After 15 years straddling both recruitment and job board worlds, I've watched the same conversation happen in parallel universes. Each side thinks they understand the other, but the gap is widening - and candidates are falling through it.
After 15 years straddling both recruitment and job board worlds, I've watched the same conversation happen in parallel universes. Each side thinks they understand the other, but the gap is widening - and candidates are falling through it.
AI is apparently reshaping these industries while economic pressures and customer expectations force everyone to justify their value. After attending Job Boards Connect (May 2025), I was struck by a troubling disconnect:
job boards and recruiters are speaking different languages while trying to solve the same problems.
Here's what I learned about where we are and where we need to go.
I’ve written about how job boards and recruitment agency models are merging before. Check out how my take has evolved since February 2024.
"Someone applied for 325 jobs in 24 hours."
This wasn't a hypothetical example – it was a real case shared by Lee Biggins, CEO of Resume Library, at the conference.
While extreme, it highlights what many recruiters already know: the current system rewards quantity over quality.
There was plenty of rhetoric laying the blame at Indeed’s door, but I’m not inclined to to agree. The problem lies with misalignment of incentives, with payment models between jobseeker traffic brokers being based on the volume of application, not the quality.
Indeed may take the lion share of traffic and therefore suffer from the ‘problem’ of high volume but, as Garreth Hayes, Marketing Director UK & Ireland at Indeed, put it, they still only “have a small market share of an industry worth $250B globally."
Meanwhile, recruiters drown in applications and candidates wonder why they never hear back.
The truth? Nobody wins in this scenario.
Employers and recruiters waste time filtering unqualified candidates, often missing out on good people buried in the pile.
All whilst job seekers are ignored and dehumanised throughout the job hunting process.
The most heated discussions centred on AI's role in recruitment.
Indeed is already using AI at scale for content generation, reportedly saving $10M annually.
But their message was clear: "human-in-the-loop" remains essential – they see dramatically better outcomes when AI supports human judgement rather than replacing it.
As Hayes put it: "Robots won't replace people, but someone using robots better than you will take your job."
Alexander Chukovski perhaps spoke most eloquently and on in depth level about AI, and believes job boards should focus on three key areas:
Interestingly, Indeed is using AI to personalise job alerts and seeing a 20% increase in conversion rates.
This suggests AI works best when enhancing the human experience, not replacing it.
Lou Goodman, former VP global B2B marketing at Monster, made a brilliant analogy that stuck with me:
"We have a better experience booking travel than we do in our job search. Yet changing careers is a much bigger decision than going on holiday."
This gets to the heart of our industry's challenge.
The traditional CV model itself is inherently flawed – it represents your past rather than your potential.
Referencing dating sites, Hayes commented; "It's like using pictures and details of your past partners to inform your future partner choice."
So, what we truly need is outcome data – information about what makes placements successful long-term – but this remains the hardest data to capture.
A fascinating trend is emerging amongst niche job boards: the move toward productised recruitment services.
These offerings deliver a higher yield than traditional job postings but cost significantly less than full recruitment agency fees.
This approach leverages automation, offshoring and/or AI with crucial human oversight, guaranteeing employers qualified candidates rather than just volume.
It's a direct response to the market's shifting needs:
This evolution makes sense when you consider that "volume isn't a sell" anymore.
Employers use Indeed despite the flood of applications because "No one ever got fired for buying IBM”, and the same can be said of Indeed. All in all, recruiters would prefer a solution that delivers quality without the noise.
Job boards are often hit with the same stick as recruitment agencies; both industries have been dying out for years apparently.
It was said that job boards survived the shift to mobile, social media giants attempts to disrupt, and that they'll also survive AI. They’re the source of all job seeker traffic after all, and HR tech would be nothing without them.
I get this argument but when there is so much inefficiency in the system job boards are under threat, in much the same way that recruitment agencies are.
Employers want to hire directly.
External recruitment support which includes advertising is in that ‘necessary evil’ category.
In the same way that it’s a small leap to build a talent team to lower spend on external recruiters, it’s also a small leap to optimise traffic generation to owned employer career sites.
Job boards aren’t dead, but they cannot rest on their laurels.
The future isn't a better job board - it's a completely reimagined connection platform that bears little resemblance to today's posting-and-praying model.
I’d say the same about most recruitment businesses. The course correct on the current downturn is not a swing back to what has come before: high headcount, graduate hiring, contingent recruiters spraying-and-praying.
It’s lean, agile, customer centric solutions powered by humans who are augmented with bleeding edge technology (read - if you can buy the tech at RecExpo you’re probably too late).
Now, Indeed picked up a lot of heat at this conference, which was full of their smaller competitors and suppliers to the job board sector. No shock there. However, they’re the market giant for a reason.
Having personally used Indeed and their challengers for over 15 years, I have a good feel for what works best and when. Having utilised Indeed to hire retail workers for one of my SMEs recently, it’s fantastic. It serves as an ATS for a business not at the scale to need one and the cost per hire was tiny.
But, I can imagine when recruiting for a white collar, remote first role with high jobseeker demand, it’s a nightmare. Therefore, don’t use Indeed for that role. It’s simple really. Find a better way to recruit.
This is where services come into play.
I predict that we'll see a complete collapse of the middle market for recruiting.
What will emerge is a bifurcated industry: high-touch boutique services for specialised roles and fully automated solutions for everything else.
As to who powers what, that’s what is up for grabs.
Despite owning valuable data and traffic, many job boards fundamentally misunderstand how recruiters operate. To truly add value, job boards need to:
Equally, many recruiters fail to understand job board operations and miss opportunities to leverage their platforms effectively:
If you're hiring, these insights should reshape your approach:
For those navigating the job market, the landscape is shifting beneath your feet:
The most striking observation from the conference was the missed opportunity for collaboration.
Job boards, recruiters, employers and training providers all hold pieces of the same puzzle but rarely work together effectively.
Those who can bridge these worlds – connecting recruitment, job discovery, and skills development – will find themselves at a tremendous advantage.
The future belongs to platforms and agencies that understand the entire talent ecosystem, not just their corner of it.
Rather than fighting over the same shrinking piece of the pie, we should be expanding what's possible in hiring. Both job boards and recruiters need to move beyond their current models toward truly solving the fundamental challenge: connecting the right people with the right opportunities at the right time.
The technology exists. The data exists. What's missing is the vision to bring it all together.
It’s an area I’m hugely interested in: it informs my work with The Satori Partnership, and I’m constantly evolving our models at Boltjobs.com and Bolt Search to validate what works whilst meeting what the market needs.
The evolutions I'm proposing aren't just good business, they're necessary for the health of the talent industry. I challenge others to similarly reject the status quo and build solutions that truly serve all stakeholders in the hiring process. Reach out if you enjoyed this article, always keen to hear from others.
Image attribution: MARIOLA GROBELSKA on Unsplash
