10 earth-shattering things that happened in online recruiting in 2012

Hey, it’s the end of the year (almost) and time to take a look at what happened in 2012. Did anything? Well, actually, yes – quite a bit. Apart from an election, a (slowly) recovering economy, and a snazzy James Bond film, it did seem like 2012 was a busy year for online recruiting. Here are my picks for the most notable:

Monster collapses (in slow motion): Despite an improving hiring picture, Monster has not succeeded (yet) in selling itself. Instead, it has managed to lay off numerous folks, sell parts of its non-US self, andconfuse potential buyers. What will 2013 bring?
VC money reappears: After a longish break for the recession, VC funding has reappeared (for exampled, $20M for GlassDoor and $1.7M for GetHired). Will it last? Probably not – get it while it’s hot!
Arbita shuts down: The industry pioneer closes up. ‘Nuff said.
Cheezhead reappears: Now blogging as ‘Joel Cheesman’ at the JobScore site. Check it out.
Dice buys stuff: Dice deepened their holdings in the financial sector with the purchase of FINS, then added GeekNet, a group of tech-oriented content sites. Oh – and they made money, too.
Mobile becomes wallpaper: Employers, recruiters, and job boards finally decide that mobile isn’t a flash in the pan and start integrating mobile into their offerings. (ATSs still haven’t gotten the message, though.)
Evenbase buys stuff, moves into North America: Evenbase, the UK-based operator of Jobsite.co.uk and other sites, picked up JobRapido, a rapidly growing aggregator – then moved into the US market with both it and a U.S. version of Jobsite.
LinkedIn makes mucho money, build stuff: LinkedIn has had a solid year revenue-wise – and it’s not over yet. What are they doing with that money? Launching lots of new products for recruiters and employers, and trying to convince candidates to ‘come visit more often’.
Facebook lays an aggregator: After much media speculation, Facebook launched what they call a ‘social jobs partnership’ which seems to bear a striking resemblance to a standard job aggregator. The jury’s still out.
Job boards dead yet?: Ahem. Darn. Another year but job boards are still going strong. (Well, ok, Monster’s hurting – 1 out of 140,000 ain’t bad). We’ll see what happens in 2013.

Comment by Rajpreet on December 19, 2012 at 3:05pm: Why do you think job boards are eventually going to die? Does this mean more job-hunters will apply on a company's website? I