The best time to think about what to do when sales go down…is when sales are up.

Huh?

Consider this: when sales are up, you have better cash flow. You aren’t frantically trying to do something – anything – to generate sales. You don’t have creditors breathing down your neck (probably). And – most importantly - you’re thinking about the future, not worrying about whether or not you can make it through another week.

Most of you are seeing increasing sales right now. That’s good. Most of you went through some challenging times over the past two years. The fact that you survived is a big plus for you and your organization. But as you and I know, the world goes on, whether you’re paying attention or not. So now is the time to analyze your sales efforts and prepare for the day when your sales go down.

So let’s take a look at some steps you can take to prepare yourself for the (inevitable) day when sales don’t do what you expected them to:

• Know where your sales come from: Do you track back all sales to their source? Most of us say we do, but we don’t. Even if you can’t manage this on an ongoing basis, take a certain time segment – say, 1-month samples at 3 different times in the year – and track every sale back to the source. You may be surprised by what you find.
• Find out what your customers really think: Don’t send them a survey filled with slanted questions. Instead, give them plenty of chances to tell you what they think about your services. Is a salesperson annoying? You want to know. How about the effectiveness of your ATS integrations? The sexiness of your site? Believe me, it’s worth digging until you get the answers.
• Who is really making the buying decision – and how does it happen?: Is your sales operation really just an ‘order-taking’ operation? Do you actually know who pulled the trigger on that last ‘buy’ decision? Do you know how they found out about you? What made them decide on you instead of ‘Brand X’? If you don’t know why your customer uses your job board, you’re screwed. And you have to know how the decision is made, or you’ll always be blindsided when they decide NOT to use you.
• Always be expanding: If you’re not adding new sales prospects every day, you’re in trouble. Really. Okay, maybe you miss a day here and there – but on average, you should be adding a certain number of new leads to your pipeline all the time. How many? Depends on your site, your goals, and your resources.
• Always be curious: No matter how good – or bad – it is, take some time out every week to poke around. Read TechCrunch or ERE or any of a hundred other sites that cover developments in the tech, recruiting, HR, and general world. You’re going to learn something – and if you pick up even 1 good idea a month, that increases your chances of creating a new revenue stream.

So, I hope your sales are up – and you’re getting ready for the next downturn!

Consider the term ‘job board’.

For some, it is a term of derision, an insult (as in, “geez, why would you use a job board?”). For others, it is a badge of honor (“we’re the biggest job board in the world for New York urologists!”).

For me, it is…. inaccurate. At its core, what does it say? “This is a board where you will find jobs.” As in bulletin board. As in, very dated. Yes, the term is extremely convenient as shorthand for employers and recruiters – it describes a site that they can use to promote their jobs.

But you know what? The best ‘job boards’ – and I mean the ones that are successful, growing, and innovative – are really ‘candidate acquisition sites‘. They have become places where employers can use a variety of methods (not just job posting) to locate certain types of candidates – at a lower cost (and faster) than if they tried to do so on their own. Yes, the phrase ‘candidate acquisition site’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. We need something better and snappier. But it tells the employer what the site can do for them.

A cardinal rule of sales is, ‘don’t tell me who you are or how great you are – tell me what you can do for me’. That holds for what you call your services. ‘Job board’ doesn’t really do the job anymore, does it? From the employer’s perspective, it’s all about finding the right candidates, when needed, at the right cost – and keeping their company in front of the right candidates, all the time.

No one will quit calling job boards ‘job boards’ just because I think they should. But you can redefine what you call your site. And you can reinforce that with each and every communication you have with your employers and job seekers. It will take time – but you will find that even though those ‘other sites’ are still job boards, you’re something different.

And that’s good.

(And no, I’m not going to become the ‘CandidateAcquisitionSiteDoctor’. Just ain’t gonna happen.)

Job Board Doctor topped 100 posts this year – and some were more popular than others. I decided to look at this year’s blog posts using 3 criteria: the number of comments, the number of page views, and the number of times the post was ‘retweeted‘. Here’s what I found:

Most popular – Page views:

1. Cool Job Sites
2. Results of the Job Board Future Survey are here!
3. Cool Job Sites – Part 2
4. People, Balance, & Technology: The future of job boards
5. Results from the 2010 Job Board Industry survey
6. “Fake” postings and your job board
7. 5 ways to screw up your job board
8. The dangers (and benefits) of backfilling job listings
9. The future of job boards is…
10. 5 ways to make your job board better

Most popular – Retweets:

1. Results of the Job Board Future Survey are here!
2. The year in job boards: 2010- what we learned
3. Job boards vs. LinkedIn is like Kindle vs. iPad
4. Job boards must evolve or die
5. Is social recruiting a symptom – or a solution?
6. People, Balance, & Technology: The future of job boards
7. Results from the 2010 Job Board Industry survey
8. How do job boards help people?
9. Words matter – for job boards, career sites, and recruiting in general
10. Reading tea leaves in the job site world

Most popular – Number of comments:

1. Cool Job Sites
2. “Fake” postings and your job board
3. How to make money – revenue models for job boards
4. What no job board wants to talk about…
5. The problem of duplicate job postings
6. Cool Job Sites – Part 2
7. Everyone writes about job boards – well, a lot of people do
8. Job boards vs. LinkedIn is like Kindle vs. iPad
9. Will job matching ever take off?
10. The future of job boards is…

The comments numbers are a bit misleading, as much of the discussion happens on other sites, such as ERE.net, JobBoarders, and RecruitingBlogs. But you know – I’m just happy that folks are talking! Here’s to a great 2011.

(Note: Today’s guest post is by Felix Wetzel, Group Marketing Director for Jobsite.co.uk. You can read more at his blog)

Job boards are the number 1 channel for finding a job and for finding candidates. The recession has cemented this position even further. If you want to know more, have a look at Jobsite’s quarterly market tracker.

Whenever a brand establishes itself as the market leader, they become the primary target for scorn & envy and for a desire to replace them. The stronger they are, the more the Cassandra calls are based on emotion and dubious claims. Just look at Microsoft, Google…and yes, job boards.

It makes me smile when I hear that job boards are now the traditional means of recruiting – I remember the time 10 years ago, when we were laughed at. It makes me smile when I see the success and challenge of LinkedIn as the next generation job board (even though currently more useful for authentication) – it just shows that we are working in a very attractive, innovative market. It makes me smile when I hear that job boards will die – 10 years ago it was all about the disintermediation of the recruitment agency and instead of disappearing they grew stronger as they adapted their business models. And seriously, do people really believe job boards won’t evolve and instead just sit there and quietly fade away?

So much more than just a Job board…

Job boards might not be fashionable, but we certainly don’t stand still. Let me list just a few examples:

Search Engine Optimization – since before Google came to prominence, Jobsite (and others) always SEOed all vacancies and all corporate pages and still do now. Recruiters benefit from the link juice of our authority site.

Social Media integration – Job sites are obviously involved with social media, be it from Jobsite launching jobs-by-twitter, to Monster’s content feed and Dice’s integration..

Crowd sourcing – we introduced this before the term “crowd sourcing” existed – it ultimately uses data intelligently by recommending jobs based on the applications of people that applied for the same job. It’s always incredibly accurate and drives around 8% of applications.

Referral – peer-to-peer recommendations – another job board classic.  On Jobsite.co.uk we have a service called ‘email a friend’ – a candidate can send a job to a friend for consideration. In the first six months of this year nearly 300k of these peer to peer connections were made. These are significant numbers and without any prompting, without any time investment by any recruiter.

Mobile – 5% of Jobsite.co.uk’s total site visits come from mobile devices and this will continue to grow. Most interestingly though is the change in user behavior – peek times are changing and interactions are altering.

Behavioral targeting – That’s a really cool piece and currently my personal favorite: If a candidate comes to Jobsite and views a job posting but doesn’t apply and then moves to another site, an unobtrusive, lightly branded banner is displayed, listing the key details of the job they’ve just looked at as well as similar recommendations. That’s cool as it takes into account dynamic behavior and the workings of the unconscious mind.

…and so much more to come

But, this isn’t enough. We must evolve even further as the tectonic plates of change are moving in the underground – the last ten years were about the transfer of traditional methods onto a new technology, now the real structural changes are going to happen. There are several innovations and mash ups about to be launched and integrated which ultimately will reinforce job boards’ position as the primary way of engaging and connecting candidates to recruiters/hirer.

Instead of job boards I like to think about recruitment retailers – it clearly puts us into the recruitment arena whilst utilising a retail approach, especially to job seekers. Let me mention three underlying, logical and intrinsically linked principles that need to be addressed to thrive as a job board in the years to come:

People instead of ads

Currently job boards could be classified as advertising media, mostly servicing the hirer. That is short sighted, instead I suggest a focus on people – finding people to work with. This gives a common denominator for both the candidate and recruiter whilst at the same time opening up many more service modules and integrations, changing the focus of our communication and engagement messages and methods and ultimately putting the individual at the heart of it all. Instead of page views and applications, our primary performance metrics needs to be: how many people have found a job.

Balance

The hirer pays the bills and sites are often structured to fulfil their desires. But sustained growth can only be achieved through engaged candidates – they are the real drivers behind the revenues.  Job boards are the conduit, bringing simplicity to a complex world by connecting all the different recruitment channels but mainly by translating between candidate and recruiter and ensuring that a service works for both sites – otherwise it is doomed to failure. Let me give you a simple example: recruiters in the UK classify themselves by industry sector, the candidates however by location – it’s the job boards’ task to translate and link these different approaches in meaningful ways.

Technology

Job boards are technology businesses – which is kind of a given since we operate on the internet. It therefore surprises me how many boards do not invest into their technology and into their IT teams. I applaud Monster for their investment into 6Sense. At the same time, it is important for everybody to understand that we are dealing with people, so the data is unstructured in comparison to books et al. I could also call it “user generated content” – if the cooler terminology aids the understanding. We are dealing with people, so we want to make job seeking and finding as easy and as natural as possible – and squeezing them into classifications or making them fill out long questionnaires is the opposite.  Technology, and more importantly the use of technology, holds the answer and brings simplicity and elegance.

In a meeting yesterday, I heard the following: “If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance even less.” Job boards brought change to an entire industry, but job boards need to change and – most importantly – are changing. As a result job boards will be relevant for a long time to come.

If you follow my Twitter stream, you no doubt noticed I spent last week at #truManchester. It was a great experience – I listened to many recruiters and HR pros talk about how they use social media in their recruiting (or hope to), and what they think about job boards. (I also learned that the British have switches on their power outlets, are extremely hospitable, and don’t open their pubs until noon).

A few observations:

• Company attempts to outlaw or censor social media usage are probably futile (remember when phones were restricted?). Companies are better off developing intelligent and restrained ‘communications’ policies that cover all forms of employee communication – from phones to Twitter – and that focus on fewer hard rules and more general guidance. Think how newspapers had many voices (via columnists) but a consistent standard across all articles.
• Mobile is displacing the desktop for many people. That means that whether you are an employer, recruiter, or job board, you need to think about how candidates can use your services via mobile devices.  It’s a different channel and calls for different approaches. (It’s also looking a little more Android and a little less iPhone out there).
• Job boards that don’t evolve will fade away. Job boards are in a unique position – they have the opportunity to expand their market…or lose it. Smart sites are already integrating social media (emphasis on ‘social’) into their offerings – and transforming themselves into the vendor of choice for social media recruiting.
• LinkedIn is a job board. OK, that wasn’t a universal opinion – but it’s certainly mine. LinkedIn is more than a typical job board (think Groups), but I’d be surprised if there was any other business out there giving large and medium size job boards more heartburn. (However, the fact that it has become a recruiter’s playpen also makes it less attractive to candidates – a problem that Linkedin will have to solve soon).
• Authenticity is important. And it always has been. Whether you’re an individual blogger or a multinational corporation, your voice must square with your actions, products, and services. Readers, consumers, job seekers, and employers are pretty good at sniffing out fakes. On the flip side, companies have a right (and duty) to maintain standards – thus, a company blogger should not spend his/her time talking about religion or politics, for example; they’re blogging for a purpose.

There was more (much more!) flying through the air at #truManchester, but these were some of the most useful takeaways for me. Hope you find them helpful as well.

Hey folks – it’s a new look for the Job Board Doctor! I’m now on the Thesis framework (thanks, Eric) and – although it’s not done – I’m inching toward a final revision.  Haven’t quite figured out how to integrate my logo – it may not be possible, given the design, but we shall see.

So…what do you think? Likes? Dislikes? Suggestions? Comments? Let me know!

Commoditization – it’s a big word. What does the dictionary tell us? “When a product becomes indistinguishable from others like it and consumers buy on price alone, it becomes a commodity. ” (emphasis added)

One of the top concerns expressed in the recent job board industry survey was the commoditization of job postings – and by default, the job boards that provide those job postings. In short, if job postings are just job postings, then the lowest price will prevail. That isn’t good for job boards.

Now, what’s wrong with this picture? I can think of several things: a) a job posting on a focused, vibrant, busy site is a far cry from a job posting on a ‘zombie’ board; b) job postings really aren’t the same – the content and presentation (and usefulness to the job seeker) vary widely from site to site.

But try telling that to a budget-starved HR or recruiting pro. If they’re dealing with you solely on the price, you are already in trouble.

How can you prevent the commoditization of your job board and its products? Branding (and I mean that in the best sense of the word).

People think and buy in terms of brands. There is a reason that almost every job seeker knows about Monster and CareerBuilder – these organizations have spent years talking about their brand. Branding works for the non-Monster boards too; if you’re in the advertising and media world, you probably know about TalentZoo and MediaBistro. Both have been effective at defining and communicating their brands to their target audiences.

Sure, branding takes some money – you have to reach your audience repeatedly, over time, and sometimes you’ll want to spend on emails, sponsorships, and advertising. But the real work in branding happens up front: defining what your value proposition is; boiling that down to 10 words and a compelling image; and thinking about how your brand will permeate every aspect of your business.

The payoff? Your job board will not be a commodity.  Your job board will be a valued brand that commands a premium price for its services. And that’s where you want to be!

A few weeks back I offered to provide 6 hours of free consulting to one lucky job site. I called it the “Extreme Job Board Makeover.” Why? Well, because the job board industry has been very good to me over the years – and we’ve suffered during the recession.

The rules? The job board had to perform a valuable, recognized service for its audience – one that the board could document through testimonials from job seekers and employers; and the site had to show that it suffered a significant decline in revenue sometime during the past 24 months.

As you might guess, there were plenty of worthy entries. Large sites, small sites, and in-between sites all took part. It was tough to narrow the choice down to one job board – but I did.

The winner of the Extreme Job Board Makeover is…

FortBendJobs!

As you might guess from the name, FortBendJobs is a geographically focused site, centered on the area around Houston.  The site has been in operation since 2000.  “I’m thrilled that FortBendJobs.com has been selected for the extreme job board makeover,” said Kelley Smith, owner. ” We look forward to benefiting from your expertise and thank you!”

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Extreme Job Board Makeover!

There are thousands of job sites out there. If you spend much time looking at them, like I do, you quickly realize that many lack ‘brand identity’.

In other words, they’re forgettable.

Try it yourself. Go to JobBoardReviews or Google “your favorite industry + jobs” and see what you find.  I’m betting that (after you get past the aggregator and Big 3 listings) you’ll discover niche sites that look and feel, well, anonymous.

So ask yourself – is your job board forgettable? More specifically, do you have a logo and positioning statement? If the answer is no (or if your logo is simply your name in a colored font), this post is for you.

Logos and positioning statements (or ‘tag lines’) serve an important purpose for both job seekers and employers: they help them to categorize and remember your site.  Together, a logo and positioning statement can convey in a few seconds what your site is all about – and provide a visual marker in your prospects’ minds.

A good logo is visually appealing, striking, and simple. A good positioning statement is short, specific, and accurate. Easy to define, hard to get right.

For example, take a look at Doostang. The name doesn’t mean anything to me as a job seeker, and the visual treatment doesn’t give me any clues as to what the site is about. The tag line, “Accelerate your career” is generic – and again doesn’t give me a hint that this is a site for recent college grads. (By the way, I think this is a nice site despite the branding!)

Contrast that with College Recruiter. The name tells me it’s about recruitment and college (although it’s a bit ambiguous as to who is getting recruited for what). The visual is somewhat distinctive. The tag line is dead on: ‘College career connector.’ In other words, I glance at this page and know what the site’s about. That’s a good thing.

What’s the bottom line value for spending time on your site’s logo and positioning statement? Higher retention of job seeker and employer traffic. Higher return visitors (because they remember you). Higher valuation of your site (because you have risen above the crowd of competitors and created a brand). More revenue!

So trust me – spending a few hours (or days) on your logo and positioning statement will pay off. Go ahead and do it now!

Branding often gets a bad rap – as if there is something inherently bad in trying to create a unique, persuasive persona for your job board. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Think about it: most of the truly successful job boards out there have built successful brands. Monster. CareerBuilder. Dice. The Ladders. RegionalHelpWanted. Of course, a brand won’t replace solid technology, good marketing, and SEO. But in combination with these, branding will help push your job board past hundreds of other competitors.

Why? Branding gives your board a personality – something that can catch in a job seeker’s mind, a reason to remember you. A job seeker is overwhelmed with choices when it comes to job boards. A good brand helps to whittle down the choices – in your favor.

Don’t forget, too, that studies have repeatedly shown strongly branded products command higher prices and larger market shares than unbranded or poorly branded products. In short, a good brand is money in your pocket.

So what comprises a good job board brand?

• a clear, succinct value proposition (Exclusively $100K jobs. Exclusively $100K talent)
• a good, tight visual (I hate it….but Monster’s monster is good)
• a solid supporting ‘look and feel’ (check out Dice – a truly refined but ‘techy’ look and feel)
• consistency of messaging throughout every nook and cranny of the job board

Beware, however, of what gives branding a bad name:

• lying about your services
• images and design that are inconsistent with your audience (do you really want Flash and ‘gee whiz’ tech stuff for your truck driver site?)
• inconsistency in messaging

Branding doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does require thought and hard work. The end result is worth it, though: in a market that has been commoditized, branding helps your job board stand out – and thrive.