ome workforce and recruiting
experts agree with the U.S. Labor Department’s decision to retire America’s Job
Bank at the beginning of this month.
Among them is Peter Weddle, recruiting analyst and executive
director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites industry group.
Weddle, whose association includes the major job boards CareerBuilder, Monster and
Yahoo HotJobs, says the free public job site replicated services offered by a range
of private-sector sites. These include sites targeted at lower-wage and blue-collar
workers, he says.
But Weddle’s, the recruitment consulting and publishing firm
that Peter Weddle heads, gave America’s Job Bank one of its 30 "2007 User’s Choice
Awards." These are based on ballots cast by recruiters and job seekers, and "recognize
the Web sites that provide the best level of service and value to their visitors."
Weddle also notes that the closing of America’s Job Bank "has
been fraught with confusion."
Still, he thinks the Labor Department’s move was sound. "Why
should the government duplicate what the private sector is providing already?" Weddle
says.
America’s Job Bank was the United States’ first national job
site on the Internet and, until its shutdown, was still one of the biggest. The
Labor Department last year announced its plan to close the site. But
the decision has come under fire, in part because of evidence the site was a cost-effective,
appropriate government service. There’s also widespread concern that the phase-out
will cause harm to employers, job seekers and states, despite at least two private-sector
efforts to replace America’s Job Bank.
The end of America’s Job Bank is likely to result in short-term
problems but a long-term payoff, says Mike Chamberland, a fellow at research group
the American Institute for Full Employment. Chamberland hopes that private-sector efforts to replace America’s Job Bank
will be able to make improvements quickly and to address what had been some of
the major flaws in the site. Among
these, he says, is a user interface that has lived a long life with little updating.
America’s Job Bank crammed more information onto its home page than do some major
commercial job sites. Chamberland says other sites have been able to adapt quickly
and learn from private-sector sites like Google.
The primary weakness of America’s Job Bank was its high cost,
Chamberland says. In a memo last year, the Labor Department said the cost of operating
the site "has been as high as $27 million per year, with a current operating budget
for maintenance-only of $12 million per year."
JobCentral National Labor Exchange, one of the private-sector
services that aims to replace America’s Job Bank, is expected to cost less than
$6 million annually, says Bill Warren, executive director of the DirectEmployers
Association, which launched the JobCentral service.
In addition, Chamberland says, other sites in recent years
have built tools that go beyond keyword searches to match job seekers with employers,
using artificial intelligence to find better fits. "Someday you will be able to
put your résumé out on one of these sites and get good job leads instantly, even
if the posting isn’t on the same site you are," he says.
Workforce Management Online, July 2007 -- Register Now!
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