The site is rapidly increasing in popularity and the company is moving aggressively to expand partnerships, but the technology investment required to scour employer sites sent the company in a very different direction than its competitors, and it's too soon to tell whether FlipDog's model will thrive.

Pssssst! Check it out.
In a strange twist of reverse popularity, FlipDog.com carries cachet precisely because it's still relatively unknown. Job seekers want job listings, and lots of them, but they also want to know that the listings haven't already been scoured and rejected by scores of other users. FlipDog is the site that gets passed around as the unturned stone, the one that might have "THE job" waiting patiently underneath. I've heard conversations like this one many times:

Job Hunter One: So, any luck?

Job Hunter Two: No, it's a tough market. There's nothing out there.

Job Hunter One: Did you try headhunter.net?

Job Hunter Two (dejected): Yeah, that one and every other one. Jobfind, Techiegold, Dice, everything.

Job Hunter One: How about FlipDog?

Job Hunter Two (masking sudden interest with suspicion): What's that?

Job Hunter One: It just seems like it has stuff other sites don't have. You might want to check it out.

Job Hunter Two (feigning indifference): Maybe I will, if I get a chance.

Job Hunter Two immediately leaves to find a laptop and look up flipdog.com.

Localization

	Search by town or region

Although FlipDog.com is a national site (with a growing focus on international job listings), the use of a town-by-town drop-down allows the appearance, if not the substance, of a highly localized set of job listings.

The convenience of searching by city or town is appealing and undeniable, although of course the strategy will backfire if FlipDog can't produce the search results to back up the granularity of its search options.

Tedious search process

Three steps isn't better than one

It's an unfortunate fact of life for online recruitment sites that the job search screen can only be arranged so many ways. In the end, they all tend to look somewhat alike.

In an apparent effort to break out of the mold, FlipDog inexplicably sacrificed usability and speed. The site drags out the job search process across a minimum of three overly-complicated screens. The result is content that seems stretched and artificial. For example, using a map of the U.S. instead of a state drop-down has no inherent advantage to the job seeker; it's a pointless waste of space.

Yet after lavishing screen real estate on most aspects of the search process, FlipDog buries the keyword field -- the most important parameter in many job searches -- in the left column under static content.

Lack of focus in partnerships

	Part of FlipDog's "resources" list

Since employer- and recruiter-paid listings aren't a part of FlipDog's business model, the company has been especially aggressive in pursuing services and content partnerships with third parties. Unfortunately the result is a mish-mash of offerings, with competitive partners (like salary engines) uncomfortably thrown together on a page.

When visiting FlipDog's "resource center," users sadly receive no guidance beyond the dizzying array of links, all of which point offsite. The branding on the destination pages extends no deeper than the FlipDog top navigation plastered across the top of the partner site.

Carefully selected and tightly-integrated third-party agreements trump the kitchen-sink effect any day -- but that's a lesson FlipDog has yet to learn.

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