find them”.

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