'Wall Street Journal' Says It's Safe To Go Back In The Job Market

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The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday launched a stand-alone online career site targeting financial professionals.
FINS.com, so-called, will encompass the major financial sectors with associated jobs and news, along with company research, career advice and insights.

Part of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, the free site is targeting job seekers, recruiters and employers, as well as anyone generally interested in the financial job markets.

Signaling a new direction for the Dow Jones-owned network, Kevin Hatfield, general manager of FINS.com, says job seekers are presently underserved by the market's existing services.

"Large general job boards traditionally have underserved the needs of finance professionals," said Hatfield. "FINS.com takes a unique, comprehensive approach to this segment by creating a daily resource that appeals to both active and passive job seekers alike."

At least superficially supporting Hatfield’s contention, a recent report by consulting firm CareerXroads found that just 12.3% of external hires come from job boards. Yet, the report concluded that while market leaders like Monster and CareerBuilder account for half of job board hires, both are losing ground to social networks and other niche Web services.

Partly driving the influence of social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook is the fact that referrals from both employees and corporate alumni make up 27.3% of all external hires, according to CareerXroads.

In an effort to compensate for lost classifieds revenue, newspaper publishers have sought to increase their stakes in online job sites. Late last year, Gannett has acquired an additional 10% stake in CareerBuilder from the Tribune Co. for $135 million. The acquisition gave Gannett a 50.8% controlling interest in the job site. The deal left Tribune with a 30.8% of CareerBuilder, while The McClatchy Company continues to own 14.4%, and Microsoft owns 4%.

FINS.com has been given a dedicated editorial staff to generate targeted, career-related content, including regular features such as the Bull/Bear Report, a blog-style column that tracks the financial job market, and Morning Coffee, which helps candidates start each day with a career spin on the latest financial news.

The site provides the ability to search for job opportunities with filtering tools, while users can also research roughly 1,500 companies across multiple sectors and access finance-specific career development information, ranging from job search tips to longer-term advancement and career transition advice.
Additional tools and features are expected to roll out in the coming months.

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