Careerbuilder.com

As a graduating senior, it has become more and more important to begin looking for a job as time goes on. In the past, before the internet became what it is today, students would rely on connections, career fairs, or going through a phone book to find companies or contacts that they would want to communicate with in order to procure a position after college. Nowadays, thanks to the internet, it has become much easier for graduates and people in the workforce to obtain company information and contact details in hopes of obtaining a job. Careerbuilder.com is a job posting website, much like Monster. Both focus on providing online job postings for companies and individuals in order to streamline the job search process and make it less costly. The online job posting industry is dominated by the two companies stated above. Both are slightly different in who they target and how they operate, however both are based on the same web business models. Both Monster and Careerbuilder rely on advertising revenues and to a lesser extent subscription revenues to sustain their operations.

I first came across Careerbuilder as a job search tool at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year. It had become apparent to me that I had to begin looking for a job and Careerbuilder was a good place to start. The thing that Careerbuilder has that Monster doesn’t, is a slightly more focused attitude towards younger people and graduates. I use both sites and have found both to be quite useful. When first going on to the Careerbuilder website, you can create a profile that lets you post resumes and cover letters, and complete a profile that describes you professionally and personally in many aspects. After signing up for a basic membership, which is free, you can roam the site, inputting search details and looking up recently posted jobs by companies from across the world. You can choose to have a public or private profile, if public then the companies can see your information and contact you with job information. Through an in depth search engine of all job postings and specific information about both the user and the company, people can find jobs in no time and easily apply either through the Careerbuilder website or through a link given.

Careerbuilder applies the Advertising model much like Monster does and much like other websites like Google and Yahoo do. Careerbuilder acts as a portal to many other sites, mostly the sites of the companies advertising, it is also a classified model, and has user registration. On the Careerbuilder website, the website offers many opportunities to companies wishing to advertise. Each month, Careerbuilder has 500 million page views and 24 million visitors. Several options exist for companies that wish to advertise, such as placement ads, banner ads, skyscraper ads, leader boards, text links, and emails. Some web partners of the site include MSN, AOL, USA Today, and Google. With a huge amount of traffic Careerbuilder is in prime placement to provide advertising space for almost any company.

Careerbuilder also has a small subscription program. If a user wishes to use certain tools or programs that help them in their job search, then they would have to subscribe to the website and pay an extra fee. An example of this is a program that allows the user to see what companies have viewed his or her resume or information. Although not a large fee, I have not signed up for this added subscription because I would not find these tools too useful.

For any pure play retailer, there are hundreds if not thousands of performance metrics that can be used to evaluate the success of the business model being used. Some basic evaluations that exist for any company are the most basic to use. For example, historical information or comparisons against the industry, like number of visits per month or day compared to a site like Monster. The duration of the visit on the site is a good start for metrics, if a company can determine how long a customer stays on the site then it gives the company a good understanding of what it is the customer is doing. For a classified site like Careerbuilder, perhaps an evaluation tool calculating the amount of jobs that have been filled through the site. Both the companies and users need to know if the site is useful, and if nobody is being offered jobs through the site, then what is the point of using it? Evaluating what types of advertisements are the most effective would allow Careerbuilder to charge higher rates for companies for more effective ads. Other metrics related to evaluating the level of effectiveness of Careerbuilder would be extremely useful. Determining what demographics the user’s of the site are would be beneficial towards companies. Figuring out which career types are the most sought out on the site would also be useful.

Many metrics exist for pure play retailers. Careerbuilder has taken the advertising business model and applied it extremely successfully. In the future, Careerbuilder should look to expand and try to eat some of Monster’s market share. A focus on young adults is a good start and hopefully Careerbuilder in the near future will benefit me greatly by finding me a job.