When Monster completed its takeover of HotJobs a few weeks ago, I wonder how much buzz there was on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Probably not much.
Social media recruiting has slowly been taking the wind out of the sails of Monster, CareerBuilder, and other large job boards for years. First it was the niche job boards. Then it was the social networking sites.
So what is the impact of HotJobs being gobbled up by Monster? For companies seeking talent, it further drives home the fact that you need to understand your target audience.
For years, CareerBuilder gained, then passed Monster, for unique visitors. This was done mainly through a variety of local efforts. Local in the geographic sense, as well as through sites and channels that were local to the job seeker.
They crawled their way through every imaginable site, aggregator, and ad placement opportunity to reach their target audiences. Now, even with the combination of Monster and HotJobs, there is great debate about who, in fact, has the greatest number of unique visitors.
But the point is moot. It's not about how many millions of visitors. It's about getting the right candidate to pay attention to your company or job.
When this news originally surfaced, I wrote about relevancy and immediacy. The gist was that social media recruiting was quickly becoming more relevant and immediate. I stand by that and would add that while large numbers of unique visitors might be impressive, the fact is that many companies are looking for people who aren't looking for a job. Those people don't go to job boards.
Mashable's coverage of the Monster/HotJobs news had some good reader comments that led me to believe I'm on the right track. There's some obvious disagreement on the impact or the relevance of the news.
While job boards might still be useful for certain jobs or industries, social media recruiting or even plain old personal networking will always be more effective than posting a job or sorting through resumes for highly skilled or specialized talent.
