Job search is very broken. Monster/Dice/Craigslist &c are broken. Not sexy, I know, but I imagine the people who solve that problem will become quite rich.
Let's say you're a web programmer living in City A, and commuting to City B, a commute of 2 hours. Unbeknown to you, there's a web programmer in City B, commuting to City A every day. My idea would be to put these two in touch with each other, and eventually facilitate a job switch. You basically swap jobs (assuming you're both of equal proficiency, and the higher-ups agree to it), and don't have to commute any more. Yay/Nay?
A job is not just a location, but a combination of lot of things like salary compensation, work culture. So it will be difficult for two people to agree on something like this. One would always think, that he's losing out on the deal. It might still work!, but maybe it's just a little too radical.
I was toying with a similar approach, but i think the social angle on job search is still missing. Eg. recommending jobs for your friends, voting on which companies are good to work for etc. There are a lot of small companies that don't get a lot of good talent, just cos they're not Google/Facebook.
I would love to get a chance to discuss, brainstorm with you on this, since i've been seriously thinking of jumping into job search with the hope of doing it right.
LinkedIn is probably a closer approximation to what's needed, but as far as I can tell it's hard to get far out of your acquaintances with a basic account.
I'd like to see something that's a little more direct, that gets me to HR/hiring managers with fewer people in the middle.