Lou Goodman: Three Shifts That Will Reshape Job Board Marketing

Guest Author: Lou Goodman

The way people work has been changing for years. 

The social contract between employers and employees has changed. The old deal, loyalty in exchange for security, has long been gone. 

Today’s workers face more uncertainty, fewer guarantees, and a hiring landscape shaped by algorithms, not relationships. Stability has been replaced by constant adaptation, with less institutional support along the way.

Employers are also facing rising pressure: tighter budgets, shifting candidate expectations, and a recruitment landscape reshaped by economic, technological, and geopolitical disruption. Talent strategies must adapt and adapt fast.

Return-to-office battles and the rise of generative AI have only accelerated the shift.

Individually, none of these changes are new. However, together they’re creating a sharp inflexion point.

For job boards, this convergence should be a wake-up call. 

It’s not just that the world is changing fast; it’s that job boards must redefine their role within it. They were early leaders in digital recruitment, bringing classified ads online and democratising job seeking in the process. But compared to other industries, have they evolved enough?

Today’s job seekers don’t just want listings. They want curation. Guidance. Relevance. Right now, generative AI is where they’re increasingly turning to get that.

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s already happening. Here are three shifts that every job board operator should be thinking about.

1. Brand matters more than ever – and data makes it real

In an AI-driven market, everyone has access to the same tools. What differentiates one platform from another is how people feel about it.

Brand is what makes someone trust your results over another’s. It’s what makes them search for your name directly. It’s how you build an owned audience – people who choose your platform first. It’s what earns you a place on a buyer’s shortlist before your sales team even knows an opportunity exists.

A brand doesn’t build itself overnight. It’s the result of every experience you have delivered, and that’s where data plays a critical role.

Data helps you:

• Understand what resonates (and what doesn’t)
• Stay consistent while still personalising
• Improve over time, so trust deepens

When brand and data work together, you create a feedback loop. One sets the promise, the other helps you deliver it.

In a tight market, that combination is crucial. With job postings down 26% year-on-year and employers demanding more for less, your brand often dictates whether you’re considered at all. If it doesn’t carry weight, you won’t even make the shortlist.

Now’s the time to be building that owned audience; it will matter even more when demand returns.

2. Social is now a core growth engine – especially for challengers

Social media has gone from nice-to-have to must-have. Candidates discover brands on the platforms where they already spend time. Increasingly, for younger users, social is the default discovery engine.

Deloitte’s 2025 Digital Media Trends report shows that Gen Z spends 54% more time on social platforms than the average. Social is where trust is built, intent is shaped, and decisions are influenced.

It also democratises brand building. You don’t need a large traditional advertising budget. If your social strategy is sharp, relevant and consistent, you can outthink and outmanoeuvre bigger spends. 

However, don’t fall into the trap of underinvesting or thinking it’s a free shortcut to brand. The entry point may be lower, but to deliver results, it still needs the right budget and resourcing. 

Treat social as a strategic growth driver, and you can get an efficient, scalable way to build brand affinity, drive engagement and influence performance.

3. SEO is shifting from clicks to credibility

Search is evolving fast. AI-generated overviews, summarised answers and citation-based outputs are changing how candidates find and trust content.

In March 2025, Google’s AI overviews appeared in 13.14% of all US desktop searches – up from 6.49% in January.* That’s a 102% increase in two months.

Job searches aren’t a major target… yet. But with the pace of change and Google’s preference for keeping everything within their own ecosystem, we don’t know how long that will last.

SEO is no longer just about clicks. It’s about being credible enough to shape and influence AI-generated answers. Again, credibility isn’t built or bought overnight.

While strong organic SEO remains foundational, AI systems increasingly favour content that is well-structured, authoritative, and easily summarised. Implementing robust schema markup and clear, concise answers can boost your chances of being cited.

That means:

• Structuring your content to be summarised
• Building authority on a topic
• Earning citations, not just clicks

This goes beyond simply ranking. According to SearchEngineLand, only 15% of sources cited in Google’s AI summaries come from the traditional top 10 links.

To future-proof your visibility, your SEO strategy needs to evolve beyond traffic, towards influence.

These aren’t trends to watch. They’re active shifts already playing out across candidate behaviour, marketing performance and product expectations.

Brand, social and SEO aren’t disconnected tactics. They’re overlapping levers, and together, they define whether your job board is found, trusted and chosen.

Job boards helped invent online recruitment. They can lead again. But only if they evolve faster than the environment that’s changing around them.

Explore how Jobiqo is helping job boards prepare for these shifts https://www.jobiqo.com/blog/trends-for-job-boards-and-recruitment-advertising-in-2025/.

Sources

🔗 Bobella Brands How Brand Improves Business Success

🔗 Wisernotify 51 Branding Statistics

🔗 BBC Falling Job Vacancies May Signal Recession

🔗 6 sense 2023 B2B Buying Journey

🔗 Deloitte 2025 Digital Media Trends

🔗 SearchEngineLand – Study from Semrush & Datos

🔗 SearchEngineLand Google AI Overview March 2025 Update

🔗 Alexander Chukovski How to Rank on ChatGPT & Perplexity

Lou Goodman Bio

Lou Goodman is a strategic marketer with over 20 years’ experience spanning recruitment, B2B, and B2C marketing, job boards, media agencies and global brands. 

She’s held senior roles both in-house and agency-side – including as VP of Global B2B Marketing at Monster, and Business Director on the British Army and Shell Recruitment accounts at MediaCom – giving her a comprehensive view of business growth and transformation.

Passionate about the intersection of technology, brand, and candidate experience, Lou partners with clients – within recruitment and beyond – blending data-driven insights with strategy to bring clarity and accountability to their marketing. 

She’s always open to new collaborations and enjoys connecting with others who are interested in shaping the future of recruitment. Feel free to reach out to discuss industry trends, marketing challenges, or potential projects. LinkedIn profile

A Note From the Doc

Hey,  Job Board Doctor friends! I hope you enjoyed today’s guest content supported by Jobiqo. Our team is committed to bringing you more expertise and thought leadership from within our community and beyond. So be on the look out for more content like Lou’s and still delivering our weekly newsletter from me.

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Til Next Time,

The Doc

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