Job Boards Add Learning Functionality

Most recruiters that I know are weary of mainstream job boards because the flow through rate of qualified candidates is low. Specialized boards like Dice.com are better but they're all feeling the pain of the recession and greater use of social networking sites and are therefore trying to generate new sources of revenue.

Dice is aggregating and promoting certain technical certification courses to make it easier for technical folks to stay current on the highest need skills. Dice isn't charging companies to list their courses but people can take the online courses through Dice, so it'll be a modest source of income.

Dice is smart; they're adding value to their site but I do wonder how much longer before Facebook adds skill profiling (a la LinkedIn) for their 250 million members and starts making money via postings, private searches for recruiters, or even some sort of placement. LinkedIn is still really not taking advantage of its potential, so there is a huge opportunity for Facebook to get this right. I could easily see it adding highly detailed skills profiles, ideal organizational descriptions, availability listings (especially for short term contract work...), etc. to allow users to actively or passively search for work. Many professionals have their polished, dry LinkedIn profiles and their more casual, fun Facebook profiles, and many of us have colleagues in both. Given Facebook's need to grow revenue I think we'll see some creative approaches to blurring these lines.