Blue collar Job Boards are turning into restaurants now.
Ex Amazon Recruiter here from India.
writing to take out my frustration on utterly bad UX I’m happening to experience with job boards now a days, which later made me realize how this bad UX experience, is actually a money making machine for job board CEO’s.
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Imagine going to a restaurant. You are in a restaurant and you are sitting at a table, you call a waiter nearby, and give your order. Few seconds later, you realize, you want modifications. Instead of red wine, you want some white wine, and you call the waiter again, but guess what ?
The waiter sees you from far, nods head and ignores you… keeps ignoring you, and You learn that this is a restaurant, you are not allowed to modify orders. You finish food and end up paying for what you perpahs didn’t want.
When Job Boards Become Money Machines Instead of providing proper Talent database.
Recruiters live and breathe precision. One wrong keyword, one misplaced skill tag, and the entire candidate funnel shifts.
Traditionally, Job boards are designed to render the right candidates for you basis the boolean search keywords and skills you use. Recruiter is supposed to enter keywords, skills, and search for candidates. If not found, he is supposed to re-enter keywords, skills and search again. This goes on until the recruiter finds the right candidates, and the recruiter is happy.
This is how usualy job boards work, and have been working … but unless and until now.
Now in India, we have some job boards that are designed in ways that punish recruiters for human error rather than empower them.
Take the model used by blue collar job boards these days — to name few — there is one called — Job Hai, by Info Edge — Naukri group umbrella, and LokalJobs.
There is a product called — Job Hai (english translation — I’ve got a job !! ). This job board is usually used to hire blue collar staff in big and small cities and towns. I’ve extensively used it’s competitors including Work India, APNA, and found nothing worth bad UX, but this one is something, that is worth sharing here.
Here’s usually how it works–
Usually, while posting a job, recruiter is supposed to enter job category, required skills, such that the system indexes candidates against those skills, and show candidate resumes.
In a job board like Job hai, it doesn’t work this way — Instead, You create a job ad draft, publish it, and then you see candidate database only basis your job published draft. Once the job goes live, the database is rendered.
But here’s funny catch: you cannot edit the job category once it’s published. That means — One typo, a missed skill, or one mis‑tagged job category and you won’t be able to find candidates you’re looking for.
One incorrect chosen job category and job title, and your entire hiring budget is gone.
These job boards use terms like credits or coins (just a fancy term used by sales team of these job boards — just to confuse users and recruiters ), and your budget’s all gone, with one wrong job category, and the only way forward is to pay again.
In case you ask your sales relationship manager, (who sold you the subscription), to allow you to change job title or job category or skills, or edit the job post once, they will happily say one thing– “Sorry Sir”!
I personally have experienced this while using almost all popular blue collar job boards — Job Hai, Lokal Jobs App, Work India and Apna. They all deny a refund at first.
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I happened to speak to my fellow receruiters in the network and they too complained the same. Recruiters are losing flexibility and control and are ending up paying heavy invoices for something that isn’t providing them any value.
Moving on: Some More –
Here’s the funny part. There are few posts on reddit, which claim, Job Board CEO’s do this intentinoally, as these job boards actually make big profits.
A bad UX (including silent customer support ) is deliverately placed, because, the end customers on these blue collar job baords are small boutique recruiters, small businesses and shop keepers, which cannot challenge big companies.
Business Model :
‘no editing once posted’ — This is what blue collear job boards are running their businesses on. This isn’t just a UX flaw — it’s a deliberate monetization strategy !
By restricting edits, the board ensures repeat spend. It’s less about recruiter success, more about protecting the database as a “premium” assets enabling opportunities for disruption for companies.
Business people in IT know this — “the more you put restrictions on software features, the more revenue you generate.”
Closing thoughts –
Unfortunately, I’ve been seeing a almost all blue collar job boards, adopting same model these days— No changes allowed to Job ads, once published.
This isn’t a problem, but, the uttery Bad UX and customer support is what makes entire experience completely different.
Platforms like Job Hai, and Lokal Jobs (https://hire.getlokalapp.com) are ones which provide absolute No value to your money, This is basis my repeated experiences with these boards.
A lot recruiters are showing concern for exact same issue. Trustpilot and reddit is filled with reviews from small boutique recruiting agencies.
I’m sure If such job boards ever existed in countries where the laws are stricter- like UK, US, Australia, these job boards and their CEO’s would’nt even exist. The reason is simple — No one wants to be press charged with fraud allegations after all, isn’t it ?
If such job boards existed in countries where the laws are stricter – these job boards and their CEO’s wouldn’t even exist.
It is India, where people have this habit of tolerating every nuisance, which further gives strength to CEO’s to set such standards and customers to blindly follow.
Recruitment tech should be about enabling precision, not penalizing imperfection and leaving a bad user experience for recruiters. Platforms that prioritize recruiter success over repeated invoice generation is what every recruiter and recruiting agency respects afterall.
These should turn back into restaurants, where customer is allowed to change his order, like the way it always was. A happy customer is always a repeated customer afterall.
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