Nothing much to see here: boring times in the recruiting site biz

Sometimes you just have to dig to find a topic to write about in the recruiting site biz, you know? Particularly when you are in a backwoods, nothing-exciting industry like ours. I mean, I’d write about watching the grass grow…but it’s winter.

Ahem. Right…Well…

OK, OK, a few very minor things have been happening. To wit:

• Facebook Jobs finally launched. Many very smart and insightful pieces have already been published, including this one, this one, and this one. My two cents: despite everyone’s focus on how Facebook’s move will affect LinkedIn, I think the real effect will be on sites that cater to small and medium sized businesses: Craigslist, ZipRecruiter, Snagajob, and so on. At least as currently configured, Facebook Jobs doesn’t do a good job for large scale hiring. Sure, they can change that – and may at some point – but just notice how long it took them to actually offer job posting functionality. Nimble they are not.
• ElevatedCareers is for sale. As I’ve written before, real matching is hard. You need lots of data from candidates and employers, you need the ability to assess the data, and you need to make all of this happen in a relatively frictionless way. After five years of trying (gotta give ’em props for persistence), eHarmony is throwing in the towel and essentially saying, ‘ok, see if you can make the damn thing work!’. Based on the letter they sent to prospective buyers, they’ve snagged at least four customers. What does the buyer get? The technology, the 4 customers, and Dan Erickson, who has managed the project from day one. Price? Well, they aren’t saying but I bet it’s negotiable. So who, exactly, would buy ElevatedCareers? Hard to say. If LinkedIn was still independent, I could see them snatching it up just for the technology. The site doesn’t have any significant market share with employers or candidates, so it doesn’t make sense for staffing firms seeking to move into our sector, ala Randstad or Recruit – they want volume. I will be very curious to see where the company lands.

But other than that (well, ok, WayUp acquired LookSharp, Xing had a record year, SmartRecruiters acquired Jobspotting, and a few other things), not much happening here. Just another lazy month in the job board/recruiting site/recruitment marketing world.

Wake me up when something really important happens in the recruiting site biz. OK?

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