Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces

Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is Saïd Eastman, a 20-year industry veteran and former executive at Monster and CareerBuilder.

Cohost Peter M. Zollman of the AIM Group is in Budapest, Hungary for its annual RecBuzz conference, so our other cohost, Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, talks with Saïd about how the stealth start-up that he is leading is aiming to bring much needed improvement to the industry by providing the tools and incentives so that candidates become active participants instead of products.

Saïd and Steven discuss how there's no simple solution. Some of what is required is a change to how we think about the process, and some requires some technology such as blockchain to validate credentials and engagement.

Lee Cage Jr. is today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast. He is the Director for Enterprise Transformation, Strategy, and Technology for BDO USA; a human resources management NCO for the U.S. Army National Guard; and the host of the "15 Minutes With" podcast, hosted by WRKdefined. Oh, and he's also a musician.

Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Lee how choosing to not take action is a choice and that we should embrace the idea of taking baby steps when we're faced with large projects or challenges. He also has some very wise closing advice about how our industry uses technology.

It's been a lean year for just about every job board in just about every country and niche. Customers aren't buying as many postings or resume/CV searching packages, and so revenues for many are flat or down. Are there other ways to both help and monetize the candidates who use our sites?

Marc Belaiche, is the founder of Guhuza and TorontoJobs.ca. He joins cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site to discuss additional revenue opportunities. One is to add interview-on-demand tech that delivers to employers a short list of matching candidates and enables them to schedule interviews as soon as they and the employer are both available, which often is within minutes.

It never ceases to amaze us how different companies in our space build their businesses. Some focus narrowly and try to dominate a niche. Others diversify into related businesses like ATS, career fairs,and employer branding.

Przemek Gacek is the CEO of Grupa Pracuj, the dominant job board in Poland with significant business in Ukraine and Germany. During the Great Recession of 2009-10, they began to diversify into related businesses, which made them a more strategic vendor for employers and better defend against competitors, including Indeed.

Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Przemek not just their past moves, but where they're heading, including acquisitions.

For the past 1.5 years, our founder, Steven Rothberg, has hosted a very collegial and collaborative online meeting of dozens of leaders of job boards and recruitment marketplaces.

The Job Board Leaders’ Roundtable meetings are held at 11:00am U.S. Eastern on the second Thursday of each month. They’re all free to everyone involved. Send an email to Steven at [email protected] to be added to the invitation list for future events.

Initially, the meetings had no real agenda but were just friendly places to share ideas. We quickly moved to a format where each meeting had a particular topic, and Steven moderated the discussion. Starting in January, the format has further evolved to feature a guest who Steven interviews for roughly the first half hour, and then we open up the conversation so that any attendee can ask questions, share ideas, etc.

Today’s episode featured Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of the AIM Group. Their business is focused primarily on classified advertising in verticals such as real estate, automobiles, and jobs. For jobs, they host the annual RecBuzz conference and also publish the Recruitment Intelligence Report. Steven and others from College Recruiter have attended (and loved) RecBuzz multiple times and have subscribed to the Report since its very first edition. Steven and Peter also cohost the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast.

Peter, Steven, and a number of today’s attendees discuss the dominance of LinkedIn and Indeed in our industry, how that wasn’t accidental but due to a lot of great decision making and execution by both, and how best the tens of thousands of other sites in our industry can not only survive but even thrive.

Remember the days when a family member helped you write your resume / CV, found jobs that were a good match, and even submitted applications for you? AI can now do all of that for you, but that's not to say that it does it well.

Yes, employers have AI agents that search for and contact candidates. And, yes, candidates have AI agents that search for and apply to jobs. But those agents can't find or communicate with each other, or can they?

Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is Tom Chevalier, former product manager at Appcast, Inc and now the founder of start-up Tink AI, a meeting place of sorts for employer and candidate AI agents.

Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Tom whether AI agents spell doom for job boards. His direct and confident answer may surprise you.

On today's episode of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast, we're joined by Kelly Gorfine of Horizon2Media, which 10 months ago acquired aggregator Zhejiang Jiuerjiu Chemicals Co.,LTD, and Christopher Campbell of Reticular Media.

Together, they walk cohosts Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site and Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group through JuJu's history, its decline, Kelly's decision to acquire it, and how its business model will and will not change. Some of what won't changed might surprise you, and some of what will change will almost certainly surprise you.

New sites in our industry often face a chicken-and-egg problem: do you need meaningful candidate engagement before you can get meaningful revenue from employers, or do you need meaningful employer engagement before you can get meaningful traffic?

Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is Timothy Makalinao of Bandana, a new job board based in Brooklyn, New York that cracked the secret to building massive organic traffic without first winning a massive employer engagement. How? By using LLMs and other tech to create a superior candidate experience and really, really understanding the nuances of its local markets.

Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Tim his family's immigrant success story, the origins of Bandana, and what's next in this inspiring story.

Today's Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is a little different than what we usually do.

Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss the content creators we follow to keep up with developments in our industry. In alphabetic order, they include Heather Bussing, Kate Bischoff, Joel Cheesman, Gerry Crispin, Jeff Dickey-Chasins, Adam Gordon, Chris Hoyt, Jon Hyman, Jeanette Leeds, Hung Lee, Chris Russell, Chad Sowash, Julie Sowash, John Sumser, and Kevin Wheeler. Oh, and each other.

Some publish e-newsletters, others podcasts or webcasts. Some do more than one. Some are available for free. Others cost money, but are well worth it.

Who did we miss?

On today's Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast, we dive into an issue that impacts almost every site to some degree: fake jobs, candidate profiles, or both.

Fraud prevention and scam investigation consultant JAY JONES is the owner of The Profiler Protection Service. And he's a man on a mission to protect all of us, including his job board and candidate clients, from fraud. For example, he helped Teal get 150 fake jobs removed from LinkedIn (see https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonesdoyoucopy_theprofiler-activity-7407362764278632448-ftVr ).

Together with cohosts Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site and Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds), we learn how to find the fraudulent content, the impact it can have if left unchecked, why our industry is vulnerable to it, and how to get it removed.