Are Job Boards Solving the Hiring Problem?

Are job boards solving the hiring problem… or just selling clicks?

This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast, the boys welcome Lou Goodman, authour of Job Board Revolution and Martin Lenz, CEO of Jobiqo, for a no-BS breakdown of what’s broken in the job board ecosystem and why throwing more volume at hiring problems isn’t working anymore.

From “quality vs. qualified” debates, pay-per-click madness, and ATS finger-pointing, to AI, agentic hiring, and whether job boards are dying (again), this episode pulls no punches. Are job boards doomed to become background data pipes? Or is there a smarter future built on matching, transparency, and outcomes instead of clicks?

Three Europeans, one loud American, and zero sacred cows. Strap in.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:29.506)

Yeah, if podcasts are evil, then this one is hell. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, kids. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash's writing shotgun as we welcome Lou Goodman, marketing strategist and author of Job Board Revolution, our job board solving the wrong problem, and Martin Lentz, CEO at Jobiqo. Lou, Martin, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.

Chad Sowash (00:39.116)

You're nothing!

Lou Goodman (00:58.735)

Hi, nice to be here.

Martin Lenz (00:59.069)

Hello

Joel Cheesman (01:00.738)

You sound thrilled to be here. I'll just, I'll chalk it up to that European humility. Chad wants to call this one three Europeans and an idiot, meaning there are three Europeans on the show and me. So I'm gonna try to hold my own for my American, my American brethren, baby idiot. My bad, my bad. Now a lot of our listeners won't know Lou Martin.

Chad Sowash (01:17.932)

Didn't say idiot, I said baby. More like the three men and a baby thing, but okay.

Joel Cheesman (01:28.812)

Javico, give us sort of a real quick Twitter bio about what makes you guys tick. We'll start with Lou.

Lou Goodman (01:37.211)

Yeah, I'm Lou Goodman. I most recently was a monster left early last year. I've spent kind of 25-ish years doing marketing in recruitment and I'm based in the UK as you can probably tell from my accent.

Joel Cheesman (01:55.458)

Martin?

Martin Lenz (01:55.874)

Yeah, Martin Lenz based in Vienna in Austria. I'm a computer scientist by trade. So I used to be a software engineer. I spend a lot of time in management consulting and software engineering. And I just joined the industry nine years ago. And it seems already pretty long. When I say this, this is now my ninth year. And I was joining the industry when Joel was already saying choppots are dying.

Chad Sowash (02:17.346)

yeah. yeah.

Martin Lenz (02:23.978)

So I'm still around and.

Joel Cheesman (02:26.147)

we'll get to that, Martin. Don't you worry. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

Chad Sowash (02:27.785)

Martin Lenz (02:31.128)

Thanks for having me.

Joel Cheesman (02:32.716)

Welcome to be here. have not been to Vienna. Have you been to Vienna, Chad? Yeah? Lou, have you been to Vienna?

Chad Sowash (02:33.013)

Thanks for coming, guys.

hell yeah. Yeah, actually had spent some time with Martin. Martin's taken me out for drinks and yeah, no, it's always a good time in Vienna. God, yes.

Joel Cheesman (02:42.178)

Should I go? What's the cell? Cell Vienna.

Martin Lenz (02:47.68)

It's the second largest German speaking city in Europe. So it's probably also the most livable city. So we usually win these ranks of most livable cities. So there's a lot of culture and a lot of things that you can do. And it's very international.

Chad Sowash (02:47.935)

at one.

Joel Cheesman (03:04.725)

He clearly doesn't know me, Chad, because he would have started off with some verse or some beer, sourbrow, I don't know.

Chad Sowash (03:07.615)

burgers.

Chad Sowash (03:11.17)

Hahaha

Martin Lenz (03:12.834)

There is no Chipotle in Vienna to my knowledge, but there's a great number of burger places and steak places. So you will definitely have a good time in Vienna.

Joel Cheesman (03:25.62)

No, Europe has no stake places. They don't make stake in Europe, I'm sorry. I have yet to have a stake, a real stake in Europe. But that's beside the point. Let's get to this survey. Lou did some extensive research, put together a 54 page document. Lou, tell us about it.

Chad Sowash (03:25.631)

I think.

Chad Sowash (03:31.967)

Joe is biased. Joe is biased.

Lou Goodman (03:48.827)

Yeah, it was a little bit of a labour of love, but the idea really came after Martin and I met at JobBoards Connect last year. And there were a few things that were mentioned there about it was about balancing the need from, know, how you balance employer needs and candidate needs. And it just kind of got me thinking, particularly after, you know, seeing what was going on with Monster around that time, it really kind of got me thinking about

Chad Sowash (04:07.595)

Mm-hmm.

Lou Goodman (04:16.377)

what some of the challenges are that are facing job boards and what you would need to fix them. And every time I thought about something, it kind of opened up another thing, which was, what about ATSs and how about employer behavior? And really kind of just spiraled from there. And then, you know, as I'd met Martin, I talked to him about whether it would be something he might like. And as it was, it kind of, was something I was able to then follow through the thoughts I was having around.

what are the challenges facing the job board industry and what would need to happen to address them.

Chad Sowash (04:50.291)

As another Monster alum, I would have to say that the Monsters, the Career Builders, it feels like it's just the products that were offered back in the day and the products that are offered now, pay-per-click, pay-per-app, they're not really designed to solve the problem, the real problem at hand. They're designed to make you buy more stuff, right? It's very capitalistic in nature where it's like, nah, we're not really gonna give you what you want or need, but we're gonna...

build products that actually make more money for us. What did you find in this research around the actual problems versus the solutions that we've been providing over the years?

Lou Goodman (05:31.055)

Well, just for say, like it wasn't actual bespoke research and there wasn't a survey as such, but it was more just, you know, desktop researcher around them. But I think when you talk about the problems, that was one of the reasons we landed on that as a title, which is that actually what are the problems that need solving and in a two-sided marketplace, you need to be solving more problems for both sides, which means that, you know, the problems that you need to be solving for candidates are

helping them find jobs and for employers is helping them get the right people. And then to your point, Chad, it was actually if that is what you were designing job boards for today, you would design them in different ways. know, job boards came about a long time ago, 30 years ago, and everything in the world was so different then. And actually the volume problem, really, I think it's the volume that used volume used to mean

that you would get enough people, know, you would get enough candidates, you'd get enough applications to find the right people. But that used to be a kind of proxy for quality or a good enough proxy for quality for enough people to keep it going. But it hasn't been for a while. And it's the economy and the advances in technology that are really kind of exacerbating that issue of volume. I think it's the economy was one of the things that

Chad Sowash (06:33.108)

Mm-hmm.

Lou Goodman (06:55.865)

always struck me as one of the most interesting things about recruitment is that in the other two-sided marketplaces don't kind of swing. So from one extreme to another with the economy in quite, quite the same way. So probably a bit of a perfect storm at the moment, but coming with AI and changes and everything else is going on this enabling candidates to submit a lot of applications felt like it was creating a real inflection point.

Chad Sowash (06:59.168)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (07:22.047)

Well, one thing, though, you said this two sided marketplace, but it almost feels like the candidate is not getting what they want. The employer is not getting what they want. The piece in the middle, the monsters, the career builders, the indeed's today, they're the ones that are devising platforms that literally just feed themselves with more money, right? As opposed to not really in. think we also trying to blend a couple of things here. So those are the model problems.

I think we also have another problem where we talk about quality. Nobody knows what the hell quality means. We need to stop talking about quote unquote quality and talk about one thing, qualified. We know what qualified looks like. That's the thing. So when we start talking about quality, well, we need a quality application. That means something to me. It means something entirely different to Joel, something entirely different to you, and something entirely different to Martin.

Lou Goodman (07:55.023)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (08:19.413)

But when it comes to qualified, that's entirely different. Those are hard edged black and white things. So can you talk about those two things? We've got models that focus on quality that is very gray, but then the solution that we really need and we've needed for very, very long time is a qualification, a qualified solution. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lou Goodman (08:40.955)

Yeah, so I love that distinction between quality and qualified and I wish I'd heard that before the report was being published. yeah, we do talk about that in the report. one of the things that we talk about is that actually it's really about, know, especially there's a lot of focus on disposition days, which I know you've talked about a lot and, know, yeah, writing a lot. But it's really I think that there's

Chad Sowash (08:46.731)

That's why I'm here.

Chad Sowash (09:01.131)

Yeah. we'll get into that.

Lou Goodman (09:08.443)

Quality doesn't need to depend on disposition data. I think it's about job boards starting to define what they mean by quality or qualified to use your term. Because actually it really needs to be, if you can't understand the hiring outcome, and I don't think that job board should be focused on the hiring outcome because there's too many factors in between the application and the hire that, you know, completely outside of your job as a, really as a media agent to send that application over. But it's really about saying how I think I phrased in the report is it's about

Chad Sowash (09:27.424)

Yes.

Chad Sowash (09:33.929)

Mm-hmm.

Lou Goodman (09:38.405)

providing the applications that the customers say they want, your employers say that they want. Now with AI and AI applications, that does mean that there has to be more about matching. It's really talking about the fact that the real product of job boards or the problem they should be solving is matching rather than hiring. And so therefore then there's going to need to be some authentication and how are you making sure that you understand that that candidate really is a match, which means instead of kind of just

sending a flow of applications over that you may be going out and finding people, you know, online, you put something in front of them. The part of the job board where you add value is how do you understand that that person is who they say they are? And, know, you've got their profile, the application matches. So really understanding a bit more, bringing more in that sourcing. So you're right. The qualified really needs to be more about saying, this is what you said you wanted, and this is us delivering what you've wanted. And we verified it within reason.

But that does also then mean that there has to start to be some more, in my view, assessment of what, you know, of the jobs. And, know, and if you don't have salary, how do you understand whether somebody is really qualified for that? And is it reasonable? Is the job reasonable? Are you asking for something that actually really requires a huge salary because you're asking for so many different types of skill sets, which is a new area, I think, for kind of job boards to go into.

Chad Sowash (10:48.319)

Right. Right.

Chad Sowash (10:59.467)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (11:03.916)

has, so back in the day, job boards were unapologetically traffic drivers. And the line was, that's what we do. It's up to your ATS, it's up to your screening service or whatever to handle that.

Two part question, our ATS is failing and that's why everyone's saying it's the job board's job now. And secondly, are job boards prepared for this? Because when you have a transformation in an organization, ultimately the people who sell a product that is, post this and we'll get traffic, now have to sell something much more complex. And a lot of companies, job boards aren't prepared for that.

I think that's going to be a serious problem for them. You can't just flip a switch and like, okay, now we sell screening, we sell app quality and like that's very hard to make that culture shift. So two-part question, why are ATS is not doing this? And secondly, how many job boards are prepared for this?

Lou Goodman (12:14.139)

So I mean, with ATSs, I haven't worked that closely with a lot of ATSs. So I don't know why they're not doing this. I think it's because it's kind of multifaceted as well that ATSs really need the input from employers. So how much of it is that employers don't really know what they want? If you look at lot of job descriptions and how they're written, are they really the best ways to get the best people for the job? I think, and that's not meant to be like a criticism of lot of employers. I think there's probably a real

Chad Sowash (12:32.683)

Ha

Lou Goodman (12:43.547)

gap for lot of employers. You when you talk about skills based hiring, which I know is kind of much maligned by some people, understandably, for some reasons. But actually, is that a good way to be hiring people? But if it is, what does that look like? How do you do it? Like, how do you understand what the best practice is? And then our ATS is structured to be able to communicate like that. And then whether job boards are prepared. I mean, I

I don't know, I'm sure a lot of them aren't. know that, you know, when I was a monster, there was so much focus on just trying to get the performance back to where it needed, that thinking about changing like this. And I'm sure that with the economy, there's a lot of, you know, apart from the really big ones, I think a lot of job boards are really struggling to just try and keep the numbers where they need to. So this kind of thinking about what the kind of transformation is needed is really difficult. One of the points that I make in the report though, and I know that Martin and I have discussed it at length, is that this change is going to be coming.

really, you if you look at the market at the moment with this kind of howls of frustration from every single side of it, job boards, employers, recruiters and candidates. So that is a market that is ripe for disruption. And with AI coming in and changing things, job boards could risk just becoming, you know, if if agentic AI really takes off and that's how people find jobs, then our job boards just the kind of, you know, unseen pipelines of data behind that. So I think

Chad Sowash (13:49.515)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (14:03.403)

Mm-hmm.

Lou Goodman (14:09.689)

Sometimes I think the transformation is coming, whether they're ready for it or not. I don't know how quickly it's going to come. I mean, I wouldn't profess to be an expert on AI and it's quite hard to know where it's going, but change is definitely coming.

Joel Cheesman (14:20.706)

mean, my take is 80 % of a budget goes to LinkedIn or Indeed, at least here in the States. 20 % is programmatic, it's hey, I love ZipRecruiter or this job board or that job board. And I don't see that 20%, which I think is what you're talking about primarily in this report of who needs to change and where things are going. I think they're very ill-prepared to have the resources, the expertise, the sort of just to do this.

Chad Sowash (14:46.528)

That's why Martin's on the show so we can actually talk to somebody who deals with technology on the job board side.

Joel Cheesman (14:50.55)

I mean, you deal with these guys. what, what are they going to do? What's, what's your advice to them? Martin.

Martin Lenz (14:56.007)

Yeah. So, so, maybe, maybe, maybe through your question first, I think, and, Lou writes about this in the report really well. there is a lack of incentive, for ATS to really create standards in this, in this ecosystem because they're, they're still serving a different business model and, and, and need. we, when, whenever we have a presentation, we always.

We always show our products on the recruiting funnel and the recruiting funnel doesn't stop at the point of application, but there's so many more steps that are typically in different systems and there's so many systems along this funnel and we try to really create this end-to-end solution, but we stop at the application typically. And there's a growing, I would say,

solution ecosystem that provides integrations to ATS systems. And then it goes also to this discussion about disposition data. But there is also a lack of interest around employers to really share what they are, how they are actually really evaluating who they are hiring. Right. So just because you get the disposition data and you know, this person has been hired, you don't know anything about why this happened. Like

Was it the skills? Was it the salary? Was it because you got more budget to hire more people or you had a cost cut or whatsoever? You don't get this information. I don't think that employers want to share that. On the point of are they prepared? I mean, this is ultimately the reason why we wanted to get this report out because it really outlines why there is an opportunity for job boards to

create more value in the market because if they just play the volume game, if they just follow this, what we call an initiative, vacation process, get more margin out of it, get more revenue out of it. You will definitely create a a worse user experience. And ultimately you will, you will not be able to compete with, with the big ones. But here is where there is a lot of opportunity around curation.

Martin Lenz (17:11.8)

the matching, when you're a niche site or a regional site. Also around customer success and customer support. If you are able to get in touch with your customers and try to understand why this job is working well or not. And Lou actually in the report creates a very simple idea of what are the minimum requirements that a job should have. So you should actually accept it to make it comparable.

If you create it, if it's measurable, if you create a good match. So Louis talking about this in the report, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that you can experiment. So I think the report will definitely help shop board operators to think about that. Because at the moment, everyone is stuck in this, what we call marketing myopia. We are just trying to optimize the products that we're selling and we're trying to measure.

the metrics that we know and, you know, we are, we are building job boards. are technologists and technologists love things that they can measure. And, uh, but we measure clicks, apply starts applications and et cetera, because we are able to measure it, but not because it's the right, because it's the right thing to measure. And this comes to this point of, well, ultimately it's a very subjective, uh, reason why one.

Chad Sowash (18:18.453)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (18:23.595)

you

Martin Lenz (18:37.902)

per one person fits to this company and to the other. I would even say it's like a hyper subjective world that the recruiting space is in. And we can't measure this, but here's the opportunity. a thing, on a, sorry.

Chad Sowash (18:52.073)

You can't be responsible for it either. I mean, if you can't measure it, you can't be responsible for it. And it's also like you'd said before, there are many aspects of the actual hiring process where you have no control. So therefore, it's kind of like people talking about getting paid per hire. That's the dumbest shit I think I've heard of in so long because there's such a huge gap in which...

Martin Lenz (19:06.05)

Yes.

Chad Sowash (19:16.649)

The job site has nothing to do with the process. They might have a crappy manager. They might have a crappy culture. There could be a ton of different things. Not to mention, if I'm pushing 50 candidates on you and you're hiring one, I just sent you 49 different leads for the next for the next shot. Right. So, I mean, it it seems like we are trying to Ph.D. the hell out of a solution that literally just needs a primary school solution to

Martin Lenz (19:21.027)

Yes.

Chad Sowash (19:45.38)

It's like we do this as human beings.

Martin Lenz (19:47.874)

Yeah. And some of these things are quite simple as you say, but I think it's very tempting to think that you can control it. And a lot of what we are talking about in the report is that potentially this match is more, is a better recruiting outcome that you can generate than just the number of applications or the number of clicks. but there is still, there's still a question, how much are they prepared? From a technology perspective,

I would say everybody that runs on a tropical platform is well prepared because we are equipping our clients for adaptability. And I think this is what is needed in like, know, AI is coming, everything is changing. You need to be resilient in times of a weak economy, but you also need to be able to run experiments. in the report we talk about, okay, let's assume you run a health job board. Maybe you want to experiment with a certain customer segment.

like how you curate jobs, like you don't accept any job that has no salary on it. And you don't accept any job that has not a clear comparable and benchmarked requirements list on it. And you just accept this and see how it's working. And it's much easier for smaller sites to do this. they're equipped if they have the technology. Technology is usually in the background. this is the bigger discussion is.

Lou Goodman (21:03.611)

Thank

Martin Lenz (21:13.258)

Are you able to adopt your business model and the way you're selling? think this is much harder than exchanging the technology. The technology just must not be in your way. Right? So there is this agentic layer. So you need to be able to handle different API requests, different level of data exchanges. There is, I wouldn't say this is all table stakes, but this is a growing demand that all these technology platforms have that you need to solve.

But ultimately, we need this input and understanding from the operators of the sites to curate this whole experience. So I think that most parts of the market are not well prepared, but we are trying to educate them with the report and guide them a little bit because everybody is afraid to even lose the last piece of revenue that sticks around. And protectionism of what works.

Chad Sowash (22:09.173)

We saw that with Monster. We saw that with CareerBuilder, but indeed, smash them, right? So it's like, if we don't evolve, this is exactly what's gonna happen, right? So, Lou, in the paper, it actually talks about activity versus outcomes, right? Can you dig into that a little bit?

Martin Lenz (22:17.443)

Yeah.

Lou Goodman (22:29.453)

Yeah, so it's really kind of what Martin said is you know, you're act monetizing activity. So clicks, your traffic, those are, yeah, apps, you know, really, those things aren't outcomes. Now, when we say outcomes, people automatically think hiring outcomes, which is why we, we had quite a discussion on it. But we use the term recruiting outcomes, because that is broader. If you say hiring outcomes, people automatically think higher. And for every reason we've discussed, people can't always be

Chad Sowash (22:35.455)

Yeah. Click apps.

Lou Goodman (22:57.243)

you know, you can't deliver to that. I do see sometimes when job boards are talking about, you know, the quality and what we can deliver, they say, well, we don't get access to this disposition data and there can be a little bit of helplessness around that. And so how do you identify what the outcomes are? At the end of the day, if you deliver what you say you're going to deliver and people value what you've delivered, it doesn't need to be a hire. If it's a good match, one of the things I think I talk about is, you know,

especially with the hiring thing, you know, what you're saying is if you, if you pay for a hire, but quite often hiring managers will want to make sure particularly in a market like this, that they've seen enough people to feel like they've got a list that they can choose from. And so you, do you need to provide them with 40 candidates just, you know, to a hiring manager who's doing the interviewing feels like they've seen enough people and that, you know, that is okay. If that's what that company wants, if that's how they operate and that's what the recruiters know they need to do.

Joel Cheesman (23:48.343)

Mm-hmm.

Lou Goodman (23:55.503)

then your job is to provide them with enough good matches for the hiring manager to make the choice. You don't need to get the right person who's hired. So really with the outcomes, I mean, that is difficult. And this is where I think the adaptability comes in because different companies are going to want different things. And there's a spectrum that we put in there, which is, you know, what kind of job board are you? There's been so much fragmentation in the job board market, but really with the number of suppliers haven't really seen it in the kind of service that they deliver.

I do think that might be the next evolution. So there are other jobs like Uber, Amazon, seasonal workers, things where the commoditized traffic where you're just sending lots of applications is what's needed because the requirements for the job are, it's not specialist, you need a number of people and you can have a wide range of people. And those are more like your commoditized traffic.

brokers, but then you could have some things right up to maybe some people do deliver hires more like an online recruitment consultancy. Although I think it's worth remembering that why recruitment consultancies get paid the money they do is that they take all the risk that they don't get the money unless somebody is hired. And then usually they have to give the money back if they leave within a certain time. I think it's really just thinking about what is it that you can deliver? And if do you have the opportunity to deliver different things if different customers

want certain things if there is a company where they need to see a certain number of people and getting that long list is the most important thing to them. Can you deliver that? Whereas you might have some other people who may want to see all the applications or some others who might want you to do some screening. So I think as Martin said, it's the technology allowing the adaptability.

Joel Cheesman (25:35.478)

Yep. Looking, look, looking to the future and it's sort of a common phenomenon now is the quiet hiring trend. basically we don't post jobs. we have a database of everybody on the planet. We can unleash the agents and find people that way. Is this a passing fad or job boards preparing for that reality? Like what, what for both of you, your take on the quiet hiring phenomenon.

Lou Goodman (26:08.899)

Okay, I'll go first. Yeah. So that was actually one of the questions that after the job board connect that prompted me to write this was, you know, there was the usual question of a job boards dying. And I thought, okay, well, what if we flipped that? Why should job boards exist? And I do think that there is value in having something where you can see what jobs there are, people can move around.

because you can't get a job that you don't know exists. And so I'm sure that quiet hiring, know, it's essentially just networking, isn't it? an AI agents enabling networking at a different scale, maybe widening that out. I think that will always happen. But I do think that there is a role for people and being able to see all of the jobs that are out there. And if they want to move somewhere, move somewhere different, try a different, you know, role that they can do that.

Chad Sowash (26:44.907)

Mm.

Lou Goodman (26:58.947)

And equally, think that there is something for brands, maybe particularly smaller companies, being able to get in front of a wider audience that they may not be able to get in front of. Now, I don't know whether agents would be able to replicate that fairly. I think the question for me that comes up is like, who then is deciding what jobs get in front of what people or what people get pulled in for what jobs? If it is a black box type thing, how does that happen? There's a transparency, I think, with job boards.

Chad Sowash (27:14.155)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (27:27.126)

Well, it gives control to the employer, right? Because it lets them decide what am I going to promote and what aren't I and how am I going to promote it if it's with agents or not. I I look at this as a serious threat to job boards if this is a trend that holds true. Martin, your thoughts?

Martin Lenz (27:43.83)

Yeah, think there's a couple of people that truly believe that there's quiet hiring. You call it quiet hiring, but that there's basically the employers knowing everything about the candidates and you just, just ingest like contingent opportunities and job postings there and you just accept and you automatically know. I don't know if the power really shifts so much to...

Chad Sowash (28:03.467)

Thank

Martin Lenz (28:12.974)

to the employer and Chopwits can play a very important role in that because they are the trusted system of record also to provide the discovery. it doesn't necessarily, whenever we talk about Chopwits, we always think about a front end where you can enter like a search query, right? But it could also be an API for an agent. So there was a recent economist article that Lou shared with me where it said, actually the candidates

Chad Sowash (28:22.208)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (28:29.931)

Mm-hmm.

Martin Lenz (28:41.742)

currently win the AI race because they are much more familiar using the AI tools than recruiters are. So you may have your own agent as a candidate and you want to know what fits best for you and the agent just gets all the data from the trusted sources that are the job boards. So that could basically shift the power also to the candidate side. At the end of the day, we hope that there is an equilibrium because other than that,

Joel Cheesman (29:08.683)

It won't if the jobs aren't out there. If the agent can't find a job, it doesn't empower the job seeker.

Chad Sowash (29:11.701)

That's the thing though. Well, that's the thing though. And I think we're missing.

Martin Lenz (29:15.628)

Yeah, that's why, that's why, but, there are opportunities and employers are competing against each other. And, know, this is, this is the same, like the question of would it make sense to provide the perfect match to, to an employer? And what you see on LinkedIn when, when this active search started, especially in IT, when the IT demand was increased, there was a, there was a strong gravitation around the same profiles. Like the best developers, they get like 10 requests per day.

Lou Goodman (29:29.787)

you

Martin Lenz (29:45.324)

And others get got zero. So there is no, there is no real marketplace, exchange. And on top of that, so, so I think employers to be able to compete, need to get their jobs out because otherwise they, don't know if they get enough of the exposure or just the biggest one wins or the one with the most power to, to, fuel their agents because there is, there is less transparency around. Why do I even get this?

job opportunity, right? So I think that people really demand for this transparency and it will be harder to understand, I really see all the opportunities? Well, I just showed a limited number of opportunities. But that's just my take.

Chad Sowash (30:30.571)

Well, that's going to come to trust. But I think we're missing one big piece here. And I think there's going to be whiplash, because obviously the United States is doing nothing with regard to enforcement around compliance and bias right now. That is something that nobody is talking about, this quiet hiring thing. OK, it's happening now. But as soon as a new administration comes in that actually cares about process enforcement and bias, this is all going to go away. Why? Because the biggest companies in the world

have to post their jobs to be able to get federal funds. Companies who get hundreds of millions and or billions of dollars, you know how they have to comply with continuing to get those contracts? One of those things is to post their jobs. So yes, I understand that we're kind of in a lawless, Wild West bullshit administration kind of gap, but once that stops, there's gonna be some whiplash. And if companies have not been actually going through the process that

that they should be, whether it's OFCP, EEOC, doesn't matter, and they've been getting federal funds, they will get slapped incredibly hard and, prospectively, taken hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars out. And that is what they worry about the most. So to think that, we're gonna go to quiet hiring. To me, with the risk of losing those types of contracts, I don't see it, guys. I just don't see it. It makes for a great byline. It makes for a great discussion. But to be quite frank,

Being in this industry as long as I have, working with federal government, state government, and the tech players, I don't see it happening. I think it's a blip.

Martin Lenz (32:06.574)

So, I mean, on top of that, most of the employers still have not managed to get all their jobs on Google for jobs. And that was a quite simple thing to do, right? With the ATS involved. I just have a hard time believing that suddenly everybody has such an easier time to get into this quiet hiring network or Nexus. And I think at some point,

Job boards will again be the activators for that, but we need to, we need to at some point rethink that there's just a front end for discovery. It can also be, it can also be this agentic layer where you provide the data and you're still curating and creating the trust. Like you make sure that what, what, what the, what the service is to the employer. Like, are you actually bidding the right thing? Because if you, if you have this job tile with this requirements in this location.

with this salary, you probably won't find anyone. And maybe at some point it's the service around getting the search into this, I would say, hiring ecosystem.

Joel Cheesman (33:18.114)

All right, guys, it's in the summary. Everyone wants me to ask the question. We'll start with Lou, convince me that job boards aren't dying, which by the way is a funny question to ask a former Monster employee based on what Monster has gone through in the past couple of years. So here's your chance, sell job boards to me.

Chad Sowash (33:21.951)

Ha

Chad Sowash (33:31.547)

Hahaha

Lou Goodman (33:38.233)

Yeah, I don't think they're dying right now. And I think we need them. I do think that job boards have a role to play, but I do think that there is a lot of change coming and I do think they need to change. So I think that this needs to be that they go through like, you know, what the phone has gone through. If we look at how people use, you know, we say a phone now, but calling people on it is probably one of the smallest things that we do. And I think that job boards need to go through that similar kind of evolution. So I think that there is a real

need for this. And I think the thing I would say is in that from that last discussion we were just having, I was thinking that, you know, quiet hiring, do we think that quiet hiring is what companies are going to need to do? Let's imagine hopefully like that tomorrow, the economy rebounded and everything was going brilliantly. That changes the need of what companies have. And I think that that thing as well is when job boards, they if they can take that specialism, if they can own an audience, if they can become a trusted source, then

Then, you know, it becomes a different thing. They can help companies when they are competing for talent again. And let's hope we get back to that soon. Then they can get, you know, companies in front of right people because they're trusted. In times like this, what it needs to be is with the quiet hiring. I think what is attractive for that for companies is that there's not the overwhelm. So that's where job boards to make sure that they don't die out. They need to be working out how they deliver that.

Joel Cheesman (35:02.21)

I'm hearing a lot of ifs, ands, or buts from you, Lou, but not quite convincing. Martin, your shot.

Martin Lenz (35:09.275)

Yeah, so I was joining the industry roughly 10 years ago at a time when everybody already said job boards are dying. And my confidence is that they're not dying because even like in every phase of also the like development of the job board ecosystem and the recruitment ecosystem, there has always been this immense need for trusted systems of record.

And I don't think that all the agentic layers that are around there will be this system of record that provides the data in a certain way. I definitely think that job boards will at some point be commoditized and that there will be more, consolidation, if you will, because they are not able to adapt to this new AI technology or to like the new business models, because they're stuck in their old, in their old business models. But,

I think what we're all searching for when asking this question is when will the term job board die? Because it feels like we need a new way of describing it. And I would agree the term job board will maybe die ultimately, but the value that they provide, it will probably not die the next 10 years.

Chad Sowash (36:26.609)

Next 10 years, cheeseman.

Joel Cheesman (36:27.532)

We just need to call it something different. that's how we don't kill, that's how they don't die. We'll call them something else.

Chad Sowash (36:32.71)

It's kind of like a It's like monster board. It used to be monster board. Then they dropped the board, right? They called it something different. Who knows? Who knows what we're going to call it? But I do know one thing. We need to know where the hell we can find this research. Lou, if somebody wants to connect with you or maybe even find the research, where can they find you? Where can they download this information?

Lou Goodman (36:55.333)

So the research is downloadable on the Jobaco site. So until we've released, people can sign up. And once it's published, they will get the report as soon as it's out, we'll putting the finishing touches on it now. So it will be very shortly. And people can find me on my website is luugoodman.co.uk or on LinkedIn.

Chad Sowash (37:15.211)

How about you, Martin? How can people connect with you and convince you that what we should call job boards next?

Martin Lenz (37:22.998)

Yeah, I have a regular discussion with a of people about that. So, best place to find me is on LinkedIn. I'm very responsive on LinkedIn. So just type in Martin Lenz and Jobiqo. I also posted the link. Maybe you can highlight it in your show notes. It's jobiqo.com slash job minus board minus revolution. That's J-O-B-I-Q-O.com.

shop minus port minus revolution, and you can download it there. And as you say, like in the beginning, you said 80 % of the traffic is coming from Indeed. We want to equip this 20 % with the right tools and knowledge so Indeed finally stops the ancientification.

Joel Cheesman (38:08.982)

There's the sales pitch. There's the sales pitch. It's lunchtime and I'm oddly enticed by Vienna sausages for some reason. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out.