Choosing the best online job boards Advice featured in:
Choosing the best online job boards Choosing the most appropriate and effective online job boards is a challenging task and one the research team at Recruitment Genius faces on a daily basis; the market moves swiftly, so to keep our edge, we have to move with it. And if we have to work hard to keep on top of the best options, how much more difficult is it for those without access to all the data that we see? As you know, if you do not choose the best online job boards, then your recruitment campaign runs the risk of immediate failure. To maximise success we use our buying power to advertise on all the UK s best job boards. This guide is intended for people who don t have the luxury of advertising on all those boards, or who don t use our service. Things to take into consideration Firstly you must change your mindset to consider four critical points: 1. Job boards sell job advertisements they are not in the business of filling jobs. 2. When choosing a job board you must avoid company logic and instead use applicant logic. Put yourself in the shoes of the people you hope to attract. 3. You have to advertise on a broad range of job boards to generate sufficient market coverage. There are over 2,000 job boards in the UK, but applicants only visit an average of 2.4; correspondingly, the chances of your advert being seen are miniscule. This is one of the key reasons why it s necessary for Recruitment Genius (and you) to advertise on so many job boards. You can never blame a relevant applicant for going on a bad job board or visiting a site where your job is not advertised. 4. Equally the online job board market is fluid and fast moving. A board that is relevant today may not be relevant tomorrow, which is one of the reasons Recruitment Genius has invested in a research team who solely monitor and prioritise job boards. Avoid company logic You must avoid using company logic, or it will cost you dearly. Some common errors we see repeatedly include: We always advertise on the site / This is where we got our last member of staff from Most job boards get their candidates via Google and you may be aware Google is constantly changing its search algorithm. Because job boards are so dependent on Google, candidate traffic can never be guaranteed and therefore it is not wise to presume that you will get the same results twice running. Please remember that, as ever, you are trying to minimise your risk, not increase it. 2
Studies report that candidates are using fewer job boards to look for jobs (even during the recession). Consequently a relevant candidate may have removed a site you are using from their portfolio. Job boards change and add new features. Unfortunately some of those (such as irrelevant daily email alerts) frustrate job seekers, causing some to switch off. Other features create real usability issues for example, we are often surprised how difficult it is for job seekers to apply to jobs. This results in many job seekers simply giving up, while others have to email us for assistance! the job board was cheap / I got a good deal / I got a free trial : Everyone likes a good deal, but it is only relevant if they help you recruit the right candidate. For example, a well-known national job board offering free trials announced that 68 per cent of companies who take advantage of the offer never return! That is over two thirds of customers who never return because they did not have a successful free trial. Every day that a vacancy remains unfilled because you re not willing to spend money attracting a capable applicant is a day lost, when a new appointee could have been adding value to your business. This costs your business money. Remember, the only reason you are recruiting is to add value to your business. It is a sad fact that too many companies forget the hidden cost of unfilled vacancies when they work out their Cost Per Hire metrics. If you cut corners and don t invest now, you ll pay for it later either way it is a false economy. I ve heard of their site : Familiarity with a brand makes us feel comfortable and secure. However, that is irrelevant if your ideal candidate has not heard of it. Fundamentally, you cannot blame a candidate for going to a job board you ve never heard of, you only have yourself to blame for your lack of market awareness. There is also another subconscious reason people automatically and often inappropriately choose wellknown sites: they feel no one will be able to blame them for that decision. In effect, they are taking a negative and defensive decision by bracing themselves for failure. We should remember, too, that the brand awareness of an individual site can be skewed by any seasonal advertising campaigns they may run, whereas the true picture will develop over a longer period. 3
The job board is a specialist in our sector : Almost anyone can call themselves a specialist. Unfortunately job boards are about advertising; what you need to know is, are they any good at that? Time and again the myth that professionals gravitate to a particular site is shattered. For example, we placed the finance director of a FTSE 100 using a generic job board typically associated with vacancies under 30,000. Once again, we can never blame a candidate for going to an inappropriate job board. As we said earlier, we need to look at all of this using applicant logic. The job board is part of an industry-leading publication : Many industry publications have seen their audience disappear, along with their advertising revenues. To remedy this, many have simply bolted a job board onto their site. Whilst they may know how to write great editorial and sell advertising, do they know how to attract quality applicants? Tip: We increasingly find publications that charge thousands of pounds, but which are wedded to the age of (offline) economy print, and we would recommend seeking better value elsewhere. Somewhat sadly, it is a case of that was then, but this is now. Use applicant logic instead! If you can put the mistake of using company logic behind you, you can move on and try to see the world through applicants eyes, where relevancy is key. Often this is quite difficult as you may well not have looked for a job yourself in a while. That is why we recommend you adopt this tried and tested systematic approach; it s the one we use at Recruitment Genius: Step 1. search Ninety-three per cent of candidates will start looking for a job online in the first instance. Most will be using a search engine such as Google and will enter a search query. The type of phrases used have adapted over time as job seekers became more sophisticated. Whereas initially they would use simple head phrases (e.g. sales jobs ) they increasingly will use a long-tail phrase (e.g. B2B sales jobs ). Approximately 70 per cent of searches will also include a geographical location (e.g. B2B sales jobs in Birmingham ) giving a clear indication of how important location is to job seekers. When the search results are displayed, approximately 94 per cent of job seekers will only visit the first page. Conduct a search using a phrase or key words you believe a prospective candidate might enter and the results will likely fall into three distinct categories: 1. National sites which cover every sector 2. National sites focused on specialist sectors 3. Local sites which cover every sector Tip: Google is not endorsing these sites, it is purely suggesting they may be appropriate based on many factors, including keyword relevancy and density, links, etc. 4
Step 2. research From the first page of results, review each job board. Conduct a search on each site to see if they advertise similar jobs to the one you were looking for. Was it easy and were there relevant jobs available? How many clicks did it take you to get to the destination you wanted? If in your experience it was neither easy, nor quick, nor relevant, then bear in mind job seekers will find the same and they may go elsewhere. Even worse is when the search results do not match your criteria a key frustration of many job seekers. Next, proceed through the site. Identify any friction such as complex application and registration processes. These will be further cause for your target audience to visit better sites. We would recommend you also look for distractions that could compromise your advert. For example, some job boards could advertise related jobs or other people applied to right next to your advert, inadvertently generating competition. Some may also try to sell training courses and, even worse, unrelated products and services. All serve to distract a job seeker from applying for jobs and underline that the core function of job boards is to sell advertising, rather than place people into jobs. You should also identify whether the site offers additional services, e.g.: Job email alerts these have the potential to drive significant job seeker traffic to your advert, therefore they are essential; they are also often free. However, job seekers get frustrated with cumbersome signup processes and annoyed if they do not receive relevant email alerts. Therefore be sure to test how easy it is to sign up to email alerts and avoid those sites that have a cumbersome process. Importantly, you should then trial the service to check whether they send you relevant search results, as candidates keep telling us how frustrated they get at being bombarded with irrelevant emails. Featured adverts which are often charged at a premium price, meaning you need to ensure you get a premium product to match the cost! There is a concern that some job boards appear to have this service simply to sell more advertising, but others genuinely have value in making your job advert more prominent or placing it higher in search listings. Our advice? Proceed with caution and check out fully what premium actually means in each case. CV Search most employers are surprised to know that almost everyone who responds to their job adverts will immediately have their details shared with other recruiters. This increased competition could be considered a threat. However, it could also be seen as an opportunity to search for relevant applicants from a wider pool than those people who respond directly. A word of warning: searching CVs can be a labourintensive, complex process (we have another guide to demystify CV searching), and if you do identify a potential applicant, you should be aware that the circumstances are subtly changed. The psychology is different for someone who did not apply specifically to your advertisement; you will need to actively sell your opportunity to him/her. You may even need to 5
pay more to attract that individual. Furthermore, do not be too disheartened when you contact people and find they are no longer looking for employment; this sometimes happens, as applicants have no incentive to update their records. Filtering service everyone has some applicants who didn t read the job requirements and therefore needlessly apply to your job. This is why a filtering service is so important; it enables you to focus on what you should be doing instead of sifting CVs. Often filters allow you to ask candidates questions, or are able to apply a relevancy score to each application based on keywords that match your Job and Person Descriptions. Every day we advertise jobs on behalf of the most prestigious and well-known brands and they keep returning because they recognise the benefits of anonymity. We believe that there is such a negligible difference between branded and anonymous campaigns because: Companies constantly advertising, albeit because of growth, may incorrectly be perceived as having a high staff attrition rate and therefore a weaker employer brand. Most companies are simply not well known. We would recommend asking the dinner party question. If someone asks What do you do? and you respond with a job title rather than your company name, then your company name is possibly irrelevant. Aggregation job boards do not rely solely on search engines for candidate traffic, but also place their jobs on a network of other sites called aggregators. It is worthwhile taking time to identify the additional network of sites your job will be advertised on. This can be achieved by speaking with the sales person and also conducting your own research: simply go to sites such as Indeed.com to learn if the site you are considering is advertising there Anonymity arguably the most important point here, and one which many recruiters and employers learn the benefits of through painful experience. The idea that better candidates apply because they saw a branded campaign is notoriously difficult to prove statistically. In contrast, a stream of direct enquiries from candidates (each requiring a bespoke response) and then sales people of all kinds, is unfortunately all too measurable, and predictable. Perversely, when a company is very well known some people just want any job with them because they want to be associated with the brand (e.g. Apple). This creates further HR problems, as when employees find the reality does not meet the rhetoric, they quickly leave. Logos can be confused with consumer brands. For example, people who see a job advertised with Innocent Drinks may have the perception that it is a fun, quirky environment where you blend smoothies all day (and I m sure it is a fun environment). However, this presupposition is also wrong, as often people would not associate the high commercial aptitude and skills required to work there (they are, after all, partowned by Coca Cola). Rejecting job seekers can also lead to rejecting customers. For example, we work with a well known retail brand who used to provide gift vouchers to every job seeker they rejected. 6
This madness soon meant whole families were applying to jobs, knowing full well they were not suitable, just so they could get free gift vouchers. Our non-branded solution enabled them to stop the folly of sending out gift vouchers whilst actually increasing placement rates with better qualified applicants. Finally, if you would like to test whether employer branding is relevant, conduct this exercise: 1. Go to a job board and conduct a search. 2. Identify a job advertised by an employer that you recognise. 3. On the job page, look for a section called job seekers also applied for (if the site does not have this section, please find another site). 4. Review those results. You will most likely find that almost every other job a candidate applied to was placed by a recruitment agency. This highlights tha candidates apply to a diverse range of jobs. Important If you still believe including a company logo is important, go to Google and perform a search for luxury items such as cars and jewellery. Notice that millions is being spent on adverts and not a single logo is in sight. Tip: Explain why your company is an employer of choice and what its employment culture is like within the body text of the advertisement. This is where you have the greatest space and flexibility to create a compelling story. An employer s brand is the aggregated effect of the entire life cycle of employment, from entry to exit, with that employer. In our opinion, including a logo is nothing more than that and many enlightened HR experts are finding this to be true. Step 3. purchase Having conducted thorough research and understood your options, you should now seek to negotiate advertising with as many sites as you can afford. Two important things to consider: You must advertise on multiple sites to stand the maximum chance of success. Cutting corners at this stage may compromise the rest of your recruitment. You must negotiate a discount if you can and you have nothing to lose by trying! Deals are there to be done, and it may help if you start by looking at the rate card as the top price, then pitching a lower opening bid. If you save money on one or more sites, it may be enough to fund an all important extra one. 7
Get organised Accept that negotiating prices and advertising your job will take time. Rushing it, or leaving the start of the process too close to the start of your proposed campaign, will mean you pay too much and/or make the wrong decision. Therefore set aside a suitable amount of time when you will not be distracted, and please start early! Good advance planning will pay dividends. database. The job boards can, if they so wish, then upsell you the CV database access service that we mentioned earlier. Remember, you are only interested in relevant CVs and we often find 81 per cent of CVs are out of date within three months. You should also remember that it only actually takes one appropriate person to fill a job! Geware lies, damn lies and statistics Before purchasing, prepare: ensure you are an educated buyer, as you may be quoted figures designed to establish credibility, but that could well be meaningless. These may include: Number of hits every image on a web page counts as a hit. Therefore if you have 100 images on one page, it equals 100 hits. If a visitor views 10 pages with those same 100 images on each one, then you ve already got 1,000 hits! Just 10 visitors doing the same thing equals 10,000 hits! It sounds amazing, but it is a ridiculous use of statistics that some sales people use on naive buyers. Number of (unique) visitors visitors to a site are not just job seekers. They may include recruiters like you, internal sales people, and thousands of search engines like Google. Number of applications unless you are getting these figures from a sector-specific site, it could be another meaningless statistic. For example, a generic site may have 100,000 applications, but how many of those were for jobs related to yours? Number of CVs almost every time someone applies to your job, their CV is added to a CV Number of jobs this can be helpful. If you find that a job board does not have sufficient jobs in your sector and location, then job seekers will find the same and will therefore be unlikely to return. However, large aggregated figures are unhelpful. For example, there are typically eight recruitment agencies advertising the same job at any one time, which means the number of unique jobs advertised is significantly less. Choose the right package The right package is one that allows you to test the suitability of a job board and, if successful, make a shortterm commitment. Be careful of attempts to sell long-term contracts. Some sales people can be encouraged to sell long-term contracts because once they have made the initial sale, your account is passed over to an account management team who take subsequent commission. Therefore always be cautious of the need for a long-term contract without being very clear the package is correct for you. As demonstrated above, things change quickly in online recruitment, be it a Google algorithm change that results in job seeker traffic plummeting; or a site adding a new feature that annoys candidates, causing them to leave. Hence we would always recommend caution with regard to long-term contracts. 8
Step 4 7 The following helpful guides are also available: 1. Write a compelling job advertisement 2. Conducting CV searches 3. Respond to job seekers 4. Screen and shortlist candidates 5. Conducting effective and legal interviews 6. Make a job offer 7. Reference check 8. Induct or onboard employees. Did you know: Recruitment Genius s service includes writing a compelling job advertisement; managing all candidate communication; shortlisting candidates; and automated telephone & video interviewing. This is included free of charge with our recruitment advertising service. Step 8. measure & research Measure what you value and value what you measure Keep a record of two important metrics: 1. Quantity the total number of applications from each job board. This provides an approximation as to how much time you are spending sifting CVs and responding to applications. It is important to recognise that just because a particular site brought an applicant in whom you hired, that in itself does not mean it was the most effective job board. The statistic may be meaningless, and the result may be down to serendipity or chance on that occasion. You need statistics that can cut through luck and identify sites that consistently perform the best. Research As mentioned throughout our Guide, the online recruitment industry is very fluid and fast moving. Google changes its algorithm, job boards change their spend on search engine optimisation and other forms of candidate attraction, new jobs sites are created at the same time as others fail. Therefore, if you later decide to recruit again even for an identikit role you must recognise the need to conduct your research again. Did you know: Recruitment Genius has an ongoing research project that monitors every job application to determine how relevant it was to the job. Based on this information we can identify trends about which job boards will be most relevant for a particular sector location and level of seniority. This positive feedback loop enables us to achieve a 93.7 per cent success rate in filling jobs. 2. Quality the total number of applicants worth interviewing from each job board. Over time, this may show a trend and help identify topperforming, highly relevant job boards. 9
A list of other guides that may be of interest: Ten tips to improve the success of your online recruitment advertising Create effective job description and person specification for better hiring Why and how to respond to applicants Screening CVs and shortlist candidates for interview Conducting telephone interviews Legal requirements of shortlisting Effective interview techniques Illegal interview questions Making a job offer Effective reference checking Inducting employees Secrets to online recruitment success Selecting the best flat fee recruitment company Have some questions? Please call: 01732 617 460 hello@recruitmentgenius.com Recruitment Genius 2013-2017. These guides are not intended to be, and should not be relied on as, professional or legal advice, and clients should verify independently any statements made in them and rely on their own judgement when adopting any suggestions or ideas in them. Recruitment Genius does not assume any liability in relation to such guides.