Career Services

It’s a case study in evolution

Simon Houpt, Globe and Mail

A little over a decade ago, newspapers were lumbering giants, fat with profits and complacency, when some nimble startup companies in what was then known as “new media” knocked them sideways by stealing away their classified ads. Online job boards like Monster.com and HotJobs.com sprouted up, exploding with listings as Help Wanted ads in print shrivelled away.
Some newspaper companies embraced the wave: In the U.S., a trio of publishers launched CareerBuilder.com, while investors in the largest Canadian job board, Workopolis, included the parent companies of The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star.

Now those job sites are preparing to hold on for a wild ride of their own. (The Globe sold its share of Workopolis in late 2006.) Because even as the labour market goes through its own convulsions in the wake of the recession, those boards are coming under threat from the newest wave in new media. Employers and new hires are meeting on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

“The original value proposition was to offer a faster, easier, and cheaper solution than newspaper advertising,” explained Gabriel Bouchard, the president of Workopolis. “That is obviously not the case any more.” In the last two years, he says, social networking sites have gone from a zero share of the job search market to the equivalent of one-quarter of the volume that online job boards handle.