Jason Gorham of US firm careermetasearch.com has provoked much discussion by suggesting that niche jobs boards are more effective at generate placement opportunity that generalists (something we would agree with!)  In addition her says that the saturation of the market is driving costs up! as more and more companies try to make enough money to operate from a decreasing share of their market, the only solution is keep prices high.

However, we would predict this will ulitmately  head in the other direction as some boards won’t survice as their market share shrinks, leaving the remaining boards with a larger share and the ability to be agressive with prices to gain further share.  Ukcareers are aiming at a model which offers advertising online at a price which cannot be refused for the results it can deliver.  The key is to keep the boards ‘clean’ as they grow, avoiding the accumulation of out of date data in terms of jobs and candidates.

Whatever happnes, expect to see the above figure of 10% climb rapidly in the coming years.  Online advertising is effective and can be relatively inexpensive, in most cases at a fraction of the cost of paper counterparts.