Anoth­er big week in TA/HR Tech news!

Yes­ter­day, App­cast announced that Matt Moli­nari, cur­rent­ly the Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, will become the Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer on Jan­u­ary 1, 2025. He suc­ceeds Chris For­man, the founder and CEO, who will retire after more than a decade of lead­er­ship. Moli­nari, a respect­ed indus­try vet­er­an, steps into the role dur­ing a ten­u­ous time for App­cast, marked by last week’s lay­offs, rumors of major client depar­tures, and ongo­ing frus­tra­tions among agen­cies and job boards regard­ing trans­paren­cy and tech­nol­o­gy lim­i­ta­tions.

How will App­cast evolve under Moli­nar­i’s thought­ful lead­er­ship? We’ll have to wait and see. And since I lost my Fed­er­al Reserve inter­est rate bet last week—my Mag­ic 8 Ball is stay­ing locked in the desk!

But seri­ous­ly…As an App­cast user, niche job board own­er, and, well, Job Board Doc­tor, I hope App­cast will seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rebuild rela­tion­ships with the job board com­mu­ni­ty. The new­ly appoint­ed lead­er­ship team is gen­der-diverse, reflect­ing Mat­t’s com­mit­ment to grow­ing and pro­mot­ing from with­in. We hope this engage­ment and tal­ent focus will strength­en and be reflect­ed in their approach with the job board com­mu­ni­ty.

As Ethan Bloom­field, CEO of the vitalfew, com­ment­ing on Alexan­der Chukovski’s LinkedIn post, wrote, “one thing that has­n’t changed in our dig­i­tal world is COMMUNITY—I think the future is to lean even more into niche com­mu­ni­ties.”

And Alexan­der’s post puts an excla­ma­tion point on what is a vibrant and thriv­ing job board com­mu­ni­ty. “I am always sur­prised by how many suc­cess­ful niche job boards still exist. Last week at TA Tech in Paris, I met the founder of a niche job board in the US gen­er­at­ing mid-sev­en fig­ures in rev­enue from job post­ings. It’s a team of two founders, three sales­peo­ple, and about three exter­nal devel­op­ers.

Don’t count job boards out just yet.”

Speak­ing of TA Tech, a stand­out dis­cus­sion came from Lana Shumyn, Direc­tor at Aspen Tech Labs and a fel­low woman in TA tech. Lana and the Aspen Tech Labs team gra­cious­ly shared their insights with the Job Board Doc­tor team, allow­ing us to pass some of the high­lights along to you.

Some Eye Catch­ers: 

Down­ward CPC Pres­sure – Aspen is close­ly track­ing US whole­sale cost per click (CPC) rates. They have observed sig­nif­i­cant changes in these rates, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the retail and food ser­vice sec­tors. Cur­rent­ly, whole­sale CPC rates are at a three-year low, with no signs of recov­ery in the near future. A par­tic­u­lar­ly painful and per­ti­nent fact for job boards over­ly depen­dent on pro­gram­mat­ic rev­enue. An oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it your mon­e­ti­za­tion strat­e­gy, def­i­nite­ly. 

State of the Job Mar­ket

• Jobs are down across the board year-over-year for both the US and Europe. US jobs are down 5.2% year-over-year, but UK jobs are down the most at 14.4%. How­ev­er, all mar­kets seem to be grad­u­al­ly recov­er­ing since the start of 2024.
• A glob­al slow­down in hir­ing across var­i­ous regions, dri­ven by fac­tors like eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty, hir­ing freezes, and evolv­ing work­force needs. Impor­tant­ly, this trend isn’t con­fined to a sin­gle industry—it cuts across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, sig­nal­ing broad­er shifts in the econ­o­my. How­ev­er, some areas are buck­ing the trend, par­tic­u­lar­ly AI-relat­ed jobs, which con­tin­ue to rise.

Hir­ing in Tech

• A par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing area is the rise in AI-relat­ed vacan­cies. Glob­al­ly, they’ve seen a 43.7% increase year-over-year in roles requir­ing AI skills. This surge aligns with the grow­ing inte­gra­tion of AI across indus­tries, from finance to health­care. Aspen Tech data reveals the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of AI jobs in Cal­i­for­nia, where over 50,000 tech com­pa­nies are head­quar­tered.
• Mar­kets like the UK, France, and Ger­many have all expe­ri­enced a rise in AI job post­ings, with France lead­ing at a 35.5% increase.
• HR/TA Tech is anoth­er space see­ing growth, though at a mod­est 1.5% year-over-year increase. This shows that while tech adop­tion is on the rise, com­pa­nies are still fig­ur­ing out how to inte­grate HR tech­nolo­gies effec­tive­ly, which could sig­nal future growth in this sec­tor.

Job­seek­er Expec­ta­tions Remain High

• Remote Work – The shift to remote work con­tin­ues to be a defin­ing trend. Tech roles are see­ing a boost in remote oppor­tu­ni­ties. This trend was accel­er­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic, but it seems to be here to stay, offer­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty and access to a glob­al tal­ent pool. Of note, the data also shows a down­ward trend in the UK for remote work.
•  Trans­paren­cy – One of the most impor­tant trends we’re see­ing, espe­cial­ly in mar­kets like the UK, US, and France, is salary trans­paren­cy.
  • Cur­rent­ly, around 44.4% of vacan­cies in the UK, 42.2% in the US, and 19.6% in France include salary infor­ma­tion.
  • In fact, accord­ing to Adobe’s Future Work­force Study, 85% of recent grad­u­ates are less like­ly to apply if the salary range isn’t list­ed. So, if your goal is to attract Gen Z tal­ent, includ­ing salary details in job post­ings is key

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we could not share all the learn­ings in this post, but I am sure Lana and the Aspen Tech Labs team would be hap­py to share more.

Until next week.

The Job Board Doc­tor is always look­ing for the fresh­est and most inter­est­ing indus­try news, and most often that comes direct­ly from our read­ers. Have tea to share with us? Send all your sig­nals via the con­tact form on JobBoardDoctor.com.

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