Job board giant Careerbuilder.co.uk has announced a massive exclusive deal with MSN to provide job postings on its Careers Channel.

And Recruiter can reveal that the job board has also signed a similar deal with AOL in the UK, although the precise terms have not been disclosed.

The news will come as a kick in the teeth to competitor Monster, as CareerBuilder has taken both contracts off its rival.

The seven-year deal to provide job postings on MSN’s Careers Channel in the UK supplements CareerBuilder’s existing deal in the US, which has also been extended by seven years.

The tie-up is worth $450m (£225m) worldwide, with the international market worth between 25-30% of the total.

Farhan Yasin, president of CareerBuilder International, said that the deals were “stepping stones” to becoming the market leader in job board traffic and revenue in the UK.

“For every market we launch into, we like to be number one in terms of traffic and revenue within a three-to-five-year period after launching,” he explained.

CareerBuilder launched in the UK in March last year.

“It’s a really exciting deal for us,” Yasin told Recruiter. “The European marketplace is a very dynamic marketplace and there’s strong opportunities for our business.”

CareerBuilder has relationships with a number of online service providers. In addition to announcing the MSN and AOL deals, it also has partnerships with Virgin and Lycos.

Microsoft has a small minority stake in CareerBuilder, the terms of which are unaffected by the new deal.

Industry experts told Recruiter that deals of this kind represented opportunities for job boards. “There’s a huge opportunity for organisations to link up with super-brands such as MSN,” Colin Minto, of recruitment technology consultancy Bornto, told Recruiter.

“The fact that the contracts have switched to CareerBuilder means that either Monster didn’t benefit from the relationships in the way that they hoped they would, or CareerBuilder just outbid them.

“It looks like straight commercials to me.”