So here’s the scoop—I’m feel­ing pret­ty heavy-heart­ed. Just got wind of iCIMS slash­ing jobs in the US, with Europe next on the chop­ping block come Sep­tem­ber. And Qual­i­fi’s lay­offs last month? A real gut punch— to some tru­ly stel­lar tal­ent.

I’ve been in those dread­ed lay­off shoes, tee­ter­ing on the edge, won­der­ing if it’s me or my col­leagues hit­ting the job mar­ket next. We might soon be crowd­ing your job boards, flood­ing your inbox­es, and over­load­ing your voice­mails, scram­bling for a life­line.

And it made me think – our job boards are more than a busi­ness. They are a life­line.

It’s time we acknowl­edge the clout our job boards could/should/would hold with­in our niche mar­kets. Yes, we are busi­ness­es, and prof­it mat­ters, but my rounds at tal­ent acqui­si­tion con­fer­ences show a glar­ing gap—a beat­ing heart and a fierce mis­sion – that focus­es on bring­ing to our employ­ers what they tru­ly need – engaged, inter­est­ed and qual­i­fied job­seek­ers.

What does job seek­er align­ment look like? Glad you asked.

Stop try­ing to be Indeed. You’re not, and that’s a good thing—your job seek­ers don’t want that either. Con­stant chat­ter about job board con­sol­i­da­tion and Indeed drain­ing the mar­ket? That’s just a quick cash grab. To real­ly grow and thrive, niche boards need to fierce­ly pro­tect and cov­et their job seek­er com­mu­ni­ty as much as they do their employ­er rela­tion­ships.

Cut the red tape but keep the integri­ty of the appli­ca­tion process. Make your site acces­si­ble, appli­ca­tion steps trans­par­ent, and reduce the hoops job seek­ers have to jump through when you can. Pin­point exact­ly what stops your job seek­ers from get­ting jobs and smash those bar­ri­ers.

Forge a brand that’s a bea­con of trust. This means being trans­par­ent about the roles you adver­tise, offer­ing gen­uine oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth and con­nec­tion, and cre­at­ing an engage­ment lev­el that makes you the go-to source in your niche.

Oh, and don’t fall for the end-of-days talk from the likes of naysay­ers like Cheese­man. Mar­kets and job counts fluc­tu­ate – play the long game.

What are your secret sauce strate­gies for gen­uine­ly engag­ing your job seek­er audi­ence?

In the News– 

New York Cannabis Work­force Ini­tia­tive Launch­es a Job Site  –  A niche mar­ket (albeit a state work­force ini­tia­tive) job board pro­vid­ing free train­ing, edu­ca­tion and access to apply for jobs in the in demand cannabis mar­ket. To thine own mar­ket be true.

Read more from the Nia­gara Gazette or vis­it the NY Cannabis Work­force Ini­tia­tive

Indeed Charges for API Calls Begin­ning Octo­ber 1 –  Jim Durbin, writ­ing for the Aim­Group, “After years of push­ing inte­gra­tion using API calls, Indeed has informed its part­ners that it plans to start charg­ing for access. What is free will now cost $3 a call”.  Read the full arti­cle from Jim (pay­wall).

Chad and Cheese weigh in, too. Check out their rat­ing of Big Mac or Noth­ing Burg­er on last week’s episode.

US July Jobs Num­bers Throw Glob­al Mar­kets into a Tail­spin – The US Bureau Of Labor Sta­tis­tics (BOL) released July Jobs and Employ­ment num­bers on August 2^nd.  US and sub­se­quent­ly glob­al mar­kets over­re­act to wor­ries of a cool­ing of the econ­o­my and the Fed­er­al Reserve Board­’s cau­tious approach to low­er­ing inter­est rates.  Next Fed meet­ing is in Sep­tem­ber and the group had already sig­naled the like­li­hood of a rate cut.

Read Reuters’ recap of the jobs report from Fri­day.

AI CapEx Spend­ing is Explod­ing with No Signs of Slow­ing Down – Big Tech earn­ings sea­son kicked off last week with the big­gies con­tin­u­ing to pour mon­ey into AI CapEx. Microsoft, Alpha­bet and Meta spent a com­bined $33 Bil­lion on AI CapEx in last quar­ter alone. The big three sig­naled this is not a one-time spend, but will be ongo­ing and like­ly to increase over the com­ing quar­ters. Read a quick spend­ing and earn­ings recap from Axios.

Check out Scott Gal­loway’s thoughts on the AI splurge on Mon­day’s Prof G Mar­kets pod­cast.

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