37signals job board review
Blog: 37signals
Category: technology
Alexa ranking: 3,227
Google Pagerank: 8/10
RSS: Yes
Cost: $300 per posting
Time: 30 days
Born: April, 2006
Introduction
37signals is more of a software maker than a blog, but it is recognized as widely for its content as its products. For this reason, it makes the cut for Blogs with Jobs. It’s also recognized as one of, if not the first, blog to provide job content in support of its published content. All professional categories are included - although the selection is limited - but the site relies heavily on technology and designer jobs. Unlike its competition, 37signals job board provides a wide array of content from many geographies.
Pros
The site offers its own positives, but clearly this is a popular destination for technology professionals, claiming 1 million pageviews every month. Approximately 100 job postings are visible at any given time. According to the site:
Most job boards are a crap shoot. You post an ad and face an email deluge from unqualified applicants. If you like collecting resumes, that’s fine. If you actually want to hire someone, it sucks. That’s why we created the 37signals Job Board — the best way to find designers and programmers who get it.
The job search interface is clean, taking its cue from Craiglist’s listing and category format. Adding jobs is equally easy, also taking a page from Craigslist’s playbook, asking employers to only fill out seven data fields. Jobs are posted in real time.
With approximately 125 jobs currently posted, organized by category. The content is easy to skim through to get the information you need quickly. RSS feeds, broken down by categories is a nice touch. Emphasis in the listings are focused on geographic location, with company name and job title following.
Cons
The site’s look-and-feel is skewed heavily toward the company’s software solutions. With the exception of a “New” highlight in the main navigation the job board and its jobs don’t get a ton of exposure. Users might pass over the job board quite easily if the highlight was to be removed. There is also no promotion of the job board in the company’s buzz section. There is no search box, which would make finding the right location, job specifics, company, etc. much quicker for many users.
As with many blogs with jobs, most employers won’t be fazed by the $300-per-job pricetag. However, for smaller companies, Craigslist’s pricetag (free to $75) will be easier to swallow and may deliver similar results, particularly in areas where Craigslist is strong like San Francisco and New York.
Job content is currently being spidered by vertical job search engines such as Simply Hired. For a job board promoting the fact of “less hay” with its listings, it’s interesting that they’d allow aggregators to publish their content. It does, however, look like 37signals Job Board is restricting its job content from being spidered by general search engines like Google.
Summary
What 37signals Job Board lacks in bells and whistles, it apparently makes up for in targeted, highly sought-after traffic. As one of their clients put it:
We posted on Dice, Craigslist, hell we even bought AdWords for keywords like MySQL. One of our engineers suggested we post on the 37signals Job Board. We didn’t get tons of resumes, but the one we did get was a keeper. He’s starting in a week, thanks for the help!
If you’re looking to hire programmers and designers from around the U.S., 37signals looks like a site worth dipping your feet into, but we’d recommend getting results before diving in, especially at the $300-per-posting price point.