.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} The No. 1 question among job seekers is: “What’s the best job board?” A loaded question, because everyone already has their favorite. What they’re really asking is if there’s something new that they don’t know about.

Technology being what it is, there’s always a slew of newcomers. As we all know, new doesn’t equate to better, especially in the world of job boards, or as they prefer to be called, “Career Development Sites.” The only real currency in this business is how many resumes and job postings you have. Take those two measurements, add in how many visitors you get per month and how long each visitor stays, and you come out with a winner.

Before we get to the winner, let’s go back to what’s new. The newest concept in career development boards is the addition of social networking and higher levels of view customization. When it comes to combining social networking and job searching, jobster.com seems to be the best; think MySpace and Monster rolled into one. If you want to customize which jobs accurately match what you’re looking for, it’s a tossup between climber.com and itzbig.com. Climber.com has more traffic than itzbig.com, but you can’t ignore either if personalization is your bag. (A side note about itzbig.com: It just launched and is only available in the larger metropolitan areas, which at this point does not include Des Moines.) Enough about what’s new and what’s coming; those sites alone should burn some productive time for you.

Now on to what’s old (proven) and what’s working. The two career development boards you can’t ignore are Monster and CareerBuilder, as they are easily the most used on the Internet. It might surprise you that CareerBuilder is the largest job board in terms of overall monthly usage. It trounced Monster in June by 6 million users, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The biggest competition to both of these doesn’t arise from the newer sites; it’s actually coming from the homegrown regional job boards.

Once written off as upstarts with no future, they have hung on, and most are doing well and providing a great service with a local feel. In some Iowa markets, candidates and hiring managers experience more success through this route. In the end, though, it is about exposure for both. Hiring managers need their jobs to be seen by the candidates looking for work and no one board does it all.

With the Talent Crunch in full swing, you could easily make an argument to have a presence on every job board. But then you’d be throwing those hard-found recruiting dollars down an empty funnel to some degree. I recommend trying several boards and tracking responses to know where to spend your money. When companies don’t track where candidates come from, it’s like being in a booth with money blowing around, and you only have 30 seconds to grab all you can. Sure you want it all, but in the end what you come out with are scraps of information and nothing to back your ad placement decisions but hunches.

Nick Reddin is the business development manager at Manpower Inc.’s Des Moines office.