Me-Tooism and Job Boards
No idea if “me-toosim” is a word, but it just sounded too good to pass up. Job boards are nothing new, they have been around forever and if you hit up any of the long time designer portals you will see lots of them had job postings up since the beginning of time. In April, 37signals announced their job board which was simply a way for companies to post jobs for all of 37signals’ readers. The board itself isn’t laced with features that you can find on Monster, but that’s where its appeal lies.
It made sense for them to create something like this. If you have the audience, why not figure out ways to monetize it as much as possible? People found the concept of independent job boards as genius especially when you consider they are charging $250 a pop. Then we got TechCrunch’s Crunchboard which targets mostly the same audience except you only had to pay $200 to post a job there. Not far behind was GigaOM Jobs which hits up the same exact same market as CrunchBoard at the exact same price.
Today we get Cameron Moll’sAuthentic Jobs, which allows you to distinguish between a full-time job and a simple gig for a price of $250. Then by mere *cough* coincidence, Jason Fried announces that 37signals will open up a Gig Board which will also allow you to post gigs and is giving away 20 free slots. In return Cameron begins to offer 20 free slots as well, although I would’ve went extreme and given 100 away for free.
In any case, in almost every announcement of these job boards people are saying how great of an idea it is, but that is probably because they are supporting the sites they love. Is a job board for every single site on the web a good thing? Of course I don’t think it is, but that doesn’t mean you should try to avoid making money if you can. Admittedly after 37signals launched their’s we considered doing one for 9rules that encompassed all of our communities and we still might do something, but we also know that it will differ than the five examples I have posted above in more than one way.
The question remains though how much innovation should you pursue when so much competition crops up without losing the simplicity of your concept? The argument for Bloglines in the Web 2.0 Losers discussion was that there was no reason to innovate when they simply did the job correctly. The only differentiating factors between the above job boards is the amount of people that each one will reach and the price per posting. So much for competitive analysis and taking things one step further than the rest.
It will be interesting to watch this space and even more so how Cameron reacts if his job board doesn’t take off. We wish him and all the others best of luck because we all win when people get paid. Or some shit like that. Do you think these job boards should try a bit harder to differentiate themselves or are they just fine the way they are?
The funny thing is that Cameron Moll has been passing along job listings in the sidebar of his site for years. I’m not sure what his connections are or how/why it started, but he has been pairing people with jobs for some time. If anyone in the new micro-job-board market should succeed, it should be him.
By Josh B. on September 26, 2006 7:24 pm
A healthy competition is good, brings the prices down for the general consumer.
By huphtur on September 26, 2006 7:29 pm
The argument here then becomes if prices get knocked down to free you have a Craigslist spam orgy on your hands where you aren’t sure which jobs are quality and which ones are total shit.
By Scrivs on September 26, 2006 7:36 pm
[...] Deuxième mise à jour: Paul Scrivens vient de publier un billet portant exactement sur le sujet: Me-Tooism and Job Boards. [...]
By Effair | Billet | Jobs en ligne on September 26, 2006 7:44 pm
Wouldn’t you also have to consider the target audience? I mean, I’m not an expert on 37signal’s vs Cameron Moll as far as their audiences go, but wouldn’t you say that they do are slightly different?
By Matt Johnson on September 26, 2006 8:23 pm
fumble my words :\
“wouldnt you say they do slightly differ?”
By Matt Johnson on September 26, 2006 8:24 pm
Don’t forget Darren, who also has a board at jobs.problogger.net or something….
By David on September 26, 2006 8:35 pm
Me-tooism or not, I’m glad to have them, as someone who’s trying to find a job at the moment. The more sources of information (even with all the repeats that you invariably get) the more likely you are to find something that fits/works. And these have, so far, definitely been more well-defined than anything I’ve seen on Monster or HotJobs.
By Kenneth on September 26, 2006 8:37 pm
Some good thoughts here, Scrivs. A few quick points:
* As Josh points out, I’ve been doing this for some time now (1 year, not several). The big diff for me is the fact that I’ve been hooking up people with jobs for some time now. Charging for the jobs now makes it worth continuing, as it previously took too much time to edit/post by hand.
* I don’t intend to go free long-term. Or ever. If it comes to that, I’ll step out because a) it won’t compensate me for the time I put in to it and b) it then evolves into a big spam mess, as you mention.
* “It will be interesting to watch this space and even more so how Cameron reacts if his job board doesn’t take off.” Yes, it’ll certainly be interesting, to say the least… :)
By Cameron Moll on September 26, 2006 9:07 pm
Josh: job listings come from running a successful site. I’ve often had inquiries for various full-time positions, and I try to connect those employers to people I know that have the skillset. The job board is simply an overt extension of that (and a great way to generate additional revenue for the site owner).
By Jonathan Snook on September 26, 2006 9:08 pm
I understand the need to get quality postings listed, but I think that they would probably make MORE money if they charged LESS. There’s no question that the aforementioned sites reach a large audience and are considered very influential in the circles that they propagate. But seriously? $250 per post per company? That’s kinda highway robbery. Expecially when there is no garauntee that the jobs that get posted will actually get filled in a resonable amount of time. Do the companies get their money back if the job isn’t filled in say 90 days? How about at least 50% of that $250.00? Jason and Co. are running to the bank…….
By viperteq on September 26, 2006 9:25 pm
The big factor in the reasoning why I think Jason Fried committed an act of “me-tooism” is their gigs board isn’t even ready yet, they announced it on the same day as Authentic Jobs, and are giving away 20 spots. If there wasn’t any competition from Cameron, do you think Jason would have been willing to do that? Who knows.
I don’t think Jason is wrong for doing it, it’s how business works.
Either way, everybody is benefiting in some way or another so I don’t see anything wrong with all the job boards popping up.
By Chris Griffin on September 26, 2006 9:53 pm
I’m stunned that, several hours later, no one is yet offering an RSS feed (or website) that aggregates the two. This was the very first thing that came to my mind when I saw Cameron’s post this morning.
For what it’s worth, I actually went ahead and built it. But, because I like and respect the folks in both camps (esp. Cameron, Greg, and Jason), I’m not going to release it publicly. But the fact that both sites offer RSS feeds (and I would assume 37signals “phase me-two” will as well) makes it incredibly simple for folks to mash them up — which makes both services far more valuable to advertiser of jobs and visitors alike. Build it, and they will come.
As with most things, the irritating part about 37signals isn’t what they’ve done — it’s how they’ve done it. I think it’s just fine and dandy that they’re adding the “gigs” feture to their job board. But, rather than come out and say “we’ve got competition now, so we’re upping the ante,” Jason has to pretend like they’ve been planning this all along and the timing of the announcement is purely coincidence. At least when Cameron one-upped, he acknowledged that 37s was the inspiration for it.
Transparency goes a long way in winning over customers. That’s the good news — the bad news is that acting like you’re better than everyone else seems to win over a lot of customers, too.
By Jeff Croft on September 26, 2006 10:53 pm
“If there wasn’t any competition from Cameron, do you think Jason would have been willing to do that? Who knows.”
Jason certainly said in his comments that the competition from Cameron had nothing to do with. His quote was:
““Jeff, what I’m telling you is that it had nothing to do with Cameron’s launch *at all*. Zero. Zip. Nada.—
He’s since reneged on that comment, changing it to be more ambiguous…but I’d already responded and quoted him before he did.
By Jeff Croft on September 26, 2006 10:59 pm
For anyone serious about web design/development, job sites like Monster and Craigslist just don’t cut it. They’re too full of “Looking for web designer with expert cold fusion, php, mysql, and has a rocket science degree. $10/hr”.
In a way, the service these new job boards provide a) for the employer is that they act as a filter both for potential empolyees, but also b) for the potential employee the act as a filter for the employer. The kinds of companies that advertise on those sites are typcially the kinds of companies we want to work for. That in itself will ensure that they have a place among the Monsters and Craiglists of the world.
As for differentiating amongst themselves, I don’t know. At this point it certainly seems like the job market is big enough to go around - Cameron has been posting jobs for a year, and 37signals’ board seems to be doing just fine as well. In the end, I think many of these companies would be happy advertising on both sites if need be ($400 is a small price to pay for a great employee).
By Adam Thody on September 27, 2006 8:44 am
Alex (CSSBeauty) has been running a free job board for a while now and I’d be curious to know if he has to deal with a lot of spam listings.
I think, in general, having a few options is a good thing. When that balloons to more than 5 or 6 though, then it can become a problem. Spending a few hundred dollars on a listing is one thing, but spending that 5 or 6 times over is another.
By Joshua Lane on September 27, 2006 9:56 am
Josh, I think the amount of spam is going to be relative to the size of the audience. Craigslist gets spammed due to its size, but I’m not sure CSSBeauty would experience any issues that would make it cumbersome to maintain.
By Scrivs on September 27, 2006 10:17 am
Personally I think there’s an oversaturation in many markets on the web. It is very easy to setup a similiar or even copy a site. What isn’t easy is attracting people and providing something unique. Even if your feature is the fact that your site is easier to use than the next - there has to be something. However - on a side note, I think some of these job board sites are ruining the economy and industries they serve. People are merely concerned with the cost of a job over the quality. The rising prices of gas, the pre-existing problems with respective industries and the economy are certainly factors that got us here…but the more sites there are that copy off each other the “cheaper” everything seems AND becomes. “Oh hire a freelance web programmer? That’s easy, there’s 50 sites you can do that and on those 50 sites you have hundreds of contractors…you should only pay what you want to pay.” — SAD. Very sad…and how many of these sites qualify the workers? How many interview for the job? People don’t care, it’s just whatever is cheapest. — But I digress… My connection here is that as the industries become less and less profitable or useful - so will these sites and ultimately they are contributing to their failure. Or at least that’s what I think and what I’m predicting…Make any sense to anyone else?
By Tom on September 27, 2006 10:36 am
Scrivs, I’ve found the whole job board thing interesting too. Thanks for touching on this subject. Another job board that has just popped up, in a different target market, that I think is pretting interesting is from Joel Spolsky’s job board. jobs.joelonsoftware.com
If I remember correctly, he noted the 37signals guys as part of the inspiration as well as a determined intern who kept telling him to do it. Given that he is targeting programmers, the needs are a bit different but his “unique” feature is that each employeer includes their score on his “Joel Test”.
I’m also very interested to see what kind of mashups come out of this little movement and what if any response there is from the big job boards.
By Brad Cranford on September 27, 2006 12:01 pm
Joel is fortunate to have both the audience and resources, which is obvious due to the success of his job board and that allows him to only keep the ads up for 21 days and charge $350. Audience definitely becomes his feature.
By Scrivs on September 27, 2006 12:16 pm
All these job boards are taking the edge out of Edgeio.
By Britt on September 27, 2006 12:37 pm
great discussion. I don’t think job boards are going anywhere, until the whole model of how hiring is done changes (which won’t be anytime soon). But there are niche needs (like techies, agriculture) and regional issues, and someone creates *a new job board* to address those needs in a way they think Monster isn’t.
I think Monster’s days are over (although they’ll still rake in the money hand-over-fist) - the idea of having one job board that fits all just isn’t realistic. And as long as you have great sites (like this and others mentioned) that attract readers with great content, you’ll see job opps (which should fall into the “great content” category).
so then the question goes back to, is there a better wheel (more ingenuity, etc.) or is simple better? Where is the opportunity for web designers and techies and Web2.0 folks to capitalize on? And, the real question, where does that leave the job seeker??
By Jason Alba on September 27, 2006 1:17 pm
Ok - so I had started some thoughts on a post about job boards and your post got me cranking… your post is excellent (as always) and mine is here:
http://www.centernetworks.com/how-many-freakin-job-boards-do-we-need
I call it “how many freakin job boards do we need” :)
By Allen on September 27, 2006 4:38 pm
What’s more interesting is that the company I work for wanted to expand our team and employ someone with a similar skillset to my own, (HTML/CSS/JS - you know the drill) and the three boards at Vitamin, 37Signals and Authnetic Jobs all failed to turn up any good candidates.
So the question of whether so many of these job boards is required should really be “Are there enough quality candidates to use these boards?”
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