Author: Maddy

5 Things Recruiting Companies Need to Stop Doing

by Maddyin Recruiting

1. Making Candidates Apply by Email ONLY

How many emails do you get? How many do you read? I’m not one of those people who will tell you to forget about using email altogether – it’s still a useful and reliable tool for a great many things – but recruiters’ inboxes are usually pretty stuffed. I think it’s safe to say most recruiters have had a few candidates get lost or forgotten in the shuffle of email.

The beauty of having a system that somehow registers candidates with you is that data and information are then housed and organized in ways that are specific to candidates. When you have candidate pools grouped to your job requisitions, you’re more likely to disposition your candidates – which is where most recruiters and employers fall short in the candidate experience. Which brings me to…

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Help Community Stakeholders by Marketing Your Job Board

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

 

Chambers of commerce or local governments running community-focused job boards have a lot to gain by thinking of this resource through the lens of marketing.

 

The biggest mistake that anyone can make in trying to reinvigorate or launch a job board project is to fail to market it to the people who stand to benefit from it the most. For community leaders who have taken on the challenge of tackling unemployment and economic development, it’s vital to get the word out.

 

As with all job boards, you’re marketing to more than one audience. You need to reach both the job seekers and the employers in your region, and make your pitch for other workers and businesses to relocate.

 

One of the reasons a regional job board can be so valuable is that it centralizes disparate information that is typically spread across a combination of big national job boards, help wanted signs and bulletin boards. If it’s easy to find out who’s hiring and what talent is available to hire, it simply becomes easier to do business.

 

But the localization of business and opportunity is about more than just job postings and resumes. It’s also important to provide other information about your town to shed more light on living and doing business there.

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Choosing a Job Board Set-Up for Associations and Publishers

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

Deciding on the best way to integrate a job board into your current website can be a struggle for associations and publishers who are starting or rebooting a job board to generate revenue and provide value for their members or readership. We’ve outlined below three different ways you can set up your organization’s job board, as well as what types of scenarios make sense for each one.

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Successful Job Boards Aren’t Just Job Boards

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy1 Comment on Successful Job Boards Aren’t Just Job Boards

“Job Boards” are for Job Seekers, “Talent Acquisition Platforms” are for Recruiters?

Terms such as “recruiting” and “talent acquisition” speak to recruiters and employers, but not necessarily to job seekers. Thinking of your job board or career centre as a “talent community” is great when it comes to strategy – it means you’re thinking about making your recruiting site an interactive community that attracts and engages the candidates you target.

But does it translate for job seekers? Do the candidates you want to attract actually think of or refer to themselves as “talent”?

Candidates – be they active job seekers or passive candidates – don’t really see themselves as a product to be nurtured, whose contact information and resume data can be bought and sold to employers, recruiters, or other entities. They have their own wants and needs.

Candidates are people who are interested in one main thing: furthering their careers.

Typical job seekers are primarily searching for jobs and researching employers. They’re not likely to type “talent community” into a search engine to discover the opportunities they seek. To the job seeker, a “job board” makes sense.

Successful Job Boards Aren’t Just Job Boards

Talented and employed candidates who are open to opportunity but not actively looking aren’t going to apply to a ton of jobs, but they might become regular and engaged visitors to job boards that provide interesting news, resources, and advice that is relevant to their careers. Then when the right opportunity or offer comes along, they’ll find themselves in the right place at the right time – that is, your job board/recruiting platform/career centre/whatever.

I don’t think we’re going to crack the code and discover the ideal job board nomenclature anytime soon. There is no clear answer because every case is different. Some recruiters and employer look for “job boards” to advertise their open positions, while others may respond to different language. Making a splash by portraying your recruiting platform as something brand new can help you grab the attention of the customers you seek.(And if you’re one of the few out there solving problems in a unique market – you probably are brand new!) Making a big fuss about how you’re not a “job board” isn’t necessarily as helpful. If someone can advertise jobs on your site, then you are a kind of job board, even if those words don’t take centre stage in your branding.

For successful niche job boards that aim to attract both active and passive candidates, perhaps it makes sense to approach the job board more holistically. Developing an online community, resource, or publication that just happens to have amazing and relevant job opportunities on its job board, as a part of its overall offerings, may be a more balanced approach to marketing to quality candidates. People specifically looking for jobs can find them, and those who are passive or merely browsing can be exposed to those opportunities and be found by employers and recruiters.

Once you have the right candidates, finding the language to connect with recruiters and employers in your niche may become easier. The choice to brand yourself a talent community, a job board, a recruiting platform, hiring tool, or talent acquisition thingamajig will fall into place if you know your market, what they’re looking for, and what language they use.

Successful job boards today simply aren’t the 90s web design nightmares that the term may conjure up in the imaginations of some recruiters. Is it up to job boards to challenge the stereotype that lives in the minds of recruiters and marketers? I’m not sure if it’s really a problem.

The nature of a job board – the kind that serves the needs of multiple recruiters and/or employers – is one of duality. You have to speak to both the people who do the hiring and the people they want to hire. Maybe “job board” isn’t right for both of your audiences, or neither, but it still means something and people still hit up Google looking for job boards that cater to the jobs they want. It’s up to you to know (or find out) what language works with your two markets.

How Job Boards Help Publishers Generate Revenue and Cope with Industry Disruption

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

Publishing is an industry that is no stranger to disruption. The digital revolution, while no longer new, still continues to make waves in publishing as technology, media, economic and social forces all impact both new publishers and venerable institutions that have been around for more than a century.

Subscriptions and advertising have traditionally made up the bulk of newspaper and magazine revenue, and it’s no different for today’s publishers. Online advertising has long been a staple of Internet-based businesses as well, and news sites, online magazines, and blogs have good track records of being able to deliver the traffic that advertisers seek from them.

The challenge of generating revenue from advertising is not simply down to transitioning from print to digital for publishers (especially given how many big players are now digital-first), but also in navigating the increasingly complex world of online advertising. From PPC and programmatic advertising to interstitials and paywalls, the online publishing world has been at the forefront of testing out and experimenting with new ways to sustain themselves and profit through advertising revenue.

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Your Guide to Planning a Job Board Tech Update

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

Established job boards have many advantages in the marketplace – a solid brand, a customer base, job seekers, and insight into their niche about the problems that need solving and what does – and doesn’t – sell. With all that going for them, it’s easy to understand why job board owners who have been around for a number of years might be apprehensive about updating their job board solution. If it ain’t broke, don’t fit it, right?

The trouble is that many older job boards have custom-built solutions that have begun to visibly age or are no longer meeting the expectations of job seekers and employers. And even though they might see their profits shrinking as they struggle to keep up with shifting expectations and changing technology, it can be difficult to make a big change when you’ve become accustomed to your current solution or business model. Reasons for updating your job board tech may vary, but regardless of what you do want to change, you really don’t want to risk losing what is working for you.

So how can job board owners reduce the risk involved in making a big change to their technology? I’ve outlined four steps below that can help you prepare and plan for updating or switching your job board solution.

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How a Job Board Can Help Revitalize Your Local Economy

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

Chambers of commerce and local governments representing and working with businesses outside of big cities have generally witnessed a slower economic recovery than those of their urban-dwelling neighbours. Many chambers are launching and implementing economic development projects to encourage the development and retention of local businesses and workers.

But industries have changed due to automation, globalization, and the rise of service and technology sectors, making it difficult to retain the young talent they raised and educated and attract new workers and residents.

So, how can chambers of commerce help local economies evolve?

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Hybrid Recruiting: How Recruiters Can Move Forward

by Maddyin Recruiting

The recruiting industry is fascinating in how its use of technology varies from company to company.

Some recruiters are always following the latest trends to try and keep a competitive edge, while others are just fine with the tried and tested – they know relationships are at the heart of what they do and don’t mind missing out on new technology. In many ways the latter group has the most to gain by modernizing some parts of their recruiting business but can be hampered by the process of changing.

This is one scenario we’ve heard from recruiters:

I have a legacy ATS that we’ve used for well over a decade. It’s worked well for the most part, but our outdated website reduces our credibility for candidates and sales leads. We also feel we could be attracting candidates and sales leads passively with the right tools, in addition to our outbound work.

We want to change, but we’re entrenched in our current system, so it will be difficult. (We have a checklist of things we know we need: mobile-friendly, social media connections, etc. But we don’t want to throw away what we like about our current process.)

Their concerns are valid, and it’s important to address them head-on. Below, we’ll discuss the four main problems and how recruiters can tackle them.

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