Enterprises Flee Rising Job Board Fees

Recoiling from the spiraling fees of online job boards such as Monster.com and HotJobs, a group of 327 companies dubbed the e-Recruiting Association Inc. has launched DirectEmployers.com, a non-profit, employer-owned search engine that aggregates all job listings from member companies Web sites.

The news isnt great for Monster. The Maynard, Mass., company saw profit drop last year, reporting fourth-quarter revenue of $115 million: a 4 percent drop from its year-earlier figure of $120 million.

But the news could be great for job seekers. Bill Warren, executive director of the association, said that because of the skyrocketing listing fees of job boards, employers typically only post about 10 percent or less of total open jobs on commercial sites. Unisys, for example, currently has about 400 open positions listed on DirectEmployers.com, but only 32 listed on commercial sites, said Warren, in Indianapolis. DirectEmployers.com, in contrast, will include all job listings available at its member companies at any given time. As of Tuesday, the site had an aggregate of 162,000 jobs.

The move comes as commercial job board listing fees have been growing fast. Whereas fees to join the Recruiting Association Inc. range from $6,000 to $60,000 per year, depending on company size, commercial job boards charge companies about five times that amount for a comparable number of listings, Warren said. And those fees are growing at a giddy rate, as much as doubling year-to-year for some employers, said Warren, who founded Online Career Center, the Internets first career site, and also served as president of Monster.com. (As with commercial job boards, DirectEmployers.com comes at no cost to job seekers.)

Warren said that he doesnt expect Monster to shrivel up and die anytime soon. “At this point, were just a week old, so probably not,” he said. “Certainly this site will be factored into [employers] overall recruiting strategy.”