A new survey from Realmatch.com, a job site that charges a fee only when a company expresses an interest in a job seeker and pays to have the candidate’s contact information revealed, asked 3200 Human Resources professionals if they were satisfied with their current job boards, and if not, why?

Over 68 percent of respondents said no, they were not satisfied, whether it’s due to pricing, technology, or lackluster results.

A whopping 75 percent of respondents said that resume databases do not uncover quality candidates. No surprise there, since finding the right person via a large database is like searching for a needle in a haystack. One might spend hours typing in various acronyms, adjectives, and well-worn phrases like “problem-solver” or “top earner 2007,” when they really wish that the perfect candidate could be packaged with praise and hand-delivered to their in-box with minimal leg work.

Job sites like craigslist, which offers free postings in many cities, are fast-becoming the preferred method of posting jobs over sites like Monster and Careerbuilder, which can cost anywhere from $115 to $300 per posting, as opposed to the $25 (or nothing) that craigslist charges.

According to Peter Weddle, 50,000 job boards are operating now and 110,000 are expected to be live by 2011. The gap between employers and job seekers is widening.

Employers have more choices that can be customized to suit their company’s needs. They will no longer need to fork over $30,000 for a standard pack of postings on a general job board, and another $2,000 to have access to a vast database that is like pawing through a giant pot of gumbo for that prized bite of shrimp.

Instead, according to the survey, which stated that 64 percent of HR reps would prefer a pay-for-quality pricing model over the traditional pay-per-post option, staffing and human resource professionals would either like the model of the traditional job board to be vastly improved upon, or they will be turning to niche job sites to find candidates in a less costly, time-consuming manner.

Rafael Cosentino, VP of Business Development for Realmatch, says because of the cooling economy and a general dissatisfaction when dealing with traditional job boards, hiring professionals are seeking more cost-effective approaches at a rapid rate, explaining why some job boards have shown a recent decline in purchases.

“Realmatch differentiates itself with technology, reach, features and pricing. The technology makes the process fast, the network provides access to lots of users in lots of industries, the features make the process simple and the pricing removes the risk because employers only pay if they decide to open the resume of a matching and interested candidate,” Cosentino said. “We believe our pricing model lets the genie out of the bottle by lowering the barrier and making it risk free for employers to post their jobs.”

One wonders why traditional job boards are still being utilized by any company, when considering the blazing ads, muddled resumes, and costly features that are in the end a detriment and a poor representation to the job seeker. Just as Marketing must present customer-focused, results-driven ideas to their clients, job boards need to do the same to keep their customers happy. No longer is it the case that one HR rep refers Monster to another; instead, HR is getting together over lunch to talk about another fruitless day spent searching through a job board database. And next year, they might be taking their budget dollars elsewhere.

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