Niche VS. Generalist Job Boards

- There’s a big battle brewing in the World of online Classifieds.

- Who is winning the war between Generalist and Niche Online Job Boards?

In a word, Niche.

Niche sites controlled about 64% of the online job-search market in 2006, up from 39% in 2004, according to Gordon Borrell, chief executive officer of consultancy Borrell Associates. The rivalry will only accelerate this year, as demand for online recruitment surges. A recent HotJobs.com survey indicates 40% of workers plan to look for a different job in 2007. Much of that searching will happen online.

The Big Three have the most to lose. In the past six months, visits to Monster, HotJobs, and CareerBuilder dropped by 23.7%, 18.4%, and 7.1%, respectively, according to Hitwise. The generalist site is falling away to that very strong niche, says Borrell.

Who’s gaining from the Niche Victory?
New York-based JobThread and other fast-growing startups with job board in a box products/services. JobThread dominates the market with thousands of customers, including major Web publishers such as Gawker, PaidContent.org, Gizmodo, and others. JobThread has a growing number of competitors. In just the past two weeks, two other companies Edgeio and SimplyHired jumped into the market with Job-A-Matic and Marketplaces.

Eric Yoon, founder and CEO of NY-based JobThread, predicts that 2007 will be the Year of the Niche Job Board Network. Many associations and groups of industry-related companies are pooling their job boards into centralized sites. The Open Source Technology Group is a great example. It maintains a centralized job board with separate silos for its member companies.