Author: Maddy

Pricing Your Job Board Services

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

If you’re starting a new job board, you’ve hopefully been making use of Careerleaf’s resources for job boards, and now you’re starting to think about how you’ll price your services.

To do this, you’ll need to know your overall costs and your business model, including what products or services you’re selling, and any other sources of revenue.

Revenue Goals

Many entrepreneurs may start off with dollar signs in their eyes, dreaming of all the cash they’ll have once they get their new business off the ground. The reality is many businesses take the time to become really profitable, so it’s important to set milestone goals for you to meet along your journey.

  1. Your First Sale – The first goal is proving out your business idea by making a sale, or a few initial sales, and learning from those early customers. Was the price right? Did they get what they wanted? Will they recommend your services to other people? You might experiment a little during this early stage to find the prices that match the value your customers expect and experience.
  2. Break Even – The second milestone is making enough money to cover your costs. How much do you spend to operate your job board in the first place? What do your monthly costs for software, hosting, marketing tools, and hours of labour (yours or that of an employee or contractor) add up to?
  3. Make a Profit – The third goal is generating enough revenue to cover your operating costs and make a profit. Once you’re profitable, you may invest that profit into growing the business further.

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Attracting Younger Members with Association Job Boards

by Maddyin Marketing

Many professional associations have found their membership growth stagnating when it comes to young professionals. The so-called “millennial” generation, who in 2017 are now roughly between ages 20-36*, may perceive membership-based organizations as “old school”, as well as being too expensive, having low value, and lacking in technology and curation.

Some context that may explain their views on associations is that most millennials have had a rough start to their lives as adults. Many began their careers during the Great Recession, facing periods of unemployment or underemployment, low wages and wage stagnation. Add to that the unprecedented weight of student loan debt most young professionals are carrying, and it’s not hard to see why millennials are reluctant to spend money to join organizations if they don’t see an obvious return on investment.

But millennial professionals are highly educated and accustomed to using digital technology, and while they earn less money than previous generations, they do want opportunities to network, to further develop their skills and training, and to discover new job opportunities. Due to the lack of economic stability during their adult lives thus far, most millennials can safely assume working in a great number of jobs over their lifetimes than did older generations. Put these facts together, and it seems millennials could really benefit from membership in professional associations – if you can convince them it’s worth their money.

So how can associations connect with millennials and be perceived as having value?

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Association Job Boards for Non-Dues Revenue Streams

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

Membership-based organizations tend to rely heavily on the dues or fees that members pay to join and access the benefits offered by such associations.

Membership fees can vary greatly, depending on their niche or industry, and on whether the association is a for-profit or non-profit organization. Non-Dues sources of revenue for associations also traditionally include events or conferences, sponsorship, selling or reselling education/training courses, fundraising or donations, and grants.

Online career centres or job boards also prove to be effective at generating revenue while adding value for both members and industry partners, and help associations stay true to their mission.

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Convincing Great Talent to Join Your Job Board

by Maddyin Marketing

In the recruiting industry, there is frequent debate about passive vs active candidates. A passive candidate is someone who has a job, and isn’t really focused on finding a new one. They may occasionally look for jobs or apply, but they’re not as absorbed in the activity as someone who is an active job seeker. An active job seeker might be unemployed or trying to leave a job they don’t like. They’re applying to jobs regularly, and are always on the lookout for opportunities.

There is the perception that passive candidates are better, perhaps because their current employment implies success in their role. On other hand, a passive candidate who can be lured away from a job they’re content with could be just as easily lured away from the employer you recruit them to join. An active job seeker may want the job more, and work harder to keep it.

However you feel about recruiting passive or active candidates, a job board needs both.

By now, you should be familiar with the chicken-and-the-egg game of simultaneously attracting both talent and customers to your job board. Last week I talked about finding the right balance of original content to make your job board unique and valuable enough to be useful to job seekers and develop good SEO, a crucial element of attracting job seekers to your board.

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Are You Competing with Indeed?

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

I’ve said before that I think you can compete with Indeed. Yes, you.

I don’t say it because I have blind faith in you (although I’m sure you’re great), I say it because I know that a job board or recruiting platform with a value proposition that resonates with and delivers for its target market can, indeed, compete with Indeed.

A focused target market and unique content can define what makes a job board valuable and preferable for job seekers and employers/recruiters to use over using a site like Indeed. Unique content (candidate profiles, blog content, job posts, landing pages, etc.) can arguably come in two forms – original content that is found nowhere else, or content that is curated in such a way that your organization and delivery of it is unique and valuable. In many cases, unique content is a combination of both original content found and unique curation of content that was first published elsewhere.

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SEO Marketing Cheat Sheet for Job Boards [Infographic]

by Maddyin Marketing

Search Engine Optimization is never going to truly be a “set it and forget it” tool for getting traffic to your job board or turning up on the first page of Google search results.

Ideally, search engines like Google and Bing want web search to be a meritocracy. Websites and pages that are relevant to the words or phrases you search for and have proven themselves to be valid and valuable should be what rises to the top.

Websites new and old have challenges in managing their SEO, often for different reasons. Old websites usually struggle with updating or cleaning up the structural and technical components of their site’s content, design, and its organization. New websites usually struggle to figure out how they can be unique and valuable enough to differentiate themselves from existing sites, and build up credibility.

There is a view, which stems from the early days of SEO, that making a website turn up on the first page of search results can be achieved simply through technical tricks and hacks. Google, in particular, is known for its evolving search algorithm – the way Google applies your search terms to look for appropriate search results today is not the way it worked last year, five years ago, or ten years ago.

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Status of Facebook Jobs: It’s Complicated

by Maddyin Marketing

Facebook started out in 2004. I joined in late 2005. Only college and university students could sign up back then, and you could only register using your school-assigned email address. Now we might refer to it as a closed social network, with subnetworks of people who add each other as “friends”. Later on, high school students were allowed to sign up, and then eventually the world at large was welcome on Facebook.

Naturally, most of the user-generated content on Facebook during those early years was posted with the assumption that only chosen friends would ever clap eyes on it. Messages on your Facebook wall (now your timeline) and selfies (taken without the advantage front-facing camera on your phone) were the norm, along with pictures of friends hanging out, partying, and making dumb faces.

If you’ve watched The Social Network, you can no doubt imagine that all sorts of social drama was acted out on the platform, and you’d probably be right. Facebook was responsible for popularizing “it’s complicated” as a relationship status, after all. On the other hand, it was also common to change your vital stats for fun – Antarctica as your hometown or relationship status set as “married” to unlikely match, platonic friend, or favourite food.

I’m not taking you down Millennial Memory Lane for no reason, mind you. The context of Facebook’s history and evolution is important to take into account when evaluating the social media platform as a recruiting tool, since now it’s a place to look for a job.

Back in November, TechCrunch reported on Facebook’s upcoming Jobs feature for company pages, and now it’s here. Let’s quickly review what we know about Facebook Jobs:

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6 More Reasons Not to Start a Job Board

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy2 Comments on 6 More Reasons Not to Start a Job Board

Maybe it’s the magic of reverse-psychology, but our most popular blog post has consistently been 5 Reasons Not to Start a Job Board since it was published.

It’s not that I don’t think people should start job boards. In fact, it’s kind of important to our business that people do run and start job boards. But, there are things that can cause problems for a new job board, and I’m interested in helping you avoid and overcome those problems.

So, back by popular demand, here are 6 more reasons not to start a job board!

1. You Don’t Know What You’re Selling

Why should anyone use your job board? Why should job seekers use your board, rather than using Indeed, LinkedIn, other large aggregators and job boards? Why should employers use your job board either, for that matter?

If you can’t answer those questions, you have a problem. This is usually the first thing to trip up a new job board. If you can’t think of what your board offers that other competitors (big or small) don’t, you’re going to have a hard time selling it to employers and candidates.

One of the reasons why job boards with a focus on a particular niche or regional market are successful is because it makes it easier to identify the problems of finding great talent and great jobs, and then work to solve them.

Make sure you know what you’re selling so you can communicate it to the people to whom you’re selling.

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Your Job Board Branding Checklist

by Maddyin Marketing

Whether you’re starting a new job board or you’re giving yours a fresh coat of paint, it’s important to think about your branding.

For some people “branding” just means a logo and a name, but it can encompass a lot more than that. Visual graphics and their placement, as well as messaging and content all contribute to the brand of your job board or recruiting platform.

The following list may cover more (or less) than what you really need, but it should help guide your process. If you already have everything you need, let this list help you to organize it all into a cohesive branding package that makes it easy to use your branding as you create new content and promotions.

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Hybrid Recruiting for Job Boards

by Maddyin Recruiting

A recruiter is angry at job boards.

Why?

Because he pays for the service of advertising jobs on a platform that will get him the candidates he wants, but the candidates he gets are subjected to job advertisements and offers from every other recruiter who uses that job board.

They’re all fishing from the same pond. 

Most recruitment companies have an ATS (applicant tracking system/software), and use multiple tools to advertise jobs and engage talent. One side effect of using multiple tools and platforms for recruiting is that you sometimes wind up fishing from the same pond as everyone else. Australian recruiter Simon Cox writes:

The online advertising employers and agencies pay for and spend hours preparing is being used to build databases of candidates for the benefit of job boards. Applying for a job on SEEK, CareerOne, Indeed.com and many other job boards, means being encouraged/cajoled/funnelled towards setting up a personal profile on that platform.  Everything is about trying to get you to say ‘yes’ to employers being able to search your CV.  Indeed.com and CareerOne are actually contacting those candidates directly to offer them recruitment services.

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