Are job boards dying?

Recently I have heard yet another time that “Job boards are dead”. It’s not even “job boards are in decline” or “We are at the end of a job board era”. Instead, a hard, completed statement about a deceased patient. Is this the case? Where is this coming from? Let’s look into answering those questions!

Recently I did a presentation titled “black mirror in recruitment IT”, where I was speculating on the future of such programs. One of the slides did examine the current job board market, wherein most of the countries we have a dominating player (Germany — Stepstone, Australia — Seek, Poland — Pracuj.pl, US — Career Builder, etc) or a highly divided market with literally hundreds of job boards that sometimes focus on a really niche markets (UK). The market is clearly changing with the success of Linkedin (and similar sites like German Xing or Polish Goldenline) and new job board-like players joining the game (Google for jobs, Facebook jobs), not to mention innovative new tools (Pocket recruiter, idibu). While I can’t quote exact job boards figures (those NDAs…), I am far from agreeing with the “Job boards are dead” phrase.

In my opinion, Linkedin and other sources of candidates, are just that. An alternative channel of candidates, which is successful for a very specific reason — lack of talent. In an employer market, where unemployment is high and there is demand for work, no one would be looking to activate passive job seekers or even better — try to win over talents that are happy where they currently work. Fortunately, in more and more countries, the market is mostly employee-driven, forcing companies to improve salaries, offer more and benefits and work hard to build their employer branding. Often enough, even this is not enough! I really enjoy listening to developers joking about how easy it is for them to find a new position. Even the most unproductive ones can find a new job within a week. It also appears that a growing number of industries is having a similar situation (banking, consulting, even supermarket workforce!).

Therefore, imagine a situation, where nowadays we have the old world where job boards are the only source of candidates. One posts a job offer, often a costly one, and receives no matching CVs, simply because very few people of the right talent are actually looking for a new position at that moment.