Are Internet Job Boards Right for You?

Internet job boards came into their own in the 1990s, with the birth of sites like Monster.com and HotJobs.com. Since then, the world of job boards has grown at a dizzying rate. “Now there are 40,000 job boards out there,” says Peter Weddle, an expert on online employment sites. “And that number will probably double in the next three years.”

Job Boards and the Building Trades
Are Internet job boards a viable option for employers in the building trades? “Five years ago I would have said no,” Weddle says. “In the beginning, [job boards] focused on information technology people and white collar professionals. Today, there are job boards that cover virtually every profession, craft and trade, every industry and every geographic location. And they chop and dice the workforce in all kinds of interesting ways.”

Indeed, Internet job boards are specializing more every day. “The trick is to figure out which job boards are best for your particular requirement,” Weddle says.

“There are job boards, for example, that focus on affinity groups like vetjobs.com, which is a job board for veterans. There are lots of people coming out of the military with skills—electricians, construction engineers, project managers—that might be very good candidates.”

Start Your Search
The major job boards are a good place to start. “Sites like Monster.com are good for the trades,” Weddle says. “It’s a powerful brand and it’s one of the first places most people will go.”

Weddle suggests that one of the first ways that employers can find job boards that specialize in the construction trades is to go to a browser and enter your criteria—“carpenter, jobs,” for example. “More than likely, job boards will be among your search results,” he adds.

Another way to start your search is to consult with a reference librarian, who most likely will point you in the direction of one of the four print guides to job boards. WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites, which is sometimes referred to as the “Zagat of the online employment industry,” is an annual guide that provides listings of hundreds of leading, well-known job boards and niche sites. “We set it up like a Zagat’s,” Weddle says. “We pick 350 sites that we consider the best and that illustrate a broad array of industries and career fields. For the construction trades, we include a full page of information.”

Weddle provides some helpful information about the sites for employers and recruiters. “We tell them how many people come to the site, what it costs to post a job, whether there’s a resume or profile database so they can look at candidates and other kinds of information that will help them save time.”

A Multichannel Strategy
If you’re considering the use of Internet job boards in your next search, you don’t need to abandon the classifieds. In fact, Weddle recommends a multichannel strategy, including newspaper advertising. “If you’re in an industry with real labor scarcity, you’re going to have to entice candidates away from another employer,” he says. “You want to start with an ad in the newspaper. Because it’s expensive real estate, you should create a very small ad with a compelling headline and direct them to a job board where they can find your posting. And include an alphanumeric code in your ad that will take them directly to your posting, so there’s no hassle.”

When you prepare your online posting, make sure you use a format that is easy to scan. “You want to write your job ad with headlines and bullets, so people can quickly scan your ad and get the value proposition,” Weddle says.

Compared with traditional print classified ads, online job postings are much less expensive on a cost-per-hire basis. And they pack a lot more information. “On the Web, the average job site will give you 1,400 words for a posting,” Weddle says. “So you have the space to convince someone to do something most humans don’t want to do—change.”