In general, I think online recruiting is a sector that has lagged behind other online marketplaces in innovation.  The leaders, like Monster, are still offering a classified advertising service.

There have been exceptions. One is Marc Cenedella‘s company The Ladders.  They stepped into the online recruiting world by going against industry conventions: They allow companies to post their $100K+ jobs for free, and get their revenues from job seekers who’d like privileged access to those jobs.  Over about two years, they created a very successful company.

This week they are launching "Opal", where they introduce new functionality to their service.  Until now, unlike traditional career services websites, The Ladders had no profiles of their job seeker members, for recruiters to search and browse.  Opal changes that.  In addition, Opal allows the recruiters to create profiles, as well!  Marc thinks this is not dissimilar to the online dating model.  The recruiters become the pretty girls. 😉

The key here will be protecting the recruiters from excess attention, as well as careful filtering to ensure the recruiters are real.  Once those two steps are in place, The Ladders will once again have innovated in an area that has largely missed key internet learnings so far.