Joel Cheesman of HRSEO just sent me an email about this. He’s saying, “ready or not, here comes google classifieds“.

See his blog post for more details including screenshots and other details.

He ends the post by asking:

If they launch job listings, how long will it take employers to jump the Good Ship Monster and list their openings on Google and leverage the power of the world’s most powerful information provider … for FREE?

This should be very big, boys and girls.

For one, I applaud it. Craig’s List has already turned the world on its ear, now Google is seeming to smooth the process and add Google’s excellent, feel-good, touchy-feely, bright-colored UI to the whole thing.

But here’s a thought — What’s really so different about this and making a blog on blogger.com about the house you’re selling, or the job you’re recruiting for?

Web publishing has been free for some time now (price). But the other three Ps in marketing’s mix seem to point to why Google Base will work:

• Product (this will likely be easier to use and easier to make your product look ‘good’)
• Placement (what better way to ensure Google visitors find your site than to post it on Google in the first place!?)
• Promotion (Google’s brand makes it a simple choice for people to use. Back to placement, why not put your ad on google for the whole world to find? Plus, Google has a reputation for being clean and orderly… so I predict people will ‘feel’ like posting their information there will keep it from getting ‘lost’)

If others worry that this will drive the final nail into the coffin of big-board job postings as we know it, I personally believe it’s a nail that should have been driven long ago.

Job ads, I maintain, carry no inherent value on their own. The reason the boards have been able to charge so much for them before is not because of the ad, but because there was a barrier to entry, prohibiting an easy and clear alternative to get your job posting in front of that many (hopefully) qualified individuals.

As I said in June concerning this:

…In my opinion, the market is realizing that the value behind the ad is the people it connectsthe recruiter and the candidate. If an ad will not adequately connect good candidates and the people willing to hire them, it is useless. To that end, since current job-posting technologies are doing little more than spamming recruiters with millions of resumes, the value is dropping rapidly.

Think quality contacts, not quantity of names, and you will begin to see why I am so interested in… next-generation technologies growing out of the disconnectedness of the job-boards as they currently stand.

Yet, more shocking than this announcement would be a post on Monster’s blog tomorrow that they are giving up and quitting the fight.

I hope that Monster, Career Builder, Hot Jobs, Dice, and others will continue on. Innovate and reach out to find new ways to attract and intelligently retain talented people! That is the value-add. That is exactly what I am looking for!

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