We took on the subject of paid job sites this month at OnlineRecruitingNews.com:

From the start of job boards in the mid 1990s until now, the vast majority of job and career sites have worked on a simple economic model: job seekers don’t pay, employers do. In fact, the concept
of free access to a job site’s listings was so ingrained that TheLadders
actually garnered quite a bit of publicity by requiring job seekers to
pay when it launched in 2004. Although still uncommon,
‘pay’ sites have gathered some momentum during the last 2
years of recession – a result of seekers desperate to gain any
kind of advantage in the job market. The question remains, though: are
‘pay’ sites worth it?

It's an interesting topic for me as we initially charged jobseekers on LatPro.com. However, we changed our business model and it has been years since we stopped charging job seekers. around the same time monster and careerbuilder started offering premium paid services to job seekers. I know it's possible to provide a time-saving service to job seekers who have more money than time. But, it puts the company offering the services in a dangerous position that I didn't want to be in. It's just too easy to get carried away with your marketing - to overstate the value and uniqueness of the product. As time goes by, it also gets harder and harder to provide something unique.

Another thing that bothered me was that you couldn't stop job seekers from paying for services who really would not benefit from them. Self-selection did not seem to work too well. We also thought the trends in the industry would work against job boards that charged job seekers.

Has anyone here used pay job sites? What was your experience?