Online job boards will be gone within a decade or sooner. That's the assertion of a new report and e-book on the state of Internet job-hunting from a leading career Website. Taking their place, a wave of new social-media-driven job-search sites and tools is arriving online and expected to dramatically change how job-seekers and employers find each other in the future.
"Just as the major job boards revolutionized how job-seekers searched, applied, and found jobs more than a decade ago, a new crop of Websites are arriving that will once again change the job-search landscape," says Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director for Quintessential Careers and author of the report titled, The Long, Slow Death March of Job Boards -- and What Will Replace Them, as well as co-author of the accompanying no-cost e-book, Job Search 2.0: Advancing Your Career Through Online Social Media.
"While traditional job boards will still play a role in how job-seekers find jobs over the next few years, social-networking sites and second-generation job boards are quickly gaining inroads, and we can expect these and other emerging job-search sites to replace the big job boards within a decade," Hansen states.
"One other element at the heart of this paradigm shift is the empowerment of job-seekers to create and manage their online career persona, what we refer to as their digital presence," Hansen says. "As job boards diminish in importance and effectiveness, and hiring decision-makers shift their approaches to connecting with talent through online searches, a digital presence becomes a must."
The 2009 report, the sixth in a series of annual reports published by Quintessential Careers covering the major trends in online job-search, includes these findings about how employers and job-seekers are connecting with each other online:
1. Job boards will be gone in 10 years or sooner.
2. Digital presence, "findability," and search-engine optimization (SEO) increasingly are standard operating tools for jobseekers.
3. Social-networking, people-finding, and micro-blogging participation are becoming critical to the job search.
4. Blogging is seen as a both a way to demonstrate expertise and learn more about and connect with employers.
5. Integrating multimedia into the job search -- a controversial trend -- is one to watch.
Readers can find more details here:
**2009 Online Job-Hunting Report:The Long, Slow Death March of Job Boards -- and What Will Replace Them. URL: http://www.quintcareers.com/job-board_death_march.html
**No-cost e-book (ISBN-10: 1-934689-08-4): The Quintessential Guide to Job Search 2.0: Advancing Your Career Through Online Social Media. URL: http://www.quintcareers.com/Quintessential_Careers_Press/Job_Search/
