To continue on our investigation into the industry specific question, Is the job board industry missing the fundamentals to delivering quality candidates? Today, we are going to turn our focus towards the money generators for a job board (at least in most cases); the employers/recruiters. As conveyed during last week’s post, the quality of candidates is the most important factor for employers when evaluating your job board services and allocating portions of their recruitment spend on your site. In recent years, the job board industry has been evolving their services to expand from simply the traditional approach; post and prey. Or, as we all know them by, job postings.

As our industry approaches become more elaborate, how do we implement, execute and deliver quality candidates our employers desire? This is the primary question and recommendations, we will focus on to assist your job board to answer that question.

1). Improve Job Postings with Analytics – say what?

In most cases, job postings continue to be the lead revenue generator for job boards.  And, for the candidates are the essential content to encourage them to revisit, interact and register on the site. Therefore, is a primary vehicle to driving quality candidates.

• Include Salary Range and Benefits in your standard job postings
  • For the candidates, as expressed in Part One, listing the salary range and benefits are the second and third highest pieces of information to impact their decision to apply
  • For the employers, you may be surprised to realize how many employers are not aware of this stat and as such, this provides your job board with an opportunity to convey this information to the employer during the job posting process
  • Maybe go a step further – provide the employer with analytics about the impact on application rates with the Salary Range and Benefits included vs. excluded
• Recommendations on job title, job location, salary range, benefits, description, etc
  • Google keywords on your job board and during a job posting…huh? Your job board has the potential to gather a wealth of information about the interactions of your users and candidates, such as, the top selected category on your job board. Why not provide this information to the employer when they are posting their jobs? Again, any opportunity to educate your employers about the site performance and the best way to target their ideal candidate
• Inform employers on the value of uploading their logo – I will admit, during my tenure of running a job board I was routinely shocked how many employers neglected to upload their logo (most times, this is a free service for the employer). Yet, from speaking directly with the employers a common trend presented itself – they were unaware of the benefits
  • Provide analytics to the employer of the expected results with a logo included with a job posting vs not
  • Inform the employer of the locations their logo will be present on the job board

2). Resume Alerts

So, I will start out by saying, this is not isn’t a revolutionary idea, however, from the vast majority of job boards we have interacted with, not many job boards offer this service. Quite surprising! It is safe to say, your employers are not picky on how you deliver the candidates, so start by implementing this vehicle to delivering their desired candidates. Secondly, sending the resume alerts via email also provides the benefit on remaining top of mind with your employers and keeping them engaged amongst your competition. Sure sounds like a win-win for both the job board and the employer.

3). Determine the employers ideal candidate 

The fact of the matter is that each employer is different and their specific recruitment needs are constantly changing, which causes considerable challenges for job boards. Yet, in order to best deliver valuable candidates, the job board must have their pulse on what the employer deems as quality. Therefore, some thoughts on ways your job board may achieve this challenge

1. Provide specific recruitment questions during the employer registration process – Examples, may include; Which job categories are your targeting, desired locations, and how many hires in the next year. Ultimately, the attempt here is to begin to lay the foundation for where, what and how many candidates the employer is attempting to hire. Any information the job board may gather will assist in leveraging your database of candidates
2. Research the employer website for current openings – this is a quick and easy approach to spark conversation with the employer and determine if your job board may deliver those candidates
3. On a monthly or quarterly basis – speak directly with the employer on their desired recruitment needs

 3a). Provide recommendations on how to reach the desired audience

Upon completing step number 3, the job board should have good understanding of what the employer is looking for and now we must turn our attention to providing recommendations on how to reach the desired audience. This is when the job board will turn to their list of services and extensive database to convey the value to the employer. Some opportunities for you include;

• Provide the employer with a short list (5-10) candidates that specifically meet their needs
• Recommend to the employer on registering for resume alerts on their specific terms
• For more passive employers, recommend and describe the analytics about branding their company with the use of a featured employer/job. Example, our featured job postings experience a 10% increase in application rate compared to standard job postings
• Targeted email campaigns – Inform the employer of the number of users that match their specific needs in your database and the opportunity to target those candidates with a tailored email campaign – Not only is this approach powerful to generate results, it is immediate as well!
• Targeted SMS campaigns – How about instantaneous results! 90% of SMS text messages are read within 3 minutes of being delivered. This is a tremendously powerful approach for the job boards to deliver the candidates in minutes and even better when you can target the specific candidates as deemed by the employer

Ultimately, any opportunity for your job board to take a proactive approach to understanding your employers/recruiters and leveraging that information to deliver candidates will greatly improve their experience and most importantly, provide the best opportunity to address their top concern; quality candidates.

Next week, we will complete the three-part series by discussing opportunities within the administrative section of a job board to boost quality candidates.

Until then, good luck!