Increasing Use of Niche Job Boards


Editor’s Note: We bring you another selected edition of the Herman Trend Alert here at Small Business Trends. This edition of the Alert focuses on anticipated shortages of qualified help in the United States and the reliance on niche job boards to fill positions. I would add my own observation: while small businesses have fewer positions than large corporations to fill, the impact is magnified. Even one unfilled position at a small business can be overwhelming. In a 10-person firm, it can amount to being down by one-tenth of the workforce.

Herman Trend Alert

The employment market is heating up. As we move through the next eight to ten years, even greater turbulence is expected. With the expanding economy, job opportunities are growing. Qualified workers have both choices and mobility. Employee turnover is up, with all indications pointing to increasing movement. Surveys suggest repeatedly that approximately 75 percent of workers may be in different jobs within the next year or so. Employers are beginning to pay attention and invest in retention, but too few with too little so far. So, expect the job-changing trend to accelerate.

At the same time, employers face a serious challenge: Finding workers qualified to perform is increasingly difficult. Practically every employer we talk with — in every industry segment — reports mission-critical vacancies in skilled, managerial, and executive positions. This shortage means companies cannot get their work done and experience dangerous difficulty meeting customer or client needs. The risk factor in customer relations, quality, safety, and productivity is practically beyond measurement, and employers who track these numbers in their organizations are worried.

Employers want to recruit, select, hire, and retain top talent. They prefer not to simply go on the open market and open their doors to an avalanche of resumes and applications. Instead, they want to be more selective, more focused. Smaller employers, particularly, are very specific about their needs and want to narrowly target their recruiting.

Highly-talented, skilled, and well-educated people know they have an edge in the employment marketplace and want to maximize their return on their job-seeking effort. They know what they want, and know how difficult it can be to find their kind of job through the major job boards. Increasingly, they’re concentrating on niche job boards to zero in on what they want. According to Weddle’s, the recognized leader in research in Internet recruiting, 67 percent of job-changers expect to find their next opportunity on the Internet. Employers will respond, using specialized job boards even more.

Expect employers and job seekers to intensify their use of job boards, .jobs domains, and other tools to connect. See Herman Trend Alert on Niche Job Boards.

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Reproduced with permission. From “Herman Trend Alert,” by Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia, Strategic Business Futurists, copyright 2006. (800) 227-3566 or www.hermangroup.com.

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Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

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