Major U.S. corporations have long paid others to promote something they controlled — job opportunities. Now, hundreds of the country’s largest corporations, including Qwest Communications and Janus Capital Group, are looking to regain control of the jobs they advertise as a slumping economy leaves more and more people looking for work.
“The companies realized the listing was their product to sell,” said Bill Warren, executive director of the DirectEmployers Association, a nonprofit cooperative that runs .
More than 450 U.S. corporations have teamed up with several federal agencies, 47 out of 50 state workforce agencies and numerous universities and colleges to post jobs at a fraction of what online job boards charge.
For a flat $15,000 membership fee, corporations can list an unlimited number of ads on the JobCentral Labor Exchange. Nonmembers pay a $25 listing fee, or nothing if they go through a state workforce center.
That contrasts with a single ad cost in Denver of $349 on Yahoo HotJobs, $385 on and $419 on .
In an effort to boost revenues, those companies also cross-sell other products to job hunters, often annoying them, another reason Warren predicts the online job-board model is headed for failure.
Warren — who founded the nation’s first online job board, which would eventually become — said he realized the Internet would eventually make profit-focused job boards obsolete.
A batch of job listings that might have cost $10,000 a year to post in 1998 now runs more than $1 million, Warren said.
Employers also like JobCentral because it points prospects directly to their websites, rather than leaving them captive to third parties.
“It is returning a connection between the job seeker and the employer, without a middle man being there. It is really changing the model of the industry,” said Ray Schreyer, program manager for IBM Interactive Recruitment Branding.
The push among corporations to cooperate came after the U.S. Department of Labor discontinued its America’s Job Bank on July 1, 2007.
They needed a venue that met the requirements of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to post listings broadly in a variety of forums.
JobCentral pushes listings to more than 1,000 other websites and to workforce centers that serve job hunters without Internet access.
In its first few months, JobCentral has managed to surpass industry leader in traffic and listings without any major marketing effort, Warren said.
JobCentral relies on established search engines to funnel job hunters its way, a more cost-effective approach.
Because of costs, the company posts only a limited number of ads on traditional online sites, which are still more widely recognized, Qwest spokeswoman Jennifer Barton said.
As more people realize JobCentral is the largest source of job listings in the country, more job seekers will come to it directly, Warren predicts.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
