Smaller, atypical job boards segmented by industry and region help target relevant talent but require more proactive work from recruiters to be truly effective.
Staffing firm Randstad's 2016 acquisition of an ailing Monster—one of the original behemoth online job boards—and indications that the sole remaining mega-board CareerBuilder is also for sale have reignited discussions on the recruiting blogosphere about the decline of the model.
"The big job boards are not exactly the darlings of the recruitment industry these days," said Chris Russell, a recruiting technology and job board consultant with RecTech Media, based in Trumbull, Conn. Russell curates a free database of more than 1,100 job boards.
"Recruiters are balking at their high prices and the many unqualified candidates that they generate."
But savvy talent acquisition professionals know that not all job boards are waning, and in fact, smaller niche boards that cater to specific regions, membership associations, specialized industries and types of contracts are a valuable tool for recruiters. Examples of niche boards include AllRetailJobs, CollegeRecruiter, JobsInLogistics, Medzilla, GitHub and Minnesotajobs.
"Niche job boards are particularly useful for cutting through the clutter and finding talent for hard-to-fill roles, specialized positions, specific industries—or to tap into unique candidate audiences, such as military veterans," said Susan Vitale, chief marketing officer at Matawan, N.J.-based recruitment software provider iCIMS.
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