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Job Boards and Newspapers Join Forces
Experts had mixed reactions to the partnerships aimed to enhance online and newspaper job searches. Yahoo!, Monster and Google all expanded their reach into local print markets.
A string of recent partnerships between job boards and newspapers should benefit both parties, as well as employers in search of talent, experts say. But while the deals could initially be a boon for the companies involved, some say that success might be difficult to sustain. Looking to enlarge their footprints in local markets around the country, Google, Yahoo! and Monster each formed partnerships with U.S. daily newspaper chains in the past few weeks. On Nov. 20, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! HotJobs announced the largest of the deals, hooking up with seven major newspaper chains producing more than 150 daily newspapers. Under the agreement, the newspapers will have the right to sell Yahoo! HotJobs ads on their own or as a part of an online and print package. Members in the consortium span 38 states and include Belo Corp., Cox Newspapers Inc., Hearst Newspapers, Journal Register Co., Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group and the E.W. Scripps Co. The newspapers include major dailies, such as San Francisco Chronicle,The Dallas Morning News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle,Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and San Jose Mercury-News. "This announcement is consistent with our strategy to establish relationships that advance Yahoo!'s objective of securing leading positions where we see the biggest prospects for growth," says Chairman and CEO Terry Semel. "We believe the local segment is largely untapped and provides significant opportunities to expand audience engagement and subsequently grow local advertising." The arrangement also includes integrating Yahoo!'s search monetization functionality on the newspapers' Web site and the posting of the newspapers' content on Yahoo!'s site. The Yahoo! partnership comes on the heels of an attempt by Google Inc. to use its search engine to sell advertising in leading dailies. In early November, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced a three-month test allowing newspaper advertisers to purchase ad space, including classified ads, through Google's Web site. Roughly 50 newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, are participating in the test. Meanwhile, as a part of what it describes as its "localization strategy," Monster Worldwide, based in Maynard, Mass., announced on Nov. 27 co-branding relationships with the North Jersey Media Group, owner of The (Bergen) Record and Herald News, as well as the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, bringing its media alliances to 43 daily newspapers and eight television properties. "Our first media alliance with Philadelphia Media Holdings has yielded strong results to date, including a 25-percent increase in the number of page views recorded on philly.com's career page, underscoring the synergy that is created ... ." says Doug Klinger, president of Monster North America. The Wilkes-Barre TimesLeader's co-branded site will launch in the coming weeks. The co-branded sites for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the North Jersey Media Group will be unveiled in January. These partnerships are a "win-win-win for job boards, newspapers and employers," says Peter Weddle, president of Weddle's, a publisher of guides to employment Web sites, based in Stamford, Conn. "The newspapers realize that their strength in the local market is no longer a competitive advantage," Weddle says. "They need a national and even international presence." Meanwhile, he says, the online job boards should benefit from the professional career-related content produced by the newspapers. The future success of these partnerships, however, will depend less on strategy and more on execution, he adds. A recent study by the New York-based Conference Board of 5,000 households suggests that Internet and print ads ranked well above other methods used by active job seekers, with seven of 10 respondents reporting they used one of the two in their job searches. "The Internet has definitely become an established method of job search," says June Shelp, an economist with the Conference Board, "but job seekers are still combing print ads as well." Not everyone, however, is optimistic about the prospects for the online-print partnerships. While it seems logical for the online job boards to seek partnerships with newspapers in the hopes of reaching local communities, the reality is that newspapers have "failed to sustain their market dominance [in the communities they serve],"says Gerry Crispin, principal of CareerXroads, a Kendall Park, N.J.-based consulting firm and publisher of online job board guides. By viewing their classified business as cash cows rather than investments, he says, newspapers have watched "things go from bad to worse." Over time, Crispin predicts, local organizations and other affinity groups that successfully focus on specific areas of interest will emerge as much more effective tools for job seekers and employers. Eventually, he says, they will "bypass the online job boards and newspapers." In evaluating the job boards, senior executives need to determine the "yields" for specific job families, Crispin says. "It's not about the traffic, it's about the hires," he notes. "For every $1,000 spent, how many people or what portion of a person do you hire for a certain job family?" While they do have metrics, the job boards and newspapers have yet to demonstrate they produce hires, he says.
December 6, 2006 Copyright 2006© LRP Publications |
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