In a struggling economy with fewer and fewer jobs available while demand for jobs remains high, "need it now" in terms of timely job leads is a must. Does that make you wonder, is it time to say goodbye to the concept of job boards? You can bet your bottom dollar that's on the mind of many job sites that are undoubtedly experiencing low volume in terms of job postings. Some of that is just the natural cycle of demand, any, product or service experiences. On the other hand, a good portion of it is due to the job board concept simply being a dinosaur job lead channel that has failed to spur innovation or at least simply keep up with the end users want and how best to deliver what job seekers want -- solid accurate timely job openings.

So if job boards are struggling, which many of them are, what have the mass exodus of job seekers turned to? In a nutshell, job seekers have reverted to the days of person to person contact or good ole fashion networking. You know the days where you actually interacted with a person and worked mojo to get your foot in the door. That's what happens when the new ways fail, job seekers revert to what is tested and true. In short, real time job search is where it's at and the leaders in job search understand this reality and have embraced such reality. Conversely, the job sites feeling the most pain are those holding on to cheap job search pages that simply relied on static job postings and big budgets to gain favor with search engines.

Surely, there's no doubt the economy is taking its toll on job site, job board and job search engine alike. On the other hand innovation and staying connected with your base is essential in any market. Right now, the job seeker base is screaming loudly for ways to gain privy knowledge of hiring trends and the ability to respond quickly to job openings that represent a strong match. Short of real time job search, job sites simply fail to meet these fundamental requirements of today's job seekers. So while it may not be time to say goodbye to, all, job boards, job seekers simply expect more from job search engines as real time job search is "IN" while posted and re-posted snail pace job listings are "OUT".

If you were under the impression that the job market has, or at least is, recovered/recovering than you might be surprised to learn otherwise. So what does that mean? It means people are beginning to wonder where did all the jobs go? You know the jobs that the Bailout Billions were supposed to create. Let's top it off with the nearly 8 million jobs that have been lost which are probably lost for the rest of our lifetime.

Really its no joke...the economy is being a little temperamental with getting back on track. Despite the fact that the current Great Recession has lately been adding 100,000 plus jobs the last few months, that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the 15 million plus unemployed. As for the unemployed, getting another unemployment benefits extension isn't likely as Congress is starting to tighten up on the spending or at least the spending on the unemployed. Hummh maybe the unemployed are considered expendable? Who knows. Surely the BP oil spill debacle isn't adding (positively) to the economic woes either.

So where did all the jobs go? Your guess is as good as the next guy's. What is certain is that the Bailout Billions, from which the banks benefited, has done little if anything to revive the economy and create jobs. At best the Bailout Billions merely refilled the Banker's coffers. So the question that everyone is pondering, what's going to be the next economic wave to get the economy out of the trenches? Hummh, you're still searching for an answer too huh. Don't worry, so too is Congress who knows their days are numbered if a job recovery miracle doesn't happen in the next few months. The fall elections are coming and let's face it, voters aren't happy with the overall economic conditions. So in the next few months you can expect your Congress men and women to answer the "where did all the jobs go?" question in an attempt to survive the voter axe or gain support to make to Washington.

Perhaps there are a few organizations left where doing a good job means you get to keep your job, but at HP the integration with EDS means 3,000 job losses. Talk about a slap in the face, that's about as crude as it gets. Why on earth would you give a hard working performing employee (or in this case 3,000 employees) the axe? Well according to HP, the integration with EDS is going so well that its ahead of schedule. Corporate lingo translation - we brought in the big guns, treated them like gold so they performed well for us and now its time to trim the payroll since the "big guns" cost too much and we would rather transfer those savings to bonuses for the bigwig executives. Sound familiar?

Wait a minute, Justin, i think your facts are off, i thought HP was hiring nearly 6,000 employees. Well, in fact that is true, HP is hiring nearly 6000 employees to it's sales and delivery teams while cutting 3000 in engineering and technical related staff. So in other words, HP is trading engineering staff for product pushers and order takers. Hummh an engineering firm that favors order takers over engineering staff...lets see where that goes. According to HP though, there is another phase, following the current phase of the EDs integration which will focus on standardization and automation of EDS services. It's a little hard to understand how HP will win favor with the technical gurus for the phase II EDS integration, when HP has already shown in phase I that the technical know how folks are pretty low on the priority list - long term. For now all we know is that the HP EDS integration equates to 3000 job losses, as for anything else we'll just have to wait and let those chapters unfold.