Back in 2008 when the economy tanked I lost about 40% of my local job board business (AllCountyJobs). 2007 had been my best year ever where I earned around $200k, but that quickly dwindled once ’08 came around. Hiring came to a crawl.
And that’s when I really learned of the cyclical nature of running a job board business. Thankfully I was just a one man business so I was still profitable, just not as much. Eventually I built the business back up to pre-recession levels in about 4 years before I sold the company.
We are currently in another hiring advertising downturn for many industries and job boards of all shapes and sizes have taken hits of around -30% (i.e. Indeed, Ziprecruiter, etc) decrease in sales.
Today, the tech job boards have taken the biggest hit with all the layoffs that sector has had. There are more niche job boards for the tech sector than literally every other industry so for them it will be survival of the fittest.
Surviving this downturn will be a testament to those job boards that have good fundamentals underlying their business.
This downturn is not as bad as years past. Hiring is still strong in some sectors but employers are starting to learn how to do more with less.
That means job boards who want to appeal to them need to offer real value.
Here’s some ideas to help.
- Double down on your efforts to attract job seekers. If there is one positive to this downturn its that more people are actively looking for work which means you can attract more job seekers to signup or create job alerts. Use this timeframe to boost your job seeker database. The more profile/resumes/emails you can collect now the more you can leverage it later for traffic.
- Find ways to add more value to clients. Do a free Q&A email blog post that feature life at their company, offer them discounts to post jobs, do a video interview with them for your socials. Stuff like that.
- Invest more in content in general. Become a news resource for whatever industry you serve. or example, hold a virtual meetup on Zoom, record it and publish on Youtube.
- Keep expenses as low as possible, stop paying for stuff you aren’t using or is not delivering ROI.
If you are a newer job board that launched in the last 6 months you have a little longer time horizon to find traction in this market. Might take you up to 18 months to really build the foundation of an audience.
Running a job board biz today takes persistence and consistency….if you need help with anything you know who to hire.
