New research claims that online job boards are failing small and medium sized employers (SMEs).

Whatjobsite.com found that over half of the job boards surveyed provided little or no online information about their candidate audience.

Karl Schweppe, MD of whatjobsite.com, said: “Job board operators shouldn’t assume that direct employers will automatically pick up on the subtleties of their job inventory.”

Even more surprising was that around 50% of the job boards gave little or no online information about the costs of their advertising products. Of those job boards that did share pricing information, most limited themselves to the cost of a credit card posting. To find out the price of other products like CV databases or email sponsorships, employers were required to ring up or email the site in question.

Worryingly, whatjobsite also found that just over 25% of the job boards surveyed failed to provide required information on their sites including basic information such as company name, registration number and registered address.

“Employers need to be able to feel confident about choosing a job board,” said Schweppe. “For this, they must be able to answer the most basic questions about a site like ‘is it a legitimate business?’ ‘Where is it located?’ ‘What is its company registration number?’ etc.”

Schweppe advises job boards to get back to basics: “At the moment, the online recruitment market place is buzzing with talk of social media, widgets, Twitter and so on. That’s all well and good; but before job boards focus on their Web 2.0 strategies, they should not forget about the basics. They should take a look at their sites and make sure that they have Web 1.0 covered.”