4 HR Trends Blowing Up Talent Acquisition, Part 2: Job Advertising Gets Outsourced
Read part one of the series here.
Job advertising is a component of talent acquisition that has always and will always be necessary, but until recent years, it required little upkeep. The mid-2000s proved a tough job market for candidates, which made recruitment easy for talent acquisition teams.
Today, the job advertising vertical is one of the largest in terms of both market size (consolidated revenue of all companies) and the number of players. This broad area is broken up into three segments: job boards, job board aggregators, and job marketing and distribution, all of which are seeing an increasing number of users every year.
Job Boards
There are a large number of job boards in business, with varying levels of scale and success. Oftentimes, a new player in the job board industry will start by identifying a market niche or segment (e.g., tech talent in Untapt) and then focus on building a talent pool in that category to gain scale and relevance. Most job boards offer job seeker solutions for free as a way to attract candidates to their respective platforms. This is likely the reason why they are the most used search channel for job seekers today.
The current trend of crossing social recruiting with job board recruiting is stirring things up in this area of talent acquisition. As a result, job board companies are stepping up their games and putting a greater emphasis on the candidate experience. Innovative companies leveraging mobile functionality are reinventing the job board model by introducing gamified elements and features of successful mobile apps (e.g., swipe right for “yes”) to improve the candidate experience. Big data continues to be a competitive differentiator for companies that can successfully leverage it to offer more personalized, data-driven solutions to job seekers and recruiters. Many of the job boards are also moving to pay-per-click models following Indeed’s success.
Job Board Contenders:
- Monster
- Untapt
- Careerleaf
- Dice
- Workpop
- Careerbuilder
- The Ladders
Job Board Aggregators
These companies run into the same issues as traditional job boards with social recruitment. For that reason, many job board aggregators are enhancing the customer experience with candidate-focused features. For example, many companies are ramping up advanced search functionality and customizing email alerts for users.
Job Aggregator Contenders:
- Indeed
- Simply Hired
- Jobrapido
- Jobs2Careers
Job Marketing and Distribution
This segment is employer-focused and is generally meant for companies doing a significant volume of hiring, including job boards and staffing firms. These companies offer a plethora of features that help larger companies streamline their talent acquisition efforts to optimize the promotion and distribution of their jobs.
What makes these companies unique is their data-driven approach to job advertising. For example, this tech often allows users to:
– source candidates who rank highly on predetermined matching criteria;
– access to reporting tools and analytics that allow them to track real-time performance data;
– access predictive analytics and benchmarking software to identify the attributes of the company’s top-performing employees in order to hire more employees who share these winning attributes.
Job Marketing and Distribution Contenders:
- ZipRecruiter
- ClearFit
- Smashfly
- Clinch
- Seedjobs
As companies continue integrating social platforms with job ads and job boards, the competition for finding the best possible talent is becoming far more complex. Sticking to one method isn’t going to get you the results you need. Keep up by using this three-pronged approach to talent acquisition.
Jonathan Kestenbaum is the executive director of Talent Tech Labs.