A Brief Profile of the Job Boards and Job Verticals Business in the US

The usage of the Internet for job seekers increased significantly in the last 12 months due to nationwide unemployment growth. Unique visitors to job sites and portals increased by 10% between June 2008 and 2009 with some websites showing more than a 50% increase. Comparative data from comScore.com shows that job search websites increased unique visitors 51% from 2007 to reach 18.2 million unique visitors in 2008. Internet job search is the primary source for information-seekers who possess a bachelor’s degree and above (more than 90%). Sixty percent of job seekers with a bachelor’s degree and above are submitting online applications and 40% use resume submission options on job board/job website. (Source: BLS, Job Seekers Characteristics, 2003, latest available data)

At the same time, the most recent IAB Internet Advertising revenue report shows that search is the leading advertising revenue generator with 47% of all Internet advertising revenue. Google continues to lead in search engine advertising, from which many of the above career portals profit. The highest-ranking U.S. job websites, CareerBuilder.com (17.9% of the traffic coming from Google.com) and Monster.com (12% of traffic coming from Google) certainly benefit from the “Google Effect” greatly. (alexa.com)

In addition, job advertising revenue has been increasing steadily from 2002 until now, and has reached $6 billion per year according to jobmount.com. That represents more than 25% of all Internet advertising revenue during 2008. And while mega-job sites such as Monster.com are losing money, niche job boards in healthcare gain momentum thanks to the dramatic difference in the demand and supply of healthcare professionals. The same pattern is observed in job advertising numbers: While overall job advertising began to fall since the end of 2008, healthcare employers increased Internet advertising to match the great demand for medical specialists with the growing demand by healthcare facilities.

Increasing demand for healthcare professionals and a growing shortage of supply of qualified medical personnel are at the root of this growth. In addition, the skyrocketing costs of healthcare at the national level oblige medical providers to cut costs and salaries while also finding ways for cost-effective recruiting. This problem can in part be addressed by eliminating the “middleman” (staffing or recruiting company) in favor of a clearinghouse option, such as the Internet Job Boards, that allows employers and candidates to match.

According to the latest job advertising reports, job postings across all U.S. websites fell more than 100,000 vacancies. In the same time period, healthcare occupations, the largest category in terms of volume, rose 28,000 in September 2009 to 605,900 job ads, which represent 18% out of all 3,363,000 job wanted ads. "September was also the second month in a row that advertised vacancies in these occupations were significantly above levels this time last year. Individual occupations showing increases included registered nurses, physical and occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, and physician assistants,” according to “The Conference Board: Help Wanted: On-line Data” for August 2009. The report continues with the statement “for every unemployed person looking for work in a practitioner or technical occupation, there were 2.9 advertised vacancies.” This shows there is still a great demand for highly qualified medical personnel nationwide.

The above data shows that for approximately 54 million job ads during 2008, $6 billion was spent on advertising. That roughly represents spending around $110 per job position, which is a relatively small amount compared with expensive search firms and corporate career website development. That also means that the healthcare Internet job advertising market represents approximately $1.1 billion dollars.

General job boards are only one of the many Internet channels for companies and recruiters to post their job vacancies. Both employers and recruiters believe that niche job boards are even more efficient due to the nature of the Internet searches. And since 47% of advertising revenues come from searches, where Google is the leader, most of the advertising money goes to position a job board on the Google result lists. As a simple search shows, most of the sponsored links for “Physical Therapy Job” are small niche job boards. The famous Google search algorithm also is known to neglect general keywords results and focus on smart job descriptions. Normally job seekers search by specialty term, versus general term. That means that a physical therapist, for example, will enter “Physical Therapist Job” in a google.com search, not “job” or “healthcare”. The algorithm responds first with the paid results, but immediately after are the results from the best SE optimized websites. That gives an enormous opportunity for new players on the market to increase their exposure to the search engines and thus compete with general job boards.

As an Internet healthcare job vertical, eCareer Connections is also counting on the development of the healthcare recruiting industry, which is responsible for 49% of the online healthcare job ads (as beyond.com is stating in their research). In spite of the loss of millions of positions in almost every job market in the USA, healthcare employment continues to grow. This trend of stable demand for qualified medical professionals, omnipresent on the healthcare job market since the late 90s, will continue to drive this multibillion-dollar industry for years to come.

Healthcare employment is influenced by big shortages impacting all medical professions. Even in recession times, medical recruiting still continues to prosper. According to the American Staffing Association, the market size of the health care recruiting business is approximately $12 billion per year (Source: Staffing Industry Analysis, January 2009). Historical data shows that healthcare jobs have increased by 21.7% for the last 10 years (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Vizantia Enterprises, Inc.).

This increase is due to two major trends in the U.S. labor market: An increasing demand in supply and a decreasing supply available. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the growth rate of new jobs in the healthcare professions will continue to be high – and register an increase of 22% per year until 2018.
This is twice the rate of job growth in non-healthcare professions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also predicts a need for 5.6 million healthcare workers by 2018 to fill job openings created by departures and
new positions.

This strong demand for qualified healthcare professionals is crucial for the development and success of an Internet healthcare job vertical – the principal business of eCareer Connections, Inc.