The rise of local and niche job boards over the past 5 years is no accident. They work, and that reason is all about the focus and quality results they deliver.
When starting my AllCountyJobs.com network I used the following quotes in my marketing materials.
Forrester Research: “Local Sites Matter. Geography is more important to job seekers than industry focused sites. Monster.com is the most popular career site, but local sites place second and fourth in usage.”
Weddles.com: “These (local) Web-sites offer focused recruiting opportunities within specific geographic areas. Some concentrate on unique metropolitan districts while others have a broader, regional span. In either case, they enable you to reach large concentrations of prospective candidates for positions where relocation support is not available or a local background is important to successful job performance.”
CollegeRecruiter.com: There are several benefits to using niche/local job boards. First, little to no advertising money is wasted targeting unqualified candidates. Because the high profile, general boards target all candidates, the result is that the vast majority of the candidates using those boards will not be interested in the position posted by the employer because it falls outside of their career path, geographic preference or skill level.
By posting the position to the appropriate niche board, virtually all of the candidates using that niche/local board will be qualified for the position. As a result, even if the site has a small fraction of the traffic of the high profile, general board, the number of qualified candidates using the niche board tends to be higher. Second, the cost to post a position to a niche/local board is usually far less.
I think these quotes say it all. Niche boards will be around for a long time because they are so targeted. When listing the benefits of your site to employers, use quotes like this to give the recruiter “piece of mind” that their ad dollar will not go to waste. Remind them constantly that your site is not like Monster or the other big guys.
I think you are right, it’s very difficult to compete as a general job board against the major ones. We have created a job board http://www.jobibex.com that focuses and promotes jobs in Oman and it has received an overwhelming response so far.
I have my niche jobsite, that’s dedicated to support project managers, release managers, implementation consultants, project leads/coordinators. I am in the mist of promoting it. Any help would be appreciated.
http://www.releasemanagerjobs.com
We have a website that is search engine for internships abroad. http://www.feender.com
For sure you are right and we also have a niche job board website for CMS professionals http://cmshires.com
By the quotes it sounds like “niche” + “location” is an excellent combination for the success of new job sites. Unfortunately the “location” element implies a boundary to be drawn, i.e. territory marking, so the next natural move after one comes through with a niche local job site is to expand to a national networking of similar sites?
We work on the “general” + “boundary-less locations” direction at http://jobs.uponmap.com with 1,000,000+ jobs on USA/Canada map on daily refilled basis. Hopefully this eliminates the boundary issue and requires no significant site networking efforts.
You are absolutely right about niche job boards, we have started a job board for the estate agent industry at estateagentvacancies.com
Thanks for these tips – I’ve been connected to my industry (indoor cycling) for 8 years and just launched https://indoorcyclinginstructorjobs.com/
Cool John, nice little niche.
Hi I own a local niched job board in Cluj-Napoca, Romania http://www.locuridemuncacluj.net the respons is well but I am still trying to surface the big national competitors
Great Article – The niche is the market. I think large boards without a niche will be squeezed by the super-aggregators at one end and specialist niche sites like http://www.bijobsplus.co.uk at the other.
Great article really help me to undersstand the importance of niche jobboard this my hotesse niche job board https://www.carriere-hotesse.com/