Bronte Media

Jobs – in an advertising sense – has always struck me as a strange outlier. It’s basically the only industry where the advertiser ends up paying the person who responds to their ads.

If you advertise a house, the person who responds to the ad buys it and gives you money. If you are a retailer advertising a digital camera, the consumer who responds gives you $300. And so on.

But with jobs you are advertising to someone who you will give tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

That’s why a CPA model – in my mind – doesn’t work. Greg Sterling reports on Indeed, a job search engine, moving to a CPA model, and is a little skeptical and a little positive (c’mon Greg, take a stand).

As a hiring manager do you want to pay $5 or whatever CPA price every time an offshore outsourcing firm replies to a locally based software engineering position? Or, an over-zealous retail sales person who sees himself as a VP of business development and applies to every job in sight?

The incentives just aren’t aligned.

Recruitment managers actually get more pissed off the more ’successful’ their ad is. They want quality not quantity.

It’s interesting to see the industry reach new forms of distribution in niche job boards that are collectives of blogs and small media sites. That to me seems to be trending more in the right direction; pre-qualifying a candidate that they are interested enough to read a blog or visit an online community.