Recruit LongTail: Universal Job Board Fabric
10/10
Demand Score
Critical roles are unfilled because current tools only cover a few major boards; talent sits on niche sites today.
8/10
Blue Ocean
Competition Level
$800-8k
Price/Month
Predicted customer spend
10 days
Time to MVP
Difficulty: Hard
The Problem
Expensive Upgrades Required
Competitor Landscape
- Broadbean
- eQuest
- SmartRecruiters Job Advertising
- Greenhouse Job Distribution
- Ashby Job Ads
- Zapier (DIY)
Must-Have Features for MVP
Headless posting engine with board-specific templates
Queueing, retries, and health monitors per board
Human-in-the-loop checkpoints for tricky flows
Applicant intake via email parsing, webhook, and inbox scraping
Auto-refresh/close posts per policy
Budget optimizer to shift spend to high-yield boards
Field mapping and dedupe back to ATS
⚠️ Potential Challenges
- Board TOS variability and anti-bot defenses
- CAPTCHA and MFA handling
- High-change HTML/DOM across boards
- Avoiding duplicate postings and spam flags
- Attribution accuracy for hires vs. applies
Risk Level: Moderate
🎯 Keys to Success
- Coverage of 1,000+ niche boards in first quarter
- <24h onboarding with existing ATS
- Measured uplift in qualified applicants per req
- Strict compliance mode (cookies, consent, data minimization)
Ready to Build This?
This hard-difficulty project could be your next micro-SaaS success.