Not too long ago, the Internet, monster.com, and careerbuilder.com created a significant amount of displacement amongst the contingency based employment companies. To survive and in some case to thrive, the contingency firms moved into the contract, consulting, or temporary placement market place. They were pushed into that business on two accounts: One, the new on-line job boards made it very attractive to gain candidates without having to having to pay heavy commissions. The other factor is that companies have began to heed Charles Handy advice in his book “The Age of Reason” in which he proposes that companies would be moving towards a variable work force model – ramp up for a project; outsource non-core skills – keep fixed cost low and only keep the core skills in-house.
What goes around comes around.
Monster.com, careeerbuilder.com et al are seeing their best days behind them. With the explosion of social media – specifically, linkedin.com which is close to going IPO; Twitter and Facebook, the cost of posting new jobs on these sites is nominal and in some cases zero; as recruiters will broadcast their needs to their network; or initiate discussions around a job description in one of the many groups.
It would be interesting to get some feed back from the recruiters as to the quality of the candidates that they receive as opposed to the volume.
From personal experience, I have made some significant contacts within my network in the recruiting front; but at the end of the day, one always asks the question: Does he or she really understand my brand and value? And can they market me properly? These questions are borne out the fact we have multiple channel of communication and most of the information, although intuitive in nature, comes from non-verbal channels.
The dye is cast. Unless, the job boards sites re-invent themselves - My advice to investors is to divest of any pure job board stock and look at social media stock as an alternative investment.
