As usual, there was much sturm und drang about social media, the lingering recession, and the Iowa caucuses — no, wait, that’s another post.

At any rate, here are the things I thought were most notable:

Job boards did not die: Yes, the combined power of thousands of bloggers and SM evangelists simply could not bring down the 100K+ or so job boards around the world. In fact, the publicly held boards seemed to recover nicely as the year progressed (er, maybe not Monster’s stock). Well, hope springs eternal, right? Maybe in 2012?

LinkedIn got serious about making money: Nothing like an IPO to focus a company’s attention. LI settled down to creating more recruitment products for its audience of employers and recruiters to buy, and it continued working on the 1-5% of its users who actually visit the site monthly to pay for that privilege. LI is not going away, folks — and that means you, job boards.

Monster fought back: The job-board monolith made several key moves in 2011 that kept it in the game and growing. First, it launched a Facebook offensive via its BeKnown app (tens of thousands of users and climbing). Next, it introduced SeeMore, a database-bridging search tool aimed directly at the LinkedIn threat. I expect to see more initiatives in 2012 (once it gets past that stock thing, that is).

Matching sites proliferated: Taking their place alongside well-established job-matching sites such as RealMatch and JobFox were new entrants: VentuRocket, Grex, Direct Approach Solutions, JobHat, Geekfinder — the list goes on and on. Have any of them solved the precision issues that have historically plagued matching sites? Stay tuned.

Mobile kept growing: It was no surprise that mobile continued to make significant inroads into the online recruiting space. According to Beyond, 77% of job seekers were using mobile in 2011. Is your site “mobilized”?

The .jobs universe fizzled: 2011 should have been the year that the .jobs universe grew. Perhaps it did, but the adoption rate among companies I surveyed was still below 15%. Legal issues may make this a shrinking universe.

Money started moving: As John Sumser pointed out in a recent post, acquisitions increased in the online recruiting space  – and that shouldn’t change in 2012. As we inch our way out of the recession, a combustible combination of pent-up demand, smart use of technology, and pre-emptive strikes against competitors will keep the pipes full.

Temps became the new perms: The recession left considerably fewer jobs in its wake — and more of those left were filled by temps. This drove up business for staffing firms and freelance sites such as oDesk and eLance, and changed hiring cycle patterns throughout the industry.

TheLadders said “adios” to $100K only: In a move that probably surprised no one, TheLadders moved away from its long-held position and embraced jobs under the $100K mark. But it’s still not a job board, right? At least, that’s what its ads say …

Indeed targeted employers: After years of saying it worked with job boards rather than against them, Indeed began directly competing for employer dollars. Monster was not amused.

So why do we see so many boring, long, and legalistic job ads — postings that are really just job descriptions? I suspect it boils down to a few things:

• No time
• Not enough of the right kind of information about the job
• Outside pressures (from the hiring manager, other departments, etc.)
• A less-than-clear understanding of how to create an effective job ad

In a session at ERE’s fall conference, I’ll be tackling the challenge of creating compelling, enticing, and effective job ads. I’ll be looking at some of the best examples — and examining why the bad ones are so awful. I’ll talk about how a great job ad lowers your cost per hire and drives up the quality of your candidates. And I’ll cover why the art of creating a great job ad transcends any technological changes — be they social media, job boards, or ATSs.

Most importantly, I’ll break apart the different parts of a job ad and show you how they work, how to build them, and how to improve your recruiting results as you do so.

I encourage you to join me in “Job ads That Deliver Results,” Friday, September 9, from 2 to 3 p.m.

Ask yourself: as a recruiter, is this really the best you can do?

I would suggest that, in fact, you can do better — and that doing better will bring you great rewards.

In the fall session of ERE’s conference, we will be tackling the challenge of creating compelling, enticing, and effective job ads. We’ll be looking at some of the best examples — and examining why the bad ones are so awful. We’ll talk about why the art of creating a great job ad transcends any technological changes, be they social media, job boards, or ATSs, and how a great job ad lowers your cost per hire and drives up the quality of your candidates.

But September is a long time from now, and I really want to get started — so I’m making an open call for the best and worst job ads you’ve seen (or even created yourself).

• Is the language impenetrable?
• Is it impossible to tell what the duties are?
• Does the company inadvertently reveal more about itself than perhaps it should have?
• Is the language so hip it’s square?
• Does it leave out critical information?
• Does it exceed the length of a typical novella?

Post your favorite ‘best’ and ‘worst’ in the comments below. Who knows? Perhaps we can line up some prizes for the best (worst?) submissions!

PS: If you have an ad that produced great results but doesn’t look like it should’ve — let us know! There is almost always some reason to the rhyme.

How can a free job board survive? Some make money from advertising (think Google AdWords). Some charge the job seekers for access. And many boards, I suspect, simply don’t make money.

So what gives?

Why upend the most common job board model (where employers pay to post jobs and view resumes)? Listen to Chris Anderson, in his recent book Free: “In a marketplace with low marginal costs and many competitors, (free) feels inevitable for most digital goods.” (For a roundup of the arguments pro and con surrounding this assertion, go here).

Hmm? I guess I wasn’t the only one who choked on that: “I do agree with Anderson and Godin’s underlying point, the “freemium” model — giving away some content while offering a more valuable experience for a premium — but it’s neither a new idea nor a terribly innovative one,” said Guy LeCharles Gonzalez in a recent blog post. “The containers may change and get cheaper, but it’s the content that gives them value, and the creation and distribution of quality content isn’t free.”

Freedom’s Just Another Word for …

Aha! So ‘free’ really isn’t ‘free’, at least as far as Anderson and his followers are concerned. ‘Free’ is another word for ‘roping them in’ with a free job post, or a test run on the resume database. I imagine most job sites are already offering some version of ‘free’.

But what about the true believers: those jobs sites that are completely free to the employer? How can they exist — and can they thrive? Let’s take a look at some of the factors involved:

• Super low barriers to entry: If you have 20 minutes, you can set up your own job board with SimplyHired’s Jobomatic. They take care of everything except the traffic — that, you must supply. What could be easier? Well …
• Social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media channels have yet to settle on their business models, so in the meantime, recruiters can use them just like job boards (ok, kind of dimwitted and poorly focused job boards). Cost? Nothing much but your valuable time.
• Inadequacy at the top: The big three job boards continue to display a lack of initiative in solving employers problems. Results? Recruiters continue to turn to niche job boards and social media.

Each of these has played a role in the growth of free job boards. But you have to ask…

Can ‘Free’ Really Stay Free?

Is it really plausible for a ‘free’ board to stay that way? Can employer really expect an eternal ‘free ride’?

I doubt it. Any job site worth its salt has to fulfill one basic function: it must provide a targeted, high-quality stream of job seekers who respond to employer offerings. Generating and maintaining this audience costs money. So too does the operation and improvement of the site itself. Jobomatic and its ilk are limited in what they can provide to seekers and employers. Maybe that will change. But again, I’m betting that change will come with a price tag.

Those sites relying on job seeker revenues will always be limited because the majority of seekers have been trained over the past 15 years to expect access at no charge. That’s a hard lesson to unlearn (even a site like TheLadders also garners revenue from recruiters).

Where does that leave the ‘not-free’ job boards? Right where they were: scrambling to maintain relevance and value in a tumultuous recruiting world. The best (and a few lucky ones) will survive.

Well, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a list you can send to your favorite career site or job board vendor (and if these requests seem foreign to you, then please tell me who you’re using! I’ll switch!)

Don’t make it hard for me to buy: If I want to purchase your services, make it easy. Don’t make me wait to talk to a salesperson if I don’t want to — let me buy online. If I don’t want to pay by credit card, then send me an invoice. And if I do want to talk to someone, please make them honest, intelligent, and understandable!

Don’t make your site hard to use: Listen, my life doesn’t revolve around your job board — really. So make it as easy and obvious to post a job as it would be, say, to buy a book on Amazon. Assume I won’t read your detailed FAQ. If I want to search your resumes, then again, make it easy and powerful. Please.

Don’t make me do all the work: I have a pile of positions to fill. So make your job site send me reminders, or resumes, or pretty much anything — and don’t expect me to remember when my package expires.

Don’t refuse to play others: Even though I may love your job board, it’s probably not the only tool in my recruitment belt. So let me feed my jobs via XML into your board if I want to, ok? And if I use one of those super-cool all-in-one resume and applicant search tools, please try to integrate with it — even if the vendor isn’t helpful. After all, I’m your customer.

Don’t make job posting painful: Sure, everyone has their own personal idea of pain, but forcing all of us to post in exactly the same way is just silly. Give me an option to load in multiple position descriptions. Tie into other tools (see #4, please).

Don’t sell me something every single moment I’m online: Monster and CareerBuilder, I’m talking to you! Interstitials in job boards should be outlawed. And more silly videos that I have to watch? Nope. No thanks.

Don’t sacrifice speed for ‘gee whiz’: Ok, perhaps I’m shallow enough to be wowed by your latest and greatest ‘feature’ — once. But if that same feature slows down everything else I do on your site, I might just leave and not come back. You don’t want that, do you?

Do listen to me: I realize that recruiters are sometimes not the easiest folks to reach, but occasionally I do have a useful comment. When I do, please listen to me (or at least pretend to)! Who knows — I might have the idea for your next great feature!

Do regularly improve and update your site: Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Apparently not — I’ve worked on job sites that have gone two or three years between revisions. That’s 60 or 70 years in Internet time.

Do give me reporting: How can I justify spending on your site if you can’t give me the numbers I need? Tell me how many times my postings show up, how often they’re accessed, how many applies I receive, how I compare to your other customers … the list goes on and on. If you’re listening to me (see #8), you know what I want.