Big news dropped this week. For those of you who missed it (seriously did you miss it? Get it together…) Monster.com bought Yahoo HotJobs for 225 million dolllllarrrrsssss. Whoa.

While Yahoo has been slowly selling off pieces of its entity for some time now, this partnership certainly came as a surprise to many. Although aggregators like Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com have established themselves as primary job board destinations, Monster.com and Yahoo HotJobs still remain two of the heaviest hitters in the online job search game. Together they combine for over 18 million monthly visitors. Whoa.

What this means? The deal between the two companies will make Monster the default job listing provider in the U.S. and Canada for the next three years. As a subset to the deal Yahoo will receive yearly payments from Monster.com depending on traffic metrics. So yeah you read that right. Yahoo received 225 million up front and will now receive money regularly without having to run and operate HotJobs itself. Not a bad deal.

What this doesn’t mean. That either of these two announced anything exciting other than the fattening of already fattened pockets. Usually when you hear about such a huge shift you hope to get that glimpse into the future paragraph. I was really hoping to see a “Monster plans to take the already established brand and leverage it as they step forward into a new age of recruitment online” or “there are talks of repositioning the HotJobs brand into a more engaged job board with a renewed focus on social search and recruitment 2.0.” I’d take anything along those lines, alas there were no statements reflecting any intention to make changes or big moves.

What we really need. The larger boards to realize that things are changing. While I appreciate Monster working on providing more accurate results with betas like Power Search I really think the energy needs to be reallocated to different pieces of the job search puzzle. Our industry’s prominent voices and bloggers have acknowledged the power of integrating social media and online networking during an online job search, but we have yet to see either Monster or HotJobs make moves toward a more socially-laced user experience. Shame.on.them. Even their advice sections reflect an outdated gallery of job search tips and suggestions. Sad scene all around.

Sites that are heading the right direction. Well SimplyHired blew me away last week when their released new features integrating social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter into their search results. Now that is what I am talking about. Similarly, Onward Search announced their new podcast—Career Cast, a tool they hope will aid professionals with job search advice as well as the latest industry trends. It is this sort of rich media adventure that I think the big boards are missing out on.

Job seekers no longer want to just download resume templates, instead they want to converse with people applying for jobs like them. They are seeking out connections and advice that is accurately relevant to a specific job search instance. In short—they want the power of the internet in their job search.

As people spent the week freaking out about the big announcement I dismissively tweeted it out and went on with my life. Nothing new to see here people. Two boards throwing money at each other without any announcement of new directions or renewed focuses. There is always the chance that the partnership announcement just wasn’t the right time to throw it all out there. I hope that is the case. I’ll gladly eat my words if Monster or Yahoo HotJobs takes the new combined power of this partnership and does something valuable with it for the millions of unemployed professionals. Gladly.eat.my.words.

Until then, I am going to go about my business as usual and redirect all of my unemployed friends to SimpleHired.com. #fact