InternetInc
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Why every job board should blog
Yesterday, I talked about why I blog so today let's talk about why you should blog if you run a job board. Competition is heating up geometrically. Transparency is being forced on us all as secrets become evermore difficult to keep. The winners will be boards that build credibility and authenticity. You can have high credibility without a blog but if you want authenticity, start blogging. Blogging may attract special people who are passionate about your product like our Sandra Bavasso. She... |
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Transparency
Had an interesting conversation with Mike O'Brien and Nick Jimenez at climber.com a few days ago and when I asked them how I can improve my blog, they said 'transparency'. They wanted to know why I blog -- so here it is: Why do I blog? My primary motivation is that our DiversityJobs.com customers are job boards and I believe that it's better in the long run to develop an audience than pay for advertising. Later this year, we will also launch a new similar project. However, if reaching... |
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Meet onTargetjobs.com founder & chairman Allen Paschal
When I first met Allen, he was fairly new to the job board industry but talked about its similarities with the newspaper digitization industry which he pioneered beginning in the early 80s. Launching in 2005 his company onTargetJobs.com has built a substantial portfolio of niche job boards. His most recent acquisition of RegionalHelpWanted.com valued near $100 million was onTargetJob’s largest to date. I had been planning to interview Allen for some time and with the changes in management... |
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Top 100 job board niches - 2008
This is a guide to the top 100 US job board niches in 2008. For each employment niche it lists the top 3 or 4 niche job boards. This report excludes: job boards that lack top Google rankings boards with with high Google rankings but very low credibility or authenticity. In a few special cases, it includes high traffic boards that lack a top Google rank. If you want to look at the same jobs or the same jobseekers that everyone else is looking at, this list is not for you. But, if you... |
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Top job board niches in 2008 -- methods and observations
The 2008 Top 100 US Job Board Niches report lists the 100 most searched for job categories. For each of these employment categories it lists the top ranked job boards according to Google but excludes the following: general-purpose job boards like monster.com subdomain spam from general-purpose job boards like science.jobs.com (very prevalent in the search results) websites powered by vertical job search engines like Indeed.com most websites whose primary business is not that of a job board network... |
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Job board?
A reasonably sophisticated friend (working on his Ph.D.) admitted to me recently that he has never heard of Monster or CareerBuilder.com and that got me thinking about the word 'job board' -- how many people actually know it? I've been working in the job board industry for 11 years and come to realize 'job board' is not in the dictionary nor in Wikipedia. So what would the Wikipedia page for 'job board' look like? Maybe something like this: A job board is a website that publishes job ads... |
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Create more value than you capture
Here is why I am so fascinated by the free classifieds concept and in particular free job boards -- they create more value than they capture. I came across this thinking in a post by Aaron Wall today and realized that it perfectly illustrates a serious flaw in the typical job board business model. Generally speaking and within reason, we capture as much value as we can. And that makes us vulnerable, inspires competition and limits our growth. The quote that grabbed me comes from Tim O'Reilly's... |
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CareerAdviceBlogs.com launched
We just launched a website that aggregates the top career advice blogs - the site is only a few days old so you can expect to see some nice improvements happening in a couple of weeks. Since this website builds on our experience with InternetRecruitingNews.com it's not really as crappy as you might expect for a few days work. Our Croatian designer disappeared weeks ago, so I had to do the logo myself and that's probably the weakest link! Suggestions for improvements? |
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Let's start a job board -- what could go wrong?
I love the job board business but could never have imagined the roller coaster ride that it is... sometimes talking to other job board people is just good therapy, because many of these things or some variation on them will happen to everyone sooner or later. This morning, I started this list in frustration after a database server crash. What could possibly go wrong? Competition sales reps at a big job board (like careerbuilder) tell employers that they have a cross-posting partnership... |
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Starting a job board -- just be crappy
Experience has taught me to launch first and fix later. Today Jason Calacanis' blog has a great explanation for this strategy. Guy Kawasaki joked with me a decade ago that he was famous for doing nothing and for saying obvious things. Self deprecation is always attractive to me, and despite the fact that Guy really has never had a "hit," he's picked up some brilliant observations over his years as a self-described undeserving pundit. The most powerful of which is his famous... |
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How to fail in business on the internet
Inspired by Sahar's how to ruin your health, here's my advice for how to fail in business on the Internet: 10. Write long e-mails, click more, faster. Most people read carefully and repetitive strain injuries do not happen to entrepreneurs. 9. Think about nothing but your business as long as you are awake. Do that 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, year in and year out. It’s good for your health and relationships too! 8. Stay highly focused. Avoid networking and do not attend events outside... |
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Is your job board credible?
I am reviewing hundreds of job boards with top rankings in Google. It feels a little bit like rummaging through a landfill looking for something clean and usable. There is a lot of junk out there! Here is what you need to do to make sure you don't blend in with the garbage. Build credibility in every way you can: tell your story and personalize your site -- anonymity is dead. Authenticity is in. create a unique, aesthetic and usable design (thanks Willy) follow conventions, use no proprietary... |
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How do you launch a new job board? With link building!
How do you launch a new job board or website? Once it is designed and built, you have a problem -- no links, no Google PR rank, and no visitors. Even with the best content, traffic does not happen magically. You have a chicken and egg problem -- no one will take you seriously, until other people take you seriously. And launching a job board is more complicated than most other ventures. Joel Spolsky explains why in How Hard Could it Be?: Of course, some companies sell to businesses and... |
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Free job boards
The free classifieds and free job boards have fascinated me for years, perhaps because back when I was starting LatPro, the hottest thing around was headhunter.net. It was growing like wildfire and was perfectly free. Times have changed a lot since then and there is a whole new crop of free job boards -- here's the list: CraigsList.org Doostang.com ITpinnacle.com Jobvertise.com LuckyDogJobs.com NewsJobs.com PostJobFree.com Smuz.com TeleportJobs.com TheJobSpider.com WirelessJobs.com If... |
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Meet job board king Don Firth
To my knowledge Don Firth runs the largest family of profitable independently owned and self-financed job boards. His boards have a utilitarian look and are designed with the single purpose of helping candidates find jobs in a specific industry. But considering their performance, I wonder if my own company hasn't paid too much attention to polish and content. JobsInLogistics.com, AllRetailJobs.com, JobsInTrucks.com, JobsInManufacturing.com, and TopUSAJobs.com have a combined monthly traffic... |
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Search drives the sale -- branding just validates it
In a fascinating article about branding versus SEO, search engine watch put into words very nicely a feeling that has been tugging at me for a long time: Before- In 1991, if you wanted to buy a portable compact disc player, you had to know: 1. What you wanted to buy (portable compact disc player) R.I.P. Branding 2. What brand you wanted to buy (Sony) 3. What product you wanted to buy (Discman) 4. What store to buy it at (The Wiz) 5. Where to find that store (Menlo Park Mall) Aside... |
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Job board widgets
A job widget is a tool used by a job board to display its jobs or search box on other web sites. It's basically a banner, button or skyscraper with customized content which is of course job ads. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, look to the right for the LatPro widget and below for a really good example of a jobs widget from jobtonic.com. For more about them have a look at Born's widget reviews. Here's a list of job widgets: AllTheTopBananas ERE Indeed JobTonic LatPro Reed SimplyHired WorkHound.co.uk Zubka Have... |
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Battling seo hackers
Earlier this year I commented on Matt Cutts SEO hacker prediction: "Would you notice if a strange link appeared somewhere inside your website? How long would it take you to see it? Hacking is a reality for everyone in our industry at one time or another but this is one that could be difficult to detect." Well, his prediction was right on target. But if this happens to you, you will not notice any of the links the hackers install on your website -- they are invisible.... |
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Can't afford to hire locally
A friend who runs a top niche job board recently asked me this: In the past, we’ve only hired local sales people but we’re looking at the possibility of hiring remote reps. I know it’s hard to find employees in South Florida and I was wondering if you have any staff that works remotely and if so is there anything you can tell me that would help us? My answer -- you can't afford not to. We tried for years to grow our sales team by hiring locally. We would hire-train-fire and then... |
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Sued for job ad text - 'only H-1s apply'
Both our immigration law and enforcement are pathetic in this country and job boards find themselves in the middle. Doesn't make sense to block highly skilled workers from coming here while letting anyone who can wade through the Colorado river come in and stay. Doesn't make sense to legislate but not enforce and the $45,000 fine is a joke. Story at Computerworld: DOJ settles H-1B job ad case for $45,000 Complaint filed by Programmers Guild over H-1B-only job ad May 2, 2008 (Computerworld)... |