Yahoo is Scraping Jobs for Hot Jobs

Posted on July 20, 2005

Yahoo is reportedly scraping jobs from employer websites and other website to beef up its job database at Hot Jobs. The move is reportedly the first time a major job site has started using free job listings. In the past they have required payment to display a job listing.

James Holincheck, an analyst with Gartner Research, tells Venture Beat, "This is clearly a stake in the ground. I think there will be cannibalization. The question is how much and how fast."

While this certainly could increase the value of the job database it could also make employers decide not to spend money if the jobs will show up on Hot Jobs just by placing the job listings on their own website. However, if it increases traffic to the jobs database Yahoo might be able to charge more for highly visible listings. Yahoo also has to make sure they are taking jobs from sites that approve of the scraping and that they are not guilty of content theft. The sites probably aren't going to approve. The employers posting job advertisements may also not like it because they probably want to track where they have placed employment ads and where potential recruits are coming from.