Are Job Boards Being Outdone By Social Media? Not Really...

By Irina Nagy

Following up on one of my previous blog posts, it’s pretty obvious that social media recruiting is not going to go away any time soon. But, this does not mean that the job boards aren’t vital anymore to the recruiting industry. They most definitely are and will keep highlighting the attributes of an organization, driving traffic to websites or acting as a marketing tool.

There are more than 150,000 job boards on the Internet and they’ve been around for a while. As times are changing and technology advancing, job boards keep evolving increasing their usability, adapting to challenges and offering new services for both employers and job seekers.

Nowadays, job boards come in all shapes and sizes and by using them employers can stop all the delays in recruitment, easily see each candidate’s contact information or control the online advertising.

There are two major genres of job boards that have been very successful in the recruitment industry:
 

1.      Niche job boards

Niche job sites usually focus on one industry, sector, location or job function avoiding candidate spam and, thus, having more suitable candidates. There are niche job boards for almost everything – jobs in marketing, sales jobs, part-time jobs, contract jobs, jobs for old people etc. – and many of them offer additional features like human resources advice or salary checkers.

The niche job boards provide job vacancies relevant mostly to those who already have a clear career plan. The applicant response is usually significantly lower than the number of applications received on generalist job boards, but more targeted and relevant.

2.      Generalist job boards

As opposed to the niche job boards, the generalist ones cover many vacancies across different industry sectors and locations serving all kinds of candidates. Well-known generalist job sites include Totaljobs.com, Jobsite or Monster and they all have allowed job seekers to apply to various job opportunities which are the best match for their skills.

Using generalist job boards is a great opportunity for a business to get exposure to a wide audience. Unfortunately, this also increases candidate spam by bringing a large number of applications from both good and bad candidates.

Furthermore, job boards:

• build and manage an employer brand
• are a straight forward method of resourcing
• are the best way to reach out active job seekers
• reach a large number of candidates quickly
• can cover a wide range of industries and locations
• allow employers to quickly and easily search through CV databases and find the best staff for the available vanacies.
• locate qualified candidates at very low costs
• allow employers to easily headhunt a candidate’s contact information

Job boards work in a very different way than social media and there is no need to think whether one is replacing the other or not. Both of them have advantages as well as disadvantages and it’s up to each company to decide which one works better for their recruitment strategy. It’s just worth making a thorough research before any decision is taken because a positive experience for the candidate is more likely to result into an application.

Do you know any other advantages of job boards? 

Image source: Coletivo Mambembe

 

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