Next to travel services, job-hunting services have been one of the Internet’s most
successful online services because they save money for both job hunters and
employers. In comparison to online recruiting, traditional recruitment tools have
severe limitations:
• Online recruiting provides a more efficient and cost-effective means of linking
employers and job hunters and reduces the total time to hire.
• Job hunters can easily build, update, and distribute their resumes, conduct job
searches, and gather information on employers at their convenience and leisure.
• It is an information-intense business process that the Internet can automate,
and thus reduce search time and costs for all parties.
Online recruiting can also serve to establish market prices and terms, thereby identifying
both the salary levels for specific jobs and the skill sets required to achieve
those salary levels. This should lead to a rationalization of wages, greater labor
mobility, and higher efficiency in recruitment and operations as employers are able
to more quickly fill positions.
The major trends in the online career services industry are:
• Consolidation—The online recruitment industry is going through a period of
rapid consolidation.
• Diversification—There is an explosion of specialty niche employment sites that
focus on specific occupations.
• Localization—There is a growing focus on local job markets.
• Job search engines—New online job search engines that scrape listings from thousands
of online job sites pose a threat to established career sites.
• Social networking—Many Internet users are beginning to use social networking
sites to establish business contacts and find jobs; employers are also using them
to identify and find out further information about job candidates.
• Mobile—As with other forms of services, career services firms have also moved
onto the mobile platform.