It’s a bad time to run a national job board. One by one, major job websites are getting spun off, bought up, or going out of business, including a few that dominated the industry since the early days of the dot-com boom. At the same time, thousands of niche job websites are still chugging along. But, just like the big boys, niche websites need to adapt to modern recruiting practices—and that’s good news for the small businesses that use them.
By some estimates, the United States has 3,000 to 5,000 job boards serving specific industries, professions, or geographic areas. By staying laser-focused on their respective niches, they’ve been able to weather the storms that have been shaking up the major players. “Small job boards will always be around because small businesses rely on them heavily,” said Chris Russell, self-professed ‘Mad Scientist of Online Recruiting’ and job board consultant and owner of Rec Tech Media and CareerCloud. “Without them, they’d have no way to advertise.”