Should I build a Reverse Job Board?

A member wants to know if he should build a site that makes candidates pay. I wrote about it in the past here. These are called ‘reverse job boards’.

I’m currently researching building a job board website for tradesmen (builders, plumbers etc). This would be different to your normal job board site in that it’s the tradesmen who would pay the subscription to view and bid for the jobs that people would post for free.

Do you have any advise for building this kind of site? How do you think this kind of site fits into the world of job boards? There seems to be some script clones that might offer what I need e.g. (http://www.odeskclone.com/ and http://www.elance-clone.com/) but they are expensive and would probably need a lot of custom work anyway.

MY RESPONSE

Yes this type of site can be a good business model. Two of my favorites in this space are Work in Sports and Flex Jobs. These are essentially membership job sites where candidates pay access to jobs/opportunities they may not be able to find elsewhere. However these types of jobs are highly sought after ones. Because of that candidates are willing to pay to gain access to them.

If you are thinking about building one of these for a job market that is already highly commoditized this model wont work. If a candidate can already find those jobs for free on readily available sites, they will continue to do so.

For this to work you need to bring exclusivity and quality. You may also need to provide other types of valuable content to make it worthwhile. Look what Flex Jobs promises;