I did a conference call with the owner of a new site called Jobcity.com. He wanted to know if his site was good enough to be successful.
Part of my job as a consultant is to give my clients honest advice about what they are proposing. So sometime I counsel them not to go forward. Usually this is because the niche they are targeting has too much competition. But in the Jobcity case, they have no niche. At least not from what I saw on the website. The owner explained they were going after Snagajob clients like Home Depot, Burger King, etc. Namely ‘hourly retail jobs’.
I think its possible to take on Snagajob but it would require aggressive marketing and a long term outlook. He would need to offer job distribution (aka ZipRecruiter.com) and make that his USP: unique selling proposition. Every job board needs one. Employers need to know what makes your job board different.
In any case, Snagajob has 35 million users, there is no way to combat that large user base.
So the owner told me that he already has access to candidates. He said he can drive up to 300 candidates per day to his new site through another one of his online properties. I said great why not make the database the actual product? You can sell email blasts to those same employers and drive quality traffic to their company career pages.
He thought that was a good idea and it would free him up from having to build out a job board.
I sent him a follow up email to recap some of the suff we talked about, Here is that email word-for-word.
1. a niche board i.e. “NY Sales Jobs” needs about 10,000 monthly uniques to make a dent in employers eyes. Something that goes up against the likes of Snagajob need more like 50-100k monthly uniques to make a dent.
2. Employers need more quality applicants in the entry level space. Use your audience demographics to sell the list.
3. Email Grabber: http://www.emailgrabber.net/ use it for email prospecting via other job boards.
4. Target career placement staff to get your message out to students.
-use this list as starting point: http://www.listofcollegesanduniversities.com/
-have an intern go to each site, find the placement office info name.phone/email
-put that info in a spreadsheet, state by state
(will take several weeks to gather)
example of what to look for “Career Services” page such as
http://www.southernct.edu/careerservices/
Then you can use that list to get links back to your site and get those career staff members to talk you up.
5. other aggregators, should you choose the Ziprecruiter distribution model
jobs2careers.com
topusajobs.com
indeed.com
simplyhired.com
juju.com
careerjet.com
