Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces

Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is Deborah C. Newton of Newton Steele. And, like it or not, cohost Peter M. Zollman was unavailable and so our audience is stuck with just our other cohost, Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site. Deborah works with sales leaders of organizations in just about every industry and of every size to help ensure that the right salespeople are in the right seats and that they're set up for success. A salesperson can be wildly successful at one organization and then awful at another. They might be successful for a while, then not, then are again. Is all of that within their control, or are there macroeconomic conditions impacting their success? What happens when macroeconomic conditions make us more successful that we might have expected, or less? Should we take the foot off the gas when times are good? How much doomsday preparation should we be doing?

One of the founders of our entire industry is today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast: Doug Berg, who likes to call himself the chief matchmaker at Match2. Doug has founded, invested, and otherwise been a key player in dozens of start-ups and well-established players in the TA tech space. Cohosts Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site and Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group talk with Doug a little about some of those, including Techies.com, Jobs2web, and Indeed but focus on how Match2 is using AI to solve the problem of poorly qualified candidates applying to jobs, yet also being mindful of the need for that AI to be assistive and not assumptive. If you're sorting, matching, or ranking applicants in an effort to improve quality, or even just considering it, some of what Doug tells us might come as a surprise.

David Viney, owner of Alchemy Consulting Services and fractional CIO, and Jon Hyman, attorney, shareholder, and director of Wickens Herzer Panza law firm, join the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast for this extended episode. Together with cohosts Peter M. Zollman of the AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, we discuss what is perhaps the hottest topic in our space: whether recent legislation in the EU and UK (and court decisions in the US) make it illegal for job boards to use AI to rank, score, or match candidates against job opportunities. Many employers and TA tech providers would like to think that their AI-powered hiring solutions are both moral and legal because they improve efficiencies and maybe even help to surface candidates who otherwise would have gone unnoticed. Those folks may be in for a rude awakening, as it's pretty clear that's not enough. Not nearly enough.

Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast holds a patent related to what we now know as programmatic job advertising. Jason S. Gorham is the co-founder of TalentXi-TalentXtended Intelligence, which is bringing consumer-style, true programmatic advertising to the world of job advertising. Cohosts Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site and Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group talk with Jason about how TalentXi takes a job posting ad, converts it into a display ad, hyper targets candidates on consumer sites such as Amazon.com, and takes them from pre-passive to passive to engaged to applicants. If all of your employer customers are receiving more than enough well-qualified applicants to all of their roles, they probably don't need TalentXi. But virtually no employer does, and that's probably why they're working with you, and might also want to work with TalentXi, either directly or through you.

Len Ward, founder of Commexis, joins the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast to share his vision (and a few fun historical and military analogies) about how AI is and will continue to impact our industry, including the candidates and employers we serve. Unlike many AI experts, Len is bullish on the ability of the smallest sites to not survive and even thrive. Sure, the small guys have always been the most nimble but Len says that their future prosperity is not just about being nimble. Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of the AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site dig into how AI is and will help and hurt job boards of all sizes. If you're wondering what your next steps should be in this new world, Len has the answers.

Our industry may be several decades old, but it seems like the pace of change has only been accelerating over the past couple of years. That change includes technology, but also leadership, investors, and ownership. Sarah White of Sarah White Advisory and Strategy Lemon joins the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast to talk about some of that change, with a focus on what owners, founders, and leaders should be thinking about if they're considering exiting their business. Our cohosts, Peter M. Zollman of the AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site share some of what they've seen done well and not so well, and find out why 24-36 months is both important and yet also not necessary.

The mad scientist of online recruiting a/k/a Chris Russell of RecTech Media / Job Board Secrets is the guest on today's episode of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast. Peter M. Zollman of the AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) is back from his fantastic vacation exploring some of the fantastic islands between Scotland and Iceland. Together with Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, we discuss some of the biggest mistakes new and long-time job board operators make. Some mistakes are similar to those that small business people in any industry make. Others are very much specific to our industry. Which ones did we miss?

We're taking a little trip down memory lane on today's episode of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast. One of our cohosts, Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group, is unavailable and so our other cohost, Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, is flying solo. Steven talks with Jeanette Leeds, COO of College Recruiter, about applicant tracking systems (ATS), recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) organizations, and whether they used to and currently play nicely with job boards. Do they view our industry a complementary, or competitive? Are those feelings reciprocal?

If there's one thing that never changes about job boards it is that they never stop changing. Our businesses, at a very high level, are pretty much the same as they were when our industry came into existence in the 1990s. But, scratch the surface, and almost nothing is the same. A change that some believe is imminent is the replacement of the written job posting, resume, or both with something else. Could that something else be voice? Instead of searching a job board for postings and applying by uploading a resume, will candidates instead be called by AI, go through an automated screening process, and be hired in a few days instead of a few week? Prompted by the recent acquisition of Ben Groves' ApplyCall.Jobs by Tom Chevalier's Tink AI, our cohosts, Peter M. Zollman of the AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site debate.

Cohost Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group is home from Budapest, Hungary, the site of their 2026 RecBuzz conference. By all accounts, it was a tremendous success. Peter shares some of the highlights of the discussions with cohost Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, including the shift away from traditional metrics of success such as traffic, listings, and applications and to placement rates. SEEK, for example, is saying that it is now the source for 36 percent of hires in its home market of Australia. Driving much of this shift in metrics is the shift toward the use of AI for matching, screening, and even selection. Will job boards / recruitment marketplaces continue to play a major role over the coming years?

Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is Saïd Eastman, a 20-year industry veteran and former executive at Monster and CareerBuilder. Cohost Peter M. Zollman of the AIM Group is in Budapest, Hungary for its annual RecBuzz conference, so our other cohost, Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site, talks with Saïd about how the stealth start-up that he is leading is aiming to bring much needed improvement to the industry by providing the tools and incentives so that candidates become active participants instead of products. Saïd and Steven discuss how there's no simple solution. Some of what is required is a change to how we think about the process, and some requires some technology such as blockchain to validate credentials and engagement.

Lee Cage Jr. is today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast. He is the Director for Enterprise Transformation, Strategy, and Technology for BDO USA; a human resources management NCO for the U.S. Army National Guard; and the host of the "15 Minutes With" podcast, hosted by WRKdefined. Oh, and he's also a musician. Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Lee how choosing to not take action is a choice and that we should embrace the idea of taking baby steps when we're faced with large projects or challenges. He also has some very wise closing advice about how our industry uses technology.

It's been a lean year for just about every job board in just about every country and niche. Customers aren't buying as many postings or resume/CV searching packages, and so revenues for many are flat or down. Are there other ways to both help and monetize the candidates who use our sites? Marc Belaiche, is the founder of Guhuza and TorontoJobs.ca. He joins cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site to discuss additional revenue opportunities. One is to add interview-on-demand tech that delivers to employers a short list of matching candidates and enables them to schedule interviews as soon as they and the employer are both available, which often is within minutes.

It never ceases to amaze us how different companies in our space build their businesses. Some focus narrowly and try to dominate a niche. Others diversify into related businesses like ATS, career fairs,and employer branding. Przemek Gacek is the CEO of Grupa Pracuj, the dominant job board in Poland with significant business in Ukraine and Germany. During the Great Recession of 2009-10, they began to diversify into related businesses, which made them a more strategic vendor for employers and better defend against competitors, including Indeed. Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Przemek not just their past moves, but where they're heading, including acquisitions.

For the past 1.5 years, our founder, Steven Rothberg, has hosted a very collegial and collaborative online meeting of dozens of leaders of job boards and recruitment marketplaces. The Job Board Leaders’ Roundtable meetings are held at 11:00am U.S. Eastern on the second Thursday of each month. They’re all free to everyone involved. Send an email to Steven at Steven@CollegeRecruiter.com to be added to the invitation list for future events. Initially, the meetings had no real agenda but were just friendly places to share ideas. We quickly moved to a format where each meeting had a particular topic, and Steven moderated the discussion. Starting in January, the format has further evolved to feature a guest who Steven interviews for roughly the first half hour, and then we open up the conversation so that any attendee can ask questions, share ideas, etc. Today’s episode featured Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of the AIM Group. Their business is focused primarily on classified advertising in verticals such as real estate, automobiles, and jobs. For jobs, they host the annual RecBuzz conference and also publish the Recruitment Intelligence Report. Steven and others from College Recruiter have attended (and loved) RecBuzz multiple times and have subscribed to the Report since its very first edition. Steven and Peter also cohost the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast. Peter, Steven, and a number of today’s attendees discuss the dominance of LinkedIn and Indeed in our industry, how that wasn’t accidental but due to a lot of great decision making and execution by both, and how best the tens of thousands of other sites in our industry can not only survive but even thrive.

Remember the days when a family member helped you write your resume / CV, found jobs that were a good match, and even submitted applications for you? AI can now do all of that for you, but that's not to say that it does it well. Yes, employers have AI agents that search for and contact candidates. And, yes, candidates have AI agents that search for and apply to jobs. But those agents can't find or communicate with each other, or can they? Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is Tom Chevalier, former product manager at Appcast, Inc and now the founder of start-up Tink AI, a meeting place of sorts for employer and candidate AI agents. Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Tom whether AI agents spell doom for job boards. His direct and confident answer may surprise you.

On today's episode of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast, we're joined by Kelly Gorfine of Horizon2Media, which 10 months ago acquired aggregator Zhejiang Jiuerjiu Chemicals Co.,LTD, and Christopher Campbell of Reticular Media. Together, they walk cohosts Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site and Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group through JuJu's history, its decline, Kelly's decision to acquire it, and how its business model will and will not change. Some of what won't changed might surprise you, and some of what will change will almost certainly surprise you.

New sites in our industry often face a chicken-and-egg problem: do you need meaningful candidate engagement before you can get meaningful revenue from employers, or do you need meaningful employer engagement before you can get meaningful traffic? Today's guest on the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is Timothy Makalinao of Bandana, a new job board based in Brooklyn, New York that cracked the secret to building massive organic traffic without first winning a massive employer engagement. How? By using LLMs and other tech to create a superior candidate experience and really, really understanding the nuances of its local markets. Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss with Tim his family's immigrant success story, the origins of Bandana, and what's next in this inspiring story.

Today's Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast is a little different than what we usually do. Cohosts Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds) and Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site discuss the content creators we follow to keep up with developments in our industry. In alphabetic order, they include Heather Bussing, Kate Bischoff, Joel Cheesman, Gerry Crispin, Jeff Dickey-Chasins, Adam Gordon, Chris Hoyt, Jon Hyman, Jeanette Leeds, Hung Lee, Chris Russell, Chad Sowash, Julie Sowash, John Sumser, and Kevin Wheeler. Oh, and each other. Some publish e-newsletters, others podcasts or webcasts. Some do more than one. Some are available for free. Others cost money, but are well worth it. Who did we miss?

On today's Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces Podcast, we dive into an issue that impacts almost every site to some degree: fake jobs, candidate profiles, or both. Fraud prevention and scam investigation consultant JAY JONES is the owner of The Profiler Protection Service. And he's a man on a mission to protect all of us, including his job board and candidate clients, from fraud. For example, he helped Teal get 150 fake jobs removed from LinkedIn (see https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonesdoyoucopy_theprofiler-activity-7407362764278632448-ftVr ). Together with cohosts Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter job search site and Peter M. Zollman of AIM Group (Marketplaces / Classifieds), we learn how to find the fraudulent content, the impact it can have if left unchecked, why our industry is vulnerable to it, and how to get it removed.