I received a couple of emails this week asking me what the online job search industry landscape will be like in five years. I firmly believe that in five years the industry won’t be dominated by the current top three players, rather it will be taken over by a new generation of career websites and search engines, here’s why:
1) If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that the current results from search engines are far from perfect (I’m writing another post about how job search engines can improve their results and will post next week). I believe that they will solve these problems in the next five years. Job search engines will have improved so much that most job seekers can find any job by a click of a button at Indeed or SimplyHired (hey guys, I really have high hopes for you, don’t let me down). Based on my research, 90-95% of real openings (not those used to fish for candidates) are actually listed on either the company’s career site or their recruiter’s site, so in five years the search engines will be smart enough to bypass Monster, Careerbuilder and HotJobs to directly cull jobs from individual company or headhunter sites. So there’s really no reason for job seekers to use Monster, Careerbuilder or HotJobs anymore.
2) New generation user-centric career sites, uCareer will be one of them, will host career profiles for a majority of people in the workforce, almost everyone will have a profile with one of those sites. Employers will directly search the database and pay a fee to contact the right candidates. The current $400, every 30 days posting will be gone, employers will only pay either when they directly contact the candidates or when qualified candidates apply for the job.
I’m not declaring the death of Monster, Careerbuilder or HotJobs, but rather the old way of doing business. Remember the travel agency at the corner down the street five years ago? They’re long gone, as will Monster, Careerbuilder and HotJobs be if they don’t change to meet the challenge.
