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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2252377

by BenSchaechter • 15 years ago

6 11 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

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.

Also -- shameless plug -- if you're a RoR hacker: http://gopollgo.com/about/jobs

dstein• 15 years ago

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

kevruger• 15 years ago

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.

dreamux• 15 years ago

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).

mattm• 15 years ago

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."

ig13• 15 years ago

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.

WillyF2• 15 years ago

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.

ig13• 15 years ago

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.

amorphid• 15 years ago

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.

ig13• 15 years ago

What sort of stats would you like to see?

bdclimber14• 15 years ago

Basic capitalism: Because they can.

WillyF2• 15 years ago

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.

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

Related Stories