

Ask HN: Why does it cost money to post on online job boards? - BenSchaechter

I'm curious as to why it costs money to post on job boards.  Is it mainly to filter crappy listings?  Or because they know they can make money?<p>It seems like it would be easy enough to build a website for free with minimal overhead and have very targeted advertising to cover costs / make a profit.<p>Also -- shameless plug -- if you're a RoR hacker: http://gopollgo.com/about/jobs
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dreamux
1\. No website is free.

2\. Building communities is hard and expensive (for both prospects as well as
attracting listings).

3\. The alternatives (recruiters) are really expensive (tens of thousands of
dollars for some positions), the relatively small fee of these sites is very
reasonable for most companies who are serious about hiring a new candidate.

4\. This may sound odd, but companies like to spend money for services. If you
have purchasing authority at a company you're more likely to go with a paid
alternative even if its only marginally better, bosses are more interested in
results than expenses (usually).

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mattm
A business is looking to hire someone because they believe hiring that person
will bring them a return on their investment. Therefore, an online job board
is helping the company make money. Therefore, the company should pay for that
service. You always have to pay for something in time or money. If you are not
paying in money, you will have to pay more in time (ala filtering
spam/irrelevant replies from Craigslist).

BTW, your posting is a little contradictory. In bold you write, "Nonetheless,
you should be ready to make working on GoPollGo the primary focus of your
life" but then state "We don't care what hours you work."

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ig1
Job boards are essentially a form of ad arbitrage, they buy traffic and resell
it at a higher price. Because job boards can amortize the cost of buying
traffic across multiple job adverts, they can afford to buy an audience which
an individual company can't.

Because people only look for a new job rarely, it's very hard to build a brand
for a job site. Hence job sites have to advertise continuously to sustain
traffic levels.

A job site which offered free job adverts couldn't buy traffic and hence would
be mostly useless to companies looking to hire.

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WillyF
Yes, the larger job boards buy a ton of traffic, but they also spend a lot on
branding. Just watch the Super Bowl.

There are also many successful niche job boards that don't buy traffic. I find
that most of them rely heavily on organic SEO along with strategic
partnernships and even some brand building.

Yes, arbitrage is big in the job board industry (which is why Indeed does so
well), but I think that you're overstating its importance.

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ig1
Even for the big branded job boards the majority of traffic is driven through
short term advertising and not long term branding. Monster, etc spend a lot on
Super Bowl advertising and most of the effect from that comes within a couple
of weeks after the advert.

Especially if you're talking about professional jobs, generally most talented
professional are rarely actively looking for a new job, so it doesn't matter
how powerful your brand is, you still need to be actively pushing them to look
for a new job.

There are very few niche players who succeed on organic SEO, certainly in the
tech sector, most of the successful non-ad-buying job boards are run by sites
which already have targeted organic traffic.

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WillyF
The same reason that it costs money to advertise on television. The job board
has an audience, and you want to reach it. Attention is expensive.

Building an online talent community isn't easy. I know since I've been doing
it for the past 3.5 years. If you can consistently deliver high quality
candidates, then you can demand a really high price. This means that you
either need to be really big or really targeted. Targeted is better, but most
of the big names in the jobs space go for big.

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amorphid
My thoughts: * servers aren't free. * charging a little keeps quality up. *
free job boards usually suck, so charging helps you look more legitimate. *
I'd love to see a job board post stats about how their stats.

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ig1
What sort of stats would you like to see?

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dstein
Ever seen the job boards on Craiglist? They're free, and they really suck. The
signal to noise ratio on both sides becomes horrendous.

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kevruger
I've seen them and they're not free ($25):
<https://post.craigslist.org/sdo/J?guide=yes>

Bigger cities are even more expensive, ie San Fran, NYC. I'll agree that the
job postings on craigslist don't look spectacular, but with a few friends who
just found jobs and other who are currently jobless, their go to job site is
Craigslist. Sure they fill out profiles on Monster and Career Builder, but
then they just sit back and wait to be contacted by recruiters.

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bdclimber14
Basic capitalism: Because they can.

