A recent editorial opined that job boards are history. Finished. Toast. Made obsolete by the arrival of DirectEmployers.com, a site launched by a consortium of major employers, and the spreading use of corporate recruitment sites by employers in general. The author's argument was as old as capitalism: Employers are going to stop paying the middleman (job boards) because they can now obtain the same results at a reduced cost by advertising on their own sites.

Though this is a familiar line of thinking, in this case it is dead wrong. Whether they are owned and operated by commercial companies, professional associations, trade organizations or other affinity groups, job boards (and their cousins the resume databank and career portal) aren't just far from obsolete -- they are becoming increasingly important to employers searching for top talent. Here's why.

1. Anger and angst wear off.

Although the folks behind DirectEmployers.com are careful to say that their venture isn't an attack on Monster.com, many of its members seem fed up with what they view as that site's poor customer service and rich prices. For many other employers, however, Monster.com works just fine. Indeed, in the 2002 User's Choice Awards from Weddles.com, Monster was named the best general-purpose site for recruiters and placed a strong second or third in categories judging customer service. (You can cast your ballot for the best sites on the Web through the Polling Station at www.Weddles.com.)

But don't misunderstand; I am not shilling for Monster. I am simply saying that the angst that has driven many employers to a greater reliance on their own web sites will eventually wear off -- and when it does, they will likely return to using Monster and other sites to supplement their yield, especially as the economy picks up steam and labor shortages reappear.

2. Employer sites can't replace job boards.

Believing this will happen represents a fundamental misunderstanding of candidate behavior. Whether they are passive or active in the job market, most people want a choice. While they probably do focus on organizations that are viewed as "employers of choice," they also believe no single employer can offer all of the best opportunities for personal development and career growth. To put it another way, today's job seekers have accepted full responsibility for managing their own careers, and implicit in that notion is that they -- not employers -- are the best judge of what jobs will serve their objectives. So they will continue to visit job boards because those sites offer openings from an array of different organizations and enable them to get a sense of the larger job market and of the specific openings that represent genuine opportunities for them. Given that behavior by job seekers, employers have no choice but to follow their lead and advertise on these sites.

3. "A"-level performers -- and most passive prospects -- don't act like active job seekers.

They aren't looking for a job, so they seldom venture out to employer sites and search through the openings posted there. Instead, these individuals hang out with their peers at places they know and trust. On the Internet, those are usually the sites managed by their professional association, trade organization or affinity group. Only there can they comfortably network with others in the field, learn something from discussion forums that cover topics in which they are interested and, in the course of doing all that, stop by the job postings to see if anything that might further their career is available. So if an employer hopes to hire "A"-level performers and passive prospects -- and what employer doesn't -- it will have to use these same job boards.

4. Many employer sites are poorly designed.

For every good corporate recruiting web site, there are three or four that could have been used as models for Dante's circles of hell. According to surveys of job seekers conducted at Weddles.com, corporate recruiting sites dropped from first to fourth place in terms of their perceived helpfulness in 2002. While virtually every employer site is attracting a torrent of resumes at the moment now, the sites that are poorly designed or managed will see the best and brightest job seekers head for other destinations fast when the economy picks up steam. According to the Weddles.com 2002 User's Choice Awards, these candidates will head off to places like Monster, HotJobs.com, CareerJournal.com, Dice.com and BrassRing.com.

5. Job boards aren't as expensive as employers think.

Employers often turn to their own sites because they view job boards as expensive. While prices do vary among boards, most charge less than the fees newspapers have traditionally imposed for print advertising. In fact, the high-fee rap against job boards is due mostly to poor shopping habits. There are more than 40,000 employment-related sites now operating on the Internet, yet 48 cents of every dollar spent on job postings is spent at Monster, and 76 cents of every dollar is spent on advertising at a few sites: Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder.com and Headhunter.net. This addiction to a single site or small set of sites has, in effect, created a monopolistic situation. Some sites have taken advantage of this de facto lack of competition by charging high fees.

But now recruiters are becoming better consumers and using more of the choices available to them. As a result, niche sites have become increasingly popular. Not only do many offer a more competitive fee, but they eliminate one of the key problems faced by the better-known general-purpose boards: When you post an opening for a nurse on the big name sites, you are as likely to get resumes from sushi chefs and truckers as you are from nurses. But when you post a nursing position at a site that specializes in nurses, however, the only resumes you will receive are those from nurses.

Those are five reasons why job boards are here to stay. Obviously, a well-designed and -managed corporate recruiting site (or gateway site to a group of employer sites) can enhance a company's online-recruiting performance. As the evidence above makes clear, however, it can't replace the role of job boards in a comprehensive, integrated strategy for hiring top talent. Moreover, these five points are just part of the case for job boards. In my next column, I cover five more.