Job Board: to Make or to Buy?

Generally speaking, when it comes to any software solution for Web business, we often ask ourselves: what is the best option? There are so many offers, which one should you choose? Moreover, building an online job board requires much effort today, since the market is heavily competitive. So you, as a site owner, should offer something unique to your online recruitment service users.

You know who never asks this question? Developers who can make there own software. Since we are not developers we become dependent on those them and we have to choose whom to trust. The choices now are to either to buy the ready-made job board script, or pay somebody to make a solution especially for you.

There are a lot of discussions on the Web about this topic, but let's just take a look at all the "pros and cons" of each option and come up with an answer to your questions.

Personalized Solution

There are lots of freelance companies over the Internet, which will create any functions you need for your job board site. To find those companies or individual freelancers you can use special freelance web sites, where you can post your project description and get bids from freelancers. Here is a list of the most popular freelance sites: www.elance.com, www.getafreelancer.com, www.guru.com, www.scriptlance.com

Pros:

• Personalization: With individual solutions you will get exactly what you need (ideally). You will have a piece of software designed specially for your career website with consideration for your business model. As a result you'll get the job site with unique features, which no one has.

Cons:

• Time-consuming: If you want a personal job board script you will need to be patient, because it will take much longer than just filling out the payment form for a ready-made script. Moreover, you are lucky if you can find a team which is able to work within your deadlines. In many cases developers fail to meet the deadlines explaining it with some unforeseen technical problems arisen during the development process which, of course, you cannot verify because you do not understand the development process.

• Expensive: Completely personalized scripts might take too long to complete and, as you know, a developer's time costs a lot. Usually the price is measured with the number of people involved in the project and the number of hours to be spent on it. So, if you want a really personalized solution, you'll pay much more then expected.

Ready-Made Solution

Today there is a huge choice of software solutions for a job board web site. Here is a list of the most popular scripts: www.smartjobboard.com, www.jamit.com, www.jobbex.com, www.joblite.co.uk

Pros:

• Relatively cheap: Absolutely true, because the script is made once and then it's being sold to as many people as possible. They don't have to spend time and effort every time they want to sell the software, they just sell a copy of what they've already made.

• Everything included: The good side of this is that you get all the basic features you need based on the customers feedback (otherwise they wouldn't sell many copies). You can be sure most of your needs will be met because many customers have already requested the existing features.

• Updates. Ready-made scripts are also good for those who are used to keeping their ear to the ground. In order to stay ahead of their competition, ready-made job board scripts are constantly being updated based on feedback from their customers, the news and the latest trends.

• Community support: Last, but not least, community is a big help whenever you are confused about something about a product (let's be realistic, many things can happen). A group of people with similar issues are often ready to help with advice or in some cases provide technical support.

Cons:

• No personalization: You get the same job board script as all other customers of this company, which means at that in the beginning you have no competitive edge, other than your ideas. If you need some expanded features you have to ask for the original developer's help.

• Unnecessary features: With all the benefits you get, you can often get a lot of unnecessary features. Companies do their best to satisfy their customer's needs, but we are all different, so that's why the only way to satisfy all of their customers is to offer all they can. That's what they do: all possible features are included by default, which can make the script difficult to manage and even to use, and often bloated in size. Again, without developers, you will not be able to get rid off unnecessary items.

Looking at all Pros and Cons of both solutions, it's difficult to choose one and go for it. Ideally, you should choose something that combines all the "pros" of these two choices and this will be the right solution. Is this possible? Yes, with some products likewww.smartjobboard.com, which are offered as a ready-made job site script, but allow for custom modifications. There are not many companies offering this kind of flexibility, and even less that provide both at high quality. Professionals who can do this are priceless. In case you don't find one, you should go for a ready-made solution as it seems that this option has more convincing "pros" in comparison to personalized job board scripts.