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An employment website is a
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
that deals specifically with employment or
career The career is an individual's metaphorical "journey" through learning, work and other aspects of life. There are a number of ways to define career and the term is used in a variety of ways. Definitions The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defi ...
s. Many employment websites are designed to allow employers to post job requirements for a position to be filled and are commonly known as job boards. Other employment sites offer employer reviews, career and job-search advice, and describe different job descriptions or employers. Through a job website, a prospective employee can locate and fill out a job application or submit resumes over the Internet for the advertised position.


History

The Online Career Center was developed in 1992 by Bill Warren as a non-profit organization backed by forty major corporations to allow job hunters to post their resumes and for recruiters to post job openings. In 1994, Robert J. McGovern began NetStart Inc. as software sold to companies for listing job openings on their websites and manage the incoming e-mails those listings generated. After an influx of two million dollars in investment capital he then transported this software to its own web address, at first listing the job openings from the companies who utilized the software. NetStart Inc. changed its name in 1998 to operate under the name of their software,
CareerBuilder CareerBuilder is an employment website founded in 1995 with offices in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. In 2008, it had the largest market share among online employment websites in the United States, where it was founded. CareerBu ...
. The company received a further influx of seven million dollars from investment firms such as
New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the w ...
to expand their operations. Six major newspapers joined forces in 1995 to list their classified sections online. The service was called CareerPath.com and featured help-wanted listings from the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, San Jose Mercury News and the Washington Post. The industry attempted to reach a broader, less tech-savvy base in 1998 when Hotjobs.com attempted to buy a Super Bowl spot, but Fox rejected the ad for being in poor taste. The ad featured a janitor at a zoo sweeping out the elephant cage completely unbeknownst to the animal. The elephant sits down briefly and when it stands back up, the janitor has disappeared, suggesting the worker was now stuck in the elephant's anus. The ad meant to illustrate a need for those stuck in jobs they hate, and offer a solution through their Web site. In 1999, Monster.com ran on three 30 second Super Bowl ads for four million dollars. One ad which featured children speaking like adults, drolly intoning their dream of working at various dead-end jobs to humorous effect were far more popular than rival Hotjobs.com ad about a security guard who transitions from a low paying security job to the same job at a fancier building. Soon thereafter, Monster.com was elevated to the top spot of online employment sites. Hotjobs.com's ad wasn't as successful, but it gave the company enough of a boost for its IPO in August. After being purchased in a joint venture by Knight Ridder and
Tribune Company Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...
in July, CareerBuilder absorbed competitor boards CareerPath.com and then Headhunter.net which had already acquired CareerMosaic. Even with these aggressive mergers CareerBuilder still trailed behind the number one employment site Jobsonline.com, number two Monster.com and number three Hotjobs.com. Monster.com made a move in 2001 to purchase Hotjobs.com for $374 million in stock, but were unsuccessful due to
Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
's unsolicited cash and stock bid of $430 million late in the year. Yahoo had previously announced plans to enter the job board business, but decided to jump start that venture by purchasing the established brand. In February 2010, Monster acquired HotJobs from Yahoo for $225 million.


Features and types

The success of jobs search engines in bridging the gap between jobseekers and employers has spawned thousands of job sites, many of which list job opportunities in a specific sector, such as education, health care, hospital management, academics and even in the non-governmental sector. These sites range from broad all-purpose generalist job boards to niche sites that serve various audiences, geographies, and industries. Many industry experts are encouraging jobseekers to concentrate on industry specific sector sites.


Job postings

A job board is a
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
that facilitates
job hunting Job hunting, job seeking, or job searching is the act of looking for employment, due to unemployment, underemployment, discontent with a current position, or a desire for a better position. The immediate goal of job seeking is usually to obtain ...
and range from large scale generalist sites to niche job boards for job categories such as
engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
,
legal Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. ...
,
insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
, social work,
teaching Teaching is the practice implemented by a ''teacher'' aimed at transmitting skills (knowledge, know-how, and interpersonal skills) to a learner, a student, or any other audience in the context of an educational institution. Teaching is closely ...
,
mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...
development as well as cross-sector categories such as green jobs,
ethical job An ethical job is a broad term to describe a job which accords with a person's ethics or values. Surveys In 2005, ''The Guardian'' newspaper polled 2,000 undergraduates in the UK, and found that "over 70% of students said that a company's ethical ...
s and
seasonal job Temporary work or temporary employment (also called gigs) refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes ...
s. Users can typically upload their résumés and submit them to potential employers and recruiters for review, while employers and recruiters can post job ads and search for potential employees. The term job search engine might refer to a job board with a search engine style interface, or to a web site that actually indexes and searches other web sites. Niche job boards are starting to play a bigger role in providing more targeted job vacancies and employees to the candidate and the employer respectively. Job boards such as airport jobs and federal jobs among others provide a very focused way of eliminating and reducing time to applying to the most appropriate role. USAJobs.gov is the United States' official website for jobs. It gathers job listings from over 500 federal agencies.


Metasearch and vertical search engines

Some web sites are simply search engines that collect results from multiple independent job boards. This is an example of both metasearch (since these are search engines which search other search engines) and
vertical search A vertical search engine is distinct from a general web search engine, in that it focuses on a specific segment of online content. They are also called specialty or topical search engines. The vertical content area may be based on topicality, media ...
(since the searches are limited to a specific topic - job listings). Some of these new search engines primarily index traditional job boards. These sites aim to provide a "one-stop shop" for job-seekers who don't need to search the underlying job boards. In 2006, tensions developed between the job boards and several
scraper site A scraper site is a website that copies content from other websites using web scraping. The content is then mirrored with the goal of creating revenue, usually through advertising and sometimes by selling user data. Scraper sites come in various f ...
s, with
Craigslist Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark began the ...
banning scrapers from its job classifieds and Monster.com specifically banning scrapers through its adoption of a
robots exclusion standard The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visit. Th ...
on all its pages while others have embraced them. Industry specific posting boards are also appearing. These consolidate all the vacancies in a very specific industry. The largest "niche" job board is
Dice.com Dice.com is a career website based in New York City with primary sales and development operations in Urbandale, Iowa and Denver. It serves information technology and engineering professionals, as well as contract and permanent engineering sta ...
which focuses on the IT industry. Many industry and professional associations offer members a job posting capability on the association website.


Employer review website

An employer review website is a type of employment website where past and current employees post comments about their experiences working for a company or organization. An employer review website usually takes the form of an
internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
. Typical comments are about
management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a Government agency, government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includ ...
, working conditions, and pay. Although employer review websites may produce links to potential employers, they do not necessarily list vacancies.


Websites providing information and advice for employees, employers and job seekers

Although many sites that provide access to job advertisements include pages with advice about writing resumes and CVs, performing well in interviews, and other topics of interest to job seekers there are sites that specialize in providing information of this kind, rather than job opportunities. One such is
Working in Canada Working may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community Arts and media * ''Working'' (musical), a 1978 musical * ''Working'' (TV series), an American sitcom * ''Workin ...
. It does provide links to the
Canadian Job Bank The Job Bank is an employment website operated by Employment and Social Development Canada. It provides an online database of job listings in Canada, as well as other employment services and information for recruiters and job seekers, including c ...
. However, most of its content is information about local labor markets (in Canada), requirements for working in various occupations, information about relevant laws and regulations, government services and grants, and so on. Most items could be of interest to people in various roles and conditions including those considering career options, job seekers, employers and employees.


Revenue models

Employment sites typically charge fees to employers for listings job postings. Often these are flat fees for a specific duration (30 days, 60 days, etc). Other sites may allow employers to post basic listings for free, but charge a fee for more prominent placement of listings in search results. A few sites use a ''pay-for-performance'' model, where the employer listing the job pays for clicks on the listing. In Japan, some sites have come under fire for allowing employers to list a job for free for an initial duration, then charging exorbitant fees after the free period expires. Most of these sites seem to have appeared within the last year in response to the labor shortage in Japan.


Risks

Many job search engines and job boards encourage users to post their resume and contact details. While this is attractive for the site operators (who sell access to the resume bank to headhunters and recruiters), job-seekers exercise caution in uploading personal information, since they have no control over where their resume will eventually be seen. Their resume may be viewed by a current employer or, worse, by criminals who may use information from it to amass and sell personal contact information, or even perpetrate
identity theft Identity theft occurs when someone uses another person's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term ''identity theft'' was c ...
.


See also

*
Career-oriented social networking market A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
*
Freelance marketplace ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
*
.jobs The domain name jobs is a sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. As indicated by its name, the domain is restricted to employment-related sites. The domain was approved by ICANN on April 8, 2005, as part of ...
* Job wrapping * List of employment websites


References

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