JobYantra distributed job-boards… good idea, wrong implementation

A few months back, I wrote this post lamenting the sheer futility of traditional job websites for startups, which inherently need employees of a certain kind. I had pointed towards the growing popularity of job boards on popular blogs (like TechCrunch, Gigaom, JoelSpolksy etc). JobYantra, a Mumbai based startup has launched an initial version of their service that will connect employers with hard to reach candidates using the blogosphere as a channel. However their modus operandi may need a fair bit of tweaking before it starts giving them real traction.

Jobyantra is based on the premise that good candidates already have good jobs, so there is no reason to believe that they are even looking at the career websites. However it might be possible to reach out to them via popular blogs (that they read), so why not create a service that allows bloggers to integrate a readymade job board into their blog.

How does it work? Bloggers (called publishers) can sign up on JobYantra and get a jobboard integrated in their blog’s theme. They get a custom page for displaying jobs, the design and html of which can be customized to match their blog’s existing design. Employers looking for candidates can post jobs on JobYanta and these would show up on the affiliate blog network. The employer cannot chose the type of blog to show the ads as all jobs would be related to tech/web 2.0. Currently the service is free for both employers and bloggers. Going forward they plan to charge employers and do a revenue split with the affiliate blogs. An example of their job board can be seen in the screnshot below (its integrated in the Webyantra theme)

I can foresee two problems with what Jobyantra is doing. Firstly the job board is not hosted on the blog, rather it is on the Jobyantra website (thats the way the url works), so it is almost like a psuedo navigation. This fundamentally violates the principle that you should not take away traffic and SEO benefits from the host which you are trying to piggyback. Think of adsense javascript codes, widgets, media players…. they are all embeddable in their hosts and do no wean away traffic as Jobyantra might do. The second problem is the low barriers to entry for something of this nature. I reckon that it will take a smart developer not more than a day to cook up a wordpress plugin that does exactly what Jobyantra does. Put that plugin on wordpress.org and you get free, instantaneous distribution for your plugin, and this could wipe out any first mover advantage.

I think Jobyantra should provide an embeddable javascript code for their jobboard that publishers can simply copy/paste into their blog. This will let the content reside on the blog itself and make the relationship symbiotic rather than parasitic.

I also feel that sooner or later the established job sites (Naukri, Monster, Indiatimes etc) are going to jump into this. Simplyhired already does this in the US.

Overall I feel Jobyantra has correctly identified an opportunity that is waiting to be harnessed. They need to tweak their offering to make it more publisher-friendly.