One of the things I love most about this blog is the fact that I get to cover stories and companies that I love to keep an eye on. One of those companies is Facebook. If you haven’t heard yet, Facebook is rumored to be launching a job board as early as August 1st.
My first thought after hearing this news was that is probably the final nail in the coffin for what’s left of the job board industry. Think about it, Facebook has a built in audience and tools that could make it a recruiters dream to cherry pick the best talent available.
After thinking about it more over the past couple of days, my stance is softening on this. The job board industry in dying a slow and painful death, so why would Facebook want to jump in this business? My first guess is because they are trying to find ways to quickly monetize their site, and with pressure from Wall St ALL options are on the table.
The job board industry is in desperate need of innovation, but where is it going to come from? There is a graveyard of companies that have tried to innovate in this space, and have failed. Some have even failed while using Facebook as their backdrop. Boards like Yahoo! HotJobs, Simply Hired and even MySpace Jobs all went by the wayside.
Even traditional names are struggling to stay alive. Monster has been forced to drastically cut it’s staff and is the constant subject of sales rumors. More recent darlings of the last year such as BranchOut are getting taken out to the wood shed and blasted over their tactics. One blogger amounted BranchOut to “nothing more than a Ponzi scheme”. Ouch!
You can’t knock any of the companies for giving it a go. I have more respect for companies and individuals that try and fail than those that don’t try at all. So Facebook, I respect your hustle, I just don’t agree with it.
Like Wayne Gretzky was once quoted as saying, to be successful you have to skate to where the puck is going. This move seems to indicate that Facebook is skating to where the puck has already been.
July 10, 2012 at 10:20 AM
I remember when Epcot was going to open the Living Seas. People at the other park were nervous. (This is going somewhere!) Well, it opened but the thing was it was like taking one tiny segment and giving you a taste of the big product.
Everything connected to Facebook seems like this. They give you games but are they like real games on your X-Box? When you visit Branch Out, it is more like Farmville than visiting a site like LinkedIn. Everything seems more about posting something on your wall or recruiting your friends as compared to giving you a real product.
I am almost expecting the same from the job board.