Whatjobsite.com: The Dangers for Free Job-Boards for Recruiters

Thu 08 April 2010, Category: job-boards

Karl Schweppe, Director of www.whatjobsite.com recently posted an interesting article questioning what could possibly be wrong with posting your jobs on ‘free’ online sources. In his words “A free job board has got to be worth a shot, right? Alas, no. Free isn't always good and free job boards seldom are.” 

Karl goes into some depth in the article, full details of which can be found here: Whatjobsite/Free Job-board Dangers, but here is a little summary for you; 

Why are some job boards free? It’s not difficult to find a job-board that will offer you a free trial; unlimited job postings for a set period (sometimes indefinite!). But why? Why do they give away their service for free? The conclusion is often that they just aren’t that good and don’t provide you with the quality of candidates you are looking for. 

New job boards are free: It's quite common for new job boards to offer free periods and trials. This, of course, makes sense. By offering free advertising to recruiters the new job board is allowing people to trial their site and services, with the hope that those clients will convert as ‘paying advertisers’ when the trial ends. Karl says “What's more, by offering free advertising such job boards attract more job ads and, by attracting more job ads, they attract more candidates. The more candidates they have visiting the site, the better.” 

Zombie job boards are free –kind of: Just like zombies in the movies, Zombie Job Boards look like real job boards. They carry lots of jobs like real live job boards. They have lots of different clients like real live job boards. But, in reality, they are dead job boards and aren't very good. 

Poor customer service: Ninety-nine times out of a hundred if a job board is free you will find that the only customer service is online via a web form. There's no telephone number because the job board doesn't want you calling them. 

There is no quality assurance: In general, if a site is free it is unlikely to have any quality control on its content. All kinds of jobs will appear. Do you ever wonder why free job boards are full of candidate scams and "work-from-home" rip-offs? 

And it does cost: in time: A free job board might not cost you any money but it will cost you time. Karl recommends that you “save yourself this wasted time and choose a quality job board” 

In Summary Karl says: Choose your free job board carefully: There are some free job boards out there that are very good. We even have a few as recommended sites on whatjobsite. But most of the time a job board is free because it is too new to be any good, it is old but still not very good, it is not really free at all, it offers a poor service or it is just down-right dangerous to your recruitment brand. Recruitment is about the single most important thing you can do for your business. So, if you are going to choose a free job board, choose a good one. The old adage applies: "if you pay peanuts you'll get monkeys." 

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