Yahoo HotJobs, one of the “big three” job boards along with CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com, announced the results-oriented pricing Thursday, June 25, calling it “pay per candidate.”

“Recruiters are being asked to find top talent using fewer resources than ever, and Yahoo’s pay per candidate model gives them the tools to increase the accountability of their listings,” Chris Merritt, general manager of Yahoo HotJobs, said in a statement.

Yahoo’s move comes as traditional job boards face increased competition from a raft of online recruiting alternatives.

These alternatives include social and professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, low-cost or free job-posting venues such as Craigslist, and search engine optimization, which involves bidding to place job ads next to search results on sites such as Google.

Then there are the “vertical search engines” in the recruiting field. SimplyHired (which is a partner with Workforce Management’s job board) and Indeed seek to gather as many jobs as possible for job seekers to search through at one site.

Pay-for-performance pricing is already the norm at Indeed. The 4-year-old firm gets most of its revenue from pay-per-click advertising—principally through sponsored job ads. Advertisers pay only when job seekers click through to view and apply for the jobs on their Web sites.

This month, Yahoo HotJobs made the list of the 100 top job boards selected by Weddle’s, a publishing firm headed by recruiting analyst Peter Weddle.

The list, appearing in Weddle’s 2009/10 Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet, also includes industry-focused sites such as HigherEdJobs and BioSpace, location-specific job boards such as MinnesotaJobs.com and sites focused on a particular employment level, such as CollegeRecruiter.com.

Weddle says a number of the top 100 have career development features for job seekers, such as social networking functionality. One of the ways job boards will survive, Weddle says, is by transforming into “career portals.”

Yahoo HotJobs has taken some steps in this direction. It touts articles on career topics by HotJobs senior managing editor Tom Musbach.

Thursday’s announcement, though, was more about serving employers. Yahoo said its pay-per-candidate product offers recruiters greater control over their budgets and listings, including the ability to cap the number of pre-screened candidates they receive per job posting when candidates apply on the HotJobs Web site.

Yahoo said recruiters purchase credits for each job posted, but their account is only charged when a candidate applies for the job listing or clicks through to the recruiter’s hiring site. In addition, Yahoo said, recruiters can shift unused credits to other open positions should a job be filled or priorities change.

The new product also offers a filtering option, in which recruiters can use a customized questionnaire that automatically filters out candidates based on their responses, Yahoo said. Alternatively, recruiters can choose to have job seekers click through a link directly to the recruiter’s Web site.