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This is not the same (boards/aggregators) as Yelp, HN, Reddit, Stackoverflow or various other user generated content review sites. This is because most if not

This is not the same (boards/aggregators) as Yelp, HN, Reddit, Stackoverflow or various other user generated content review sites. This is because most if not all the jobs come from the companies website. They are a search middleman similar to how Google is for almost everything else. They don't provide an ecosystem like say HN, Stackoverflow, Yelp, etc. In some ways they steal the content. Sites like Indeed are basically doing the same thing that Google really should have been doing. Now the boards/aggregators tried to provide "ecosystems" but they could never get it right because when people are looking for the job they are desperate and just don't give a... (or at least that is my theory. its also why linkedin works because its is passive). I have noticed through our metrics (and I'm biased because we make job web sites for companies that hire) that the best candidates (despite what Indeed says) come from going directly to your website or come from LinkedIn (assuming non referral based). If you are wondering how then Indeed/Career Builder et al do so well its that its hard to measure actual success (ie source to hire). It should be easy but sadly its not (don't have time for the details). So what these guys provide is ton of traffic with lots of noise. Traffic that google could have easily provided. So honestly I think it is sort of good they fail.

vram22 9y ago
I had heard a while back (from a startup client I did some consulting work for (built and delivered a prototype), and who was in the HR/Job web app space), that Indeed.com was bought for ~$1bn by Recruiter.com . I wonder if they made money back on that buy.
- ILIKEPONIES 9y ago
  Indeed was purchased by Recruit Holdings, which is a massive Japanese conglomerate. As far as I'm aware, it has been a success. http://www.recruit-rgf.com/ http://www.recruit-rgf.com/
  - vram22 9y ago
    Interesting ...
AJ007 9y ago
The big companies post all of their jobs on their website, but the smaller companies definitely do not. In developing countries it is even worse. In India it is common for jobs to be posted on a website as PDFs, which are scan/images of printed pages. There is added value. Indeed, and plenty of other job sites, have done things like quick apply which bypasses the horrific process of legacy ATSs like Oracle's Taleo. People, in the most general sense, should be extremely concerned if Google -- or any specific company -- gains a market hold on job search / recruiting. If, say Google and Facebook, or Google and LinkedIn had control of 90% of the hiring vertical they could, in effect, take a large chunk of an employee earnings. How? Employers would have to spend a lot of money just for the employee to know some opportunity exists for them. Big, high margin, corporations would be just fine. Small businesses would be disadvantaged. This is what has happened with the travel aggregators. Two companies dominate (and own all of the other travel search engines you think are independent.) The big hotel chains can negotiate slightly better deals, the small ones pay full price for visibility. In a more narrow definition we can see this with on demand work start ups. Uber, Postmates, and others have spend massive amounts of money to recruit workers. Of course as start ups they have time constraints and geography constraints. They need to grow really fast so they pay tens of millions of dollars on buying search ads, display ads, and so on. Perhaps they could grow organically but it would be hard. A good job search / recommendation would just show users the best economic opportunities for them at this moment. Yes, it would be hard to rank and filter out stuff that looks good but is crap (Maybe Uber falls in the crap category?) However, if someone wants to work, certainly they shouldn't be sitting at home idle because a potential employer didn't spend millions of dollars on an ad campaign. (Those "reach" dollars should be going to workers, not platforms.)
- uiri 9y ago
  (re: travel aggregators) Isn't one of those companies ITA software which was bought by Google a couple of years ago? Which is the other one: Expedia or Priceline? What about CheapOair? Hipmunk?
  - smueller1234 9y ago
    When somebody claims there's a duopoly in online travel agents, they are generally referring to the priceline group and expedia.

vram22 9y ago

I had heard a while back (from a startup client I did some consulting work for (built and delivered a prototype), and who was in the HR/Job web app space), that Indeed.com was bought for ~$1bn by Recruiter.com . I wonder if they made money back on that buy.

ILIKEPONIES 9y ago
Indeed was purchased by Recruit Holdings, which is a massive Japanese conglomerate. As far as I'm aware, it has been a success. http://www.recruit-rgf.com/ http://www.recruit-rgf.com/
- vram22 9y ago
  Interesting ...

AJ007 9y ago

The big companies post all of their jobs on their website, but the smaller companies definitely do not. In developing countries it is even worse. In India it is common for jobs to be posted on a website as PDFs, which are scan/images of printed pages. There is added value. Indeed, and plenty of other job sites, have done things like quick apply which bypasses the horrific process of legacy ATSs like Oracle's Taleo. People, in the most general sense, should be extremely concerned if Google -- or any specific company -- gains a market hold on job search / recruiting. If, say Google and Facebook, or Google and LinkedIn had control of 90% of the hiring vertical they could, in effect, take a large chunk of an employee earnings. How? Employers would have to spend a lot of money just for the employee to know some opportunity exists for them. Big, high margin, corporations would be just fine. Small businesses would be disadvantaged. This is what has happened with the travel aggregators. Two companies dominate (and own all of the other travel search engines you think are independent.) The big hotel chains can negotiate slightly better deals, the small ones pay full price for visibility. In a more narrow definition we can see this with on demand work start ups. Uber, Postmates, and others have spend massive amounts of money to recruit workers. Of course as start ups they have time constraints and geography constraints. They need to grow really fast so they pay tens of millions of dollars on buying search ads, display ads, and so on. Perhaps they could grow organically but it would be hard. A good job search / recommendation would just show users the best economic opportunities for them at this moment. Yes, it would be hard to rank and filter out stuff that looks good but is crap (Maybe Uber falls in the crap category?) However, if someone wants to work, certainly they shouldn't be sitting at home idle because a potential employer didn't spend millions of dollars on an ad campaign. (Those "reach" dollars should be going to workers, not platforms.)

uiri 9y ago
(re: travel aggregators) Isn't one of those companies ITA software which was bought by Google a couple of years ago? Which is the other one: Expedia or Priceline? What about CheapOair? Hipmunk?
- smueller1234 9y ago
  When somebody claims there's a duopoly in online travel agents, they are generally referring to the priceline group and expedia.