A lot of the chatter about social media in our industry has been about how it may displace job boards as a core recruiting tool. Less has been said about how job sites can actually use social media to promote their services. It’s time to rectify this oversight!

Job boards must connect with two core audiences: job seekers and employers. Both audiences are using social media for a variety of reasons, such as personal or professional networking, research, and entertainment. Rather than rushing willy-nilly into social media, a job site should first understand the two audiences. Where do they live? What do they do? What do they watch, listen to, read, etc.? In other words, what does the target audience look like? Until you can answer this question, you simply can’t make a decision about which social media tools or channels you should use.

Example: your job site caters to mid-career professionals in accounting. LinkedIn may be a better choice than Facebook (if an accountant is on Facebook, most likely he/she is using it for entertainment and family). But an even better choice may be an accounting-specific networking site like HubStreet. Remember: the audience determines the channel!

Once you’ve analyzed your audience and identified the best channels (and I would probably include Twitter and LinkedIn for all job sites – they have the right general career demographics and size), you need to set up a map of the messages you’ll use and their frequency. No, I’m not talking about just setting your job listings to auto-Tweet (although that is useful and should be done). Instead, think about your audience (again): what do they want? what are they interested in?…and what can you offer them?

Example: Going back to our fictional accounting folks, they no doubt would love to know which metro areas pay the most for accountants. So gather up some data and get it out there! For example, you could Tweet about different cities and pay – and link back to the relevant part of your site. Then go to LinkedIn and start a Question about the same thing. Then run over to HubStreet and start a discussion. Notice what’s happening here? You are thinking like your audience, giving them information they want – and engaging them.

Last – but absolutely not least - measure what you are doing. There are numerous free and paid tools out there, such as SocialMention, Radian6, and SproutSocial. You can even use Google Analytics – just create a profile exclusively for social media. The bottom line, however, is that you must measure or you won’t know which social media channels are working – and which aren’t.

The bottom line? You’ll see more job seekers AND employers on your site – and that’s a good thing!

Ding dong, the recession’s (not quite) dead! Every day I hear from another job site that their numbers are up, that more jobs are being posted, and that the general feel from employers is positive. Folks are breathing a little easier.

So what effect has the recession had on the job board world?

• Fewer competitors: Those job boards who were overextended, underfunded, or just poorly run have gone by the wayside – which is ultimately a good thing.
• More competitors: Huh? Yep – cash-starved recruiters and HR pros have spent the last 2 years looking at lower-cost alternatives to job boards (think: Twitter & LinkedIn & just about every other social media recruiting startup). For some, the jury is still out; for others, they’ve either moved into stage 2 of their social media experiment – or they’ve gone back to job boards. Maybe even a little of both.
• Lower margins: Many sites were forced to cut prices – a change that will probably become permanent.
• More experimentation: When times are bad, the smart get thinkin’. I’ve seen plenty of interesting experiments by job sites in terms of new services, new products, and technical innovation. I expect these experiments to continue.
• Fire sales: Some job board owners have been in the mood to sell after 24 months of battering economic winds – and industry bargain hunters have been happy to oblige. Prices will stay low for a while, but then expect to see them start climbing as the shortage of skilled labor reasserts itself.
• Renewed desire for growth: When you’ve been down, up sounds pretty good – and the fastest way to climb out of a recession can be growth. Expect more new sites and services, and some consolidation among existing ones.

What did I miss?

A few weeks back I asked you to help with a job board industry survey – and you did! You answered questions about the effect of the recession on your job sites, threats to your business – and your thoughts about the future of the industry.  So first and foremost, thanks!

I received 94 completed responses – which gives me considerable confidence in the results.  A wide range of job sites participated, ranging in revenues from less than $500,000 to more than $10 million. Each size segment was well represented, so again, I think that speaks to the usefulness of this data. Thus, without further ado (and in no particular order), here are some key findings:

• The future looks bright: 80% of respondents said they were either somewhat or very optimistic about the opportunities in their particular niche of the job board industry. This held across all size categories, by the way.
• Threats are out there: Among larger boards, price erosion was a big concern; with mid-size and small boards, the ongoing effects of the recession loom large. Other threats included: growth of job aggregators; LinkedIn; and search engine intrusion into the jobs market.
• Technology rules: One finding that surprised me was the plans by all sites – regardless of size or revenue – to invest in technology. Perhaps, given the threats mentioned above, this finding isn’t that surprising after all.
• More marketing: As the recession fades, expect to see more marketing from the job boards. A majority of respondents are planning to increase their marketing spends in the coming year.
• Business is picking up: Most sites are seeing increases in job postings, resume access, and site advertising from a year ago. The larger boards are also seeing increases in other services such as targeted emails.
• Niche dominates: As per the job board industry at large, most respondents had sites that focused on industry, geographic, or professional niches. Only 19% of respondents were ‘general’ job boards.

If you’re interested in seeing the full survey results, just fill out the Contact form and I’ll send you a copy.

Oh, to be the new kid on the block! Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of social media are experiencing that thrill – they’re new, exciting, and can do no wrong.

A while back, job boards were the new kids. No more messy newsprint, no more limits on ad length, immediate results – what was not to like? Recruiters flocked to job boards and, in the process, made many boards very profitable.

But things have changed. Job boards are old news, like those ugly, dependable leather shoes your mother made you wear to ‘protect your feet’. Sure, job boards continue to connect millions of job seekers with millions of employers – but they’re boring (at least, that’s what the pundits say).

And so we come to the subject of this post: Why do (some) recruiters hate job boards? I find this fascinating, because of course lots of recruiters don’t hate job boards. But a vocal sub-group does, so let’s see why:

• Job boards are too expensive: That can translate into “too many $$ for too few candidates”, “just too damned high”, or “not free like social media”. Seems to apply primarily to the ‘big’ boards.
• Job boards’ results aren’t what they used to be: Usually comes from recruiters who have been in the market for more than 4 years.
• Job boards are filled with bad postings: In this case, a ‘bad posting’ can range from a ‘work at home’ scam to a duplicate posting.
• Job boards don’t attract the right audience: The audience is too old, too young, too unskilled, too high-priced, etc. Again, depends on the recruiter.
• There are too many job boards: In other words, too many choices, and all of them are bad.

As a mentor once told me, when a customer says you’re too expensive, he or she is usually telling you something else – and it’s your job to find out what that something is.

In this case, when recruiters tell job boards they hate (well, maybe hate is too strong – loathe?) them, the job boards in question should find out what the real problem is – and try to fix it.

At the end of the day, I believe the vast majority of recruiters focus on results – and if job boards can produce the best results, then recruiters will use them. Even if job boards aren’t the next big thing.

Folks, I need your help. We’re emerging from an extremely challenging recession – one that has affected the job board industry deeply. So I thought we might all benefit from some collegial insight. Thus, I’ve put together a short (12 question) survey that should help us better understand the state of the job board world.

Your responses are completely anonymous. No names named, no sites cited. I will publish the main findings in this blog, and if you’d like the complete data, just contact me and I’ll send them to you.

But…I need your participation. The more responses we have, the better the data. It’s that simple. So please, I’m begging you – take the survey! It will take 5 minutes of your time, and I think you’ll find the results very useful.

Thanks in advance!

Consider this a companion piece to last week’s blog. Remember, you don’t want an average job board – you want one that makes job seekers and employers alike enthusiastic!

1. Ask questions. You can never know too much about your job seekers and employers. Survey them at least twice a year. For seekers: Do they use Twitter? How many have found a job on your site as compared with competitors? What websites do they visit? For employers: What is their apply to hire conversion rate for your site? Are they active in social media or associations? What are they scared to tell you?
2. Invest in your technology. You don’t have to be ‘bleeding edge’ – but you need to stay in the middle of the pack, at a minimum. Your site should make it easy for employers to reach candidates, easy to calculate ROI, and easy to integrate into their existing hiring process. Your site should make it easy for job seekers to share what they find with others – and to connect with other like-minded job seekers. And your back end shouldn’t dictate what your front end can do – if it does, it’s time for a change.
3. Over deliver. Think about it – if you consistently over deliver, you will have pleasantly surprised job seekers and employers. You will always be in a position of power vis-a-vis your competitors, and you’ll always have the option of increasing your prices. (And by the way, investing in technology is one good way to keep the cost of over-delivering down!)
4. Fix at least one problem every month. Don’t let problems pile up. Tackle something significant each month. You’ll have a continual stream of positive news for your audience and a feeling of accomplishment and progress for your internal team. Plus you won’t be spending as much when the really big changes roll around.
5. Know what you stand for. Having a clear understanding of the value your job board offers job seekers and employers is critical – and I would argue it has to be more than just ‘make money’. Yes, profits are key, but so is value and clarity. The better you understand your site’s ‘purpose’, the clearer the path forward.

As I was sorting through the usual spate of ‘job boards are dead’ articles, I noticed other more interesting types of articles: pieces that point to job board postings as indicators of the state of the economy. (Monster has published their Employment Index since 2004.)

Makes sense, doesn’t it? If job boards are posting more jobs, then there must be more jobs available. Yet that’s where those doom-and-gloom job board articles clash – if job boards are no longer relevant and in fact are going down the tubes, then they can’t really be good indicators, eh? (Also, don’t forget that the increase in ‘free’ job post sites has driven up the volume of postings).

Well, as you probably know by now, I don’t subscribe to the ‘job boards are dead’ school. However, I do believe that job boards are evolving – in fact, they have no choice. The best are incorporating aspects of social media that make sense for their specific audiences. Some are attempting to become hubs for their audiences. Many allow their employers multiple ways to reach their job seekers – not just via job postings.

So getting back to the question at hand – yes, job boards can act as economic indicators, but simply using the number of job postings as that indicator is a bit simplistic. A better approach might be combining site traffic numbers, resume postings, job postings, and forum or network activity to produce an overall ‘economic health’ indicator.

Maybe your job board should take the lead – and get some free PR in the process!

Once upon a time, if you visited a job board, you knew what you would get: whatever jobs the board had on that day. These were jobs that the board’s sales force had convinced employers to post, on that job board. If you clicked on a job, you went straight to that job posting. And if you applied for it, you did so through that particular job board.

Well, those days are long gone. Since the advent of job board aggregators such as Indeed and Simply Hired, it’s become so easy for a job board to ‘backfill’ their listings that almost everyone does it.

Why?

• you immediately give the illusion of size and depth – just look at all of those postings!
• you hide any shortcomings in your existing sales efforts
• you keep job seekers happy (you hope!)
• the job board aggregators make it so darned easy – and you can pick up some spending money via click-thrus tied to your site

But things aren’t always as simple as they seem. These are a few of the dangers I’ve seen in backfilling:

• you create job seeker dissatisfaction – when jobseekers click on a job posting, they are suddenly transported to another job site (which may or may not have the job they’re looking for – it might just be another click on the way)
• you advertise your site’s shortcomings – job seekers (and employers) aren’t dumb; they realize that if they see ‘Jobs by…’ logo in your search results, your site just doesn’t have its own listings
• you give up traffic and job seekers – a certain percentage (often as high as 60-80%) of job seekers will leave your site and never come back. That can be a lot of traffic that you’ve fought hard to get – that you’ve just given away.

So what’s the answer? I don’t have one. Backfilling can make a lot of sense at a certain time – but it can also create problems.  Just like PPC and other temptations, use backfilling when you have to – and not a moment longer.

For the past 15 years, the job board industry has been dominated by the ‘pay per posting‘ revenue model: an employer purchases a job posting (and sometimes resume access or other add ons).

Yet there’s another model that has been around a while: ‘pay per response‘. In other words, you post your job, and when job seekers apply to your job, you pay for each application.

On the surface, it seems that pay per response would be more attractive to most employers – after all, if your ad tanks, then you’re not out any expense, right? But…what if you have a strong response? You could actually end up paying more than the cost of a traditional job posting. This concern, plus the dominance of the traditional pay per posting model and technical issues, has held back adoption of a pay per response option on most boards.

As a job board operator, you may want to consider pay per response as an alternative revenue model. Why?

• it has the potential to drive up your job postings, as more employer may be willing to put their positions on your site if the up-front cost is $0.
• it has the potential to generate higher revenue per posting if your site can deliver the seekers

However, you should be ready to handle an employer’s concerns over bogus or unqualified applications, and excessive numbers of application.  A possible solution: allow the employer to ‘cap’ the number of applications for each job (thus limiting their financial exposure), and including 1-3 screening questions for each job.

Employers that utilize ATS are probably poor prospects for pay per response, however – in my experience, they are ‘feeding’ their internal prospect system and thus want as many applicants as possible. So they will prefer a fixed cost per posting, rather than variable.

Your thoughts? If you’ve utilized a pay per response model, please share your experiences!

Sometimes it really is all about the numbers. For instance, you know that your customers (and competitors) will probably use Alexa, Compete, or QuantCast to evaluate your site’s traffic.

Never mind that any of these can be grossly inaccurate – you have to live with their numbers (unless, of course, you’re willing to open up your Google Analytics account to pretty much everyone).

In my experience, having worked with many clients’ data, I’ve found that:

• Alexa overreports traffic – usually
• Quantcast varies wildly
• Compete is usually pretty close on uniques (note: USUALLY)

But you know, you can’t control which source your prospects and customers use.  So how do you deal with site ranking data?

Here are a few suggestions – and I encourage you to add your advice in the comments:

1. Preemptively frame the discussion: Make sure that you do more than trumpet a good ranking; put it in context, both in terms of how it is valid, and how it is vis-a-vis your competitors.
2. Preemptively dismiss the site rankings: Focus on your own Google Analytics info (but be prepared to answer inevitable questions about your rankings anyway).
3. Avoid the ‘numbers’ game entirely: Focus on how you own your niche, who your ‘influential’ customers are, the quality of your job seekers (demographics), and so on.

In my experience, however, site rankings are like taxes – they’re inevitable and they affect everyone – so learn how to deal with them.