Future of Job Boards: Opportunities for Self-Employed4 min read

With the launch of the IT recruitment site, Techfynder, in Ireland, it was time the Jobboard Finder took a closer look at a growing trend in the job board world. The future of job boards consists in offering the self-employed more opportunities and more control over their projects. Whether you’re a freelancer or a contractor (or something else), these changes will affect how you find work, in a very good way.

The Freelance movement

If you look up the history of freelancing, you’ll see that the term has been around since the 1800s in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe; but most of us think of something a bit more modern when talking about freelancing in the workplace. A freelancer is someone who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. This means that even if we only started to hear the term in abundance in the 21^st century, freelancers have been around for a very long time. The biggest difference today is that freelancers are everywhere in all types of professions. It’s no wonder so many companies are focusing on the future of opportunities for the self-employed and ways to recruit them through job boards.

Freelancers can be writers, editors, translators and marketers, working on short term projects for various companies. However, they can also be teachers, designers, even engineers! And contractors also fall into the category of the self-employed, so they cover a new range of jobs, in construction, and handiwork, for example.

Thanks to this sudden boom of self-employed workers, job boards have started to rethink how they appeal to employers and employees. A job board isn’t just a list of jobs anymore, it is so much more.

The Employer

Thanks to sites like Techfynder, employers can contact the IT contractors and discuss their future projects directly with the potential partners. We say partners and not hires because the company doesn’t actually hire the contractor: the two agree on the terms of the partnership for a certain amount of time or for a specific project. What’s great about this is that employers don’t have to feel locked into a contract with a professional who might not be the right fit. Furthermore, candidates who don’t want to be locked into one contract also have the freedom to work on several projects at once. Employers can offer more money for as long as they need assistance from the contractor or freelancer. If the candidate cannot complete the work, it has never been easier to jump online and find another contractor.

In other fields, like marketing, additional people can be brought into the team for a specific campaign without having to guaranty work for the quieter parts of the year. This can also be beneficial for other professions, like teaching. It gives teachers the opportunity to earn more for the hours they worked, and find an additional job during the vacation period, instead of earning a low salary all year round.

The Self-Employed

By 2020, it is predicted that over 40% of the US workforce will be made up of self-employed people. Thanks to new job boards designed specifically for them, like UpWork, Dribbble or Guru, freelancers and contractors can take control over the recruitment process. Whether it be offering a quote and defining one’s rates, or promoting one’s skills thanks to testimonials, the self-employed have become as important as jobseekers and recruiters to job boards.

Earlier this year, we had a look at how job boards can adapt to the gig economy. Among the many changes that can attract the hybrid jobseeker-employer, we have new filters and user engagement. Much like in marketing and sales, the user’s voice is the future of job boards. Thanks to testimonials, more and more employers, jobseekers and freelancers will feel save using online job sites to find work. The users have the power over the success of a product, and that includes job boards.

Since the job market continues to evolve, job boards need to as well. In addition to adapting to the gig economy, there are other focus areas, which can help job sites remain on top of the new trends. If you look closely, you’ll see that those ahead of the competition are careful of their social media, communication, privacy settings and algorithms.

Job boards of the future

Even if the industry is a buzz with freelancing and AI at the moment, the future of job boards and recruitment is not black and white. The laws concerning freelancing and contractual work continue to evolve, in the US as well as in the rest of the world. These laws will greatly affect the workforce. Depending on the employment regulations, workers may find it more interesting to sign a contract rather than create the freelancer status. Changes in medical care, maternity leave and even bank loans can affect the choices workers make. This in turn will affect the job board. Job sites are never safe from radical changes in the industry, so it is important to keep a close eye on the different facets of employment and the country’s culture in general.

Author: Ali Neill

As the job board tester and blog editor for the Jobboard Finder, Ali works on job boards from all around the world and keeps a close eye on the recruitment trends thanks to a number of sources, including the website’s social media pages.

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