AI, Labor Shifts and Possible Recession Weigh Heavy on Future of Recruitment
One thing is for certain: The future is uncertain.
Analysts conducted dozens of interviews with CEOs and corporate executives. Spent hundreds of hours researching traffic, revenue and new products at job boards/recruitment marketplaces worldwide.
- Trends: All there. AI, referrals, pay-for-performance
- Top 50: Traffic
- Top 25: Revenue
- Top 15: Freelance
- Top 3 from A to Z: The leaders in 68 countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe
Companies the publisher looked at include the CareerBuilder and Monster, Redarbor, Jooble, and Karriere.at.
Turmoil. Uncertainty. A challenging future. A bright long-term horizon. All of those apply today to recruitment marketplaces and job boards.
These are the factors driving this dynamic mix:
- Recession: Or recession-ish. Or economic growth. Certainly, economic uncertainty.
- Tariffs: Or no tariffs. Trade wars.
- AI: Whether it’s generative or agentic, it’s changing recruitment marketplaces every day.
- The post-Covid-boom slump.
However you view it, the future is murky. Except in two of those areas, AI is coming. No, it’s here. And the post-COVID-19 boom slump is also here. This report is based on dozens of interviews with corporate CEOs and executives; research by more than 30 writer-analysts around the globe, and detailed analysis of traffic, revenue and new products at job boards/recruitment marketplaces worldwide.
Top story? The impact of AI. One forecast: In five years, many jobs won’t be “found;” companies will use AI and data to find candidates, and send them pre-approved job offers like banks send out pre-approved credit offers today.
LinkedIn and Indeed are still top-of-mind for every job board. What are the top 25 job boards worldwide by revenue? Along with lists of the top 15 freelance marketplaces, the top 50 recruitment marketplaces by traffic, and Top 3 lists for 68 countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe.
Companies looked at include: CareerBuilder+Monster, InfoJobs in Spain; Jooble, the world’s leading job listing aggregator, and Karriere.at, the leader in Austria. Profession.hu is looking to expand beyond Hungary; Redarbor is growing fast in Latin America - and might it buy InfoJobs in Spain? Two companies worth watching: IranTalent and XpressJobs in Sri Lanka.
Table of Contents
- Executive summary
- Industry trends
- Recruitment sites are edging toward pay-for-performance
- Large, long-term contracts are becoming less and less common. Job marketplaces need to respond to the ebb and flow of clients’ needs
- LinkedIn: How to compete with a networking giant
- In a recent quarterly analyst call, the Microsoft CEO said LinkedIn’s hiring business was continuing to grow market share.
- GenAI: Agentic AI, screening and candidate engagement
- More sophisticated GenAI uses have come into play during the last year. Ironically, many were designed to combat a problem that GenAI itself caused: application overload
- AI will upend recruitment marketplaces
- AI is posing many existential questions for job boards. But human recruiters are likely to be among the first segments to be displaced.
- Referrals: Outdated approach, or waiting to be perfected?
- Referrals have been around for a long time, with job sites still trying to perfect this approach to digital recruitment.
- Company spotlights
- Recruitment marketplaces by revenue: The world’s Top 25 Indeed has lost the top spot after seeing a decline in revenue
- CareerBuilder-Monster: Waiting for the next shoe to drop
- Many predicted Apollo would do with Monster what it had done with CareerBuilder: strip it for parts and sell to the highest bidders. But we’ve seen no signs of this yet
- InfoJobs Spain: For sale? Who will buy it?
- InfoJobs is an attractive acquisition, but it may be sold at a better time, considering the current economic difficulties job sites are facing
- Jooble: World’s leading aggregator on expansion and AI
- Jooble is the No. 1 job aggregator globally by traffic and the No. 7 overall recruitment marketplace brand
- Karriere.at: Leading in Austria vs. Stepstone, Indeed Karriere.at is beating Indeed and Stepstone, the two largest recruitment marketplaces in Europe
- Profession.hu: Looking globally for new growth areas
- Hungary has an aging population of less than 10 million and one of Europe’s lowest unemployment rates - around 4% for the last couple of years
- Redarbor: Catho, OCC acquisitions help build leads
- Catho’s historical focus on smaller enterprises brought greater diversity to Redarbor’s Brazil business
- Companies to watch
- IranTalent: Pipeline from local talent to global employers
- IranTalent offers two primary products: a freelancing platform called WinATalent and an applicant tracking system called Hire.Camp, which it acquired in 2021
- XpressJobs: Growing through multiple crises
- XpressJobs has targeted two areas of growth: expanding into blue-collar jobs, and moving into the student / graduate segment
- Top 50 recruitment marketplaces and classified sites
- Top 15 freelance marketplaces
- Top recruitment ad sites/apps by country
Samples
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Companies Mentioned
- CareerBuilder
- Catho
- Hire.Camp
- Indeed
- InfoJobs
- IranTalent
- Jooble
- Karriere.at
- Monster
- OCC
- Profession.hu
- Redarbor
- Stepstone
- WinATalent
- XpressJobs
Methodology
The publisher has analysts on every continent except Antarctica and clients on every continent except Antarctica. The publisher relies on them, government filings, competitive analysis, interviews with industry insiders and experts, conversations with the companies being covered and external data such as SimilarWeb to provide extensive data and reporting on key topics.
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