4 Ways Job Boards Are Changing Your Recruiting Process

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With hundreds of job boards in operation today, employers have their work cut out for them when it comes to determining which ones will help them secure the talent they need. With so many options our there, it is important to work with the best sites — those that adapt and innovate to stay ahead.

Below, we’ll explore how job boards have evolved and explain why they should remain one of your key sources for finding talent.

1. Passive Candidates: A Prime Target on Today’s Job Boards

With unemployment currently at historic lows, there’s more pressure on recruiters to be proactive in their hiring efforts. Organizations are beginning to understand that you can no longer rely solely on job applications to find the best candidates.

Many job boards are aware of this fact, and they are focusing on re-engaging existing candidates in their databases to flip them from passive to active status. For example, many job boards now produce helpful resources such as salary calculators and career advice articles. By doing so, these job boards can influence otherwise reluctant individuals to enter the job market.

2. Focusing on Quality Over Quantity

According to research from Hudson RPO, 97 percent of organizations believe quality of hire is important. In response, many job boards are shifting away from simply offering high volumes of candidates. Instead, they are working to help organizations find quality over quantity. When assessing potential job boards, employers and recruiters must remember: It’s not about the number of candidates a job board has in its database — it’s about how qualified the candidates are and how up to date the database is.

In order to analyze the quality of resumes in a job board’s database, it’s important to find out where the board’s traffic comes from and how much the board invests in its efforts to attract new candidates. Whether a board places ads online, collaborates with other career sites, or uses social media heavily, it should have a clear, comprehensive strategy for maintaining a steady influx of high quality candidates over time.

3. Putting Candidates First

In our candidate-driven market, the best job boards are focusing on what candidates want in order to get them in the door. Here, job boards can take inspiration from other industries.

Netflix and Amazon, for example, make recommendations to customers based on what they’ve recently watched or purchased. Does your job board take a similar approach, using intelligent algorithms to recommend candidates relevant jobs based on previous applications?

We also know that job seekers are put off by long application forms and complicated hiring processes. They crave simple, effective, streamlined applications. Be sure to work with a job board that offers this kind of ease, rather than one that makes candidates jump through hoops just to get their resumes out.

4. Helping Your Ads Find an Audience

When it comes to job ads, it’s important that your job board help you get the most out of them.

SEO optimization is crucial, as the right candidates can only find your jobs if you are using the same keywords they use to search. Similarly, you need to include all the relevant information candidates are looking for, such as salary, qualifications, responsibilities, and so on.

While job ads are typically handled in house by employers, the best job boards are those that provide support when it comes to crafting attention-grabbing job posts. Look for a job board that offers this kind of service.

What Does the Future Have in Store?

Machine learning is reshaping the recruitment world in many ways, and job boards are not immune. The rise of AI may result in more job boards deploying pay-per-performance models, wherein companies use machine-to-machine communication to purchase online job ads based on pre-set rules and audience targets on a pay-per-click basis.

In addition to this, more candidates are going directly to the job sites they trust, rather than relying on internet searches. Job boards that make the effort to build their brands offline in order to boost traffic are likely to stay competitive in this environment.

Augusta Henning is PR manager for Resume-Library. 

By Augusta Henning