Pay Per Click
Two new internet sites claim to revolutionize the online job board market — NotchUp and Applicant Tree. Their basic pitch is that they forgo the standard subscription fee recruiters and businesses typically pay to read through the resumes offered on major players Monster and Career Builder, and instead only charge for the specific applicant that interests the hiring company.
This is indicative of the pay per click ad model pioneered by Google many years ago. That company saved the sagging internet advertising market by solving the issue of gauging how effective ads are on the internet. Advertisers were wary to continue pumping ad dollars to a medium where hard numbers on their effectiveness were not available. Google began charging advertisers only for the number of times a user actually clicked on the ad, i.e. pay per click.
That’s the same concept being brought to job boards by NotchUp and Applicant Tree. These sites deliver only so much information about the job candidate, just enough for a recruiter or HR manager to make the preliminary decision of whether or not they want to interview that person , and then only pay for that one.
Each site goes about the process in their unique way, but the concept is very similar. Instead of paying thousands for a subscription to be able to mine the databases, you only pay a fraction of that amount for the exact person you need. Then, in turn, the actual applicant is paid a percentage of that fee to entice more members to join the club.
Will this new business model revolutionize the online job board market?
Probably , but just not yet. There’ s still too much of a stigma associated with earning money from the internet. The first thought on anyone’s mind is that if it sounds too good to be true, than it must be. And the idea of being paid for your job seeking efforts definitely sound too good to be true. For recruiters, this is a great way to save money. But how many applicants are we going to get to choose from if everyone’s scared to try it out?
For these ideas to really revolutionize the internet, some severe paradigm shifts in the mass consciousness will need to take place. People will have to offer the internet more trust than they currently are. It’s still too much of a novelty for people to take it that seriously.
However much I think the online job market is in need of a revolution, I don’t think we’ll get one until there’s a worldwide web revolution first. Then, and only then, will these new business models really take off.