Author: Maddy

How to Promote Your Job Board

by Maddyin Marketing5 Comments on How to Promote Your Job Board

Start with Branding, and Know Your Value

I routinely come across a lot of recruiting, staffing, and software websites, and I’ve developed a very particular pet peeve as a result. I hate it when I visit a website and can’t ascertain in ten seconds or less what they actually do.

Reading their Twitter profile bio (if they have one) is often my best bet to get a quick summary or definition of their business, because it’s concise and to the point. 140 characters or less, baby!

It’s tough to take everything you do and boil it down to a tagline, but it’s so worth it. A clear message to your target market and audience helps focus your goals, making them easier to achieve. It’ll be easier to build upon that success and pitch to other markets as you grow, so don’t worry about excluding future verticals. Start with how you’re going to make money and serve your base of employers and candidates now.

Before you start your marketing campaigns, lay out the welcome mat. Put yourself in a stranger’s shoes–would this person be able to grasp all the amazing things your job board can do for them? In ten seconds or less? 140 characters or less?

It’s hard to pack the entirety of your value into such small packages, but if you lead with brevity and give them a reason to go deeper, you make it easier to stick around. A recognizable brand (name, logo, colours, taglines!) and a clear offering go a long way. Out of that, you’ll start to define keywords and more ways to sell.

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The Simply Hired Shutdown: News and Next Steps

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

You’ve likely already heard the news that job aggregator Simply Hired is shutting down on June 26th. A letter was sent to their customers and publishing partners, informing them of the shutdown.

The Simply Hired shutdown will impact those whose job sites are hosted by Simply Hired, and anyone using Simply Hired’s job widgets, API, and data feeds. Simply Hired staff also “face an uncertain future”, and many assume they will be laid off. It has since been reported through “a trusted source” that Recruit (Indeed’s parent company) has acquired Simply Hired.

Simply Hired Shutdown Timeline and News Round-Up

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Feed Me, Need Me (Part 2): A Primer on Jobs Distribution

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

We’re back with Part 2 of our 2-part primer on jobs feeds. This week we’re talking about distribution. Need to catch up and read Part 1? Check out Feed Me, Need Me (Part 1): A Primer on Curating a Jobs Backfill

When you’re starting out or in the midst of running a job board, there comes a point when you think about how you’re distributing jobs posted to your board. Like curating a jobs backfill, you’ll have to make some choices and educate yourself on your options. Distributing jobs is essentially becoming the publisher of backfill that someone else uses, and in most cases, you’re paying others to send you candidates for the postings you distribute.

 

Part 2: Jobs Distribution

  1. What is jobs distribution?
  2. Why would I want to distribute jobs elsewhere?
  3. Is jobs distribution a money-maker or just a cost of operating a job board?
  4. What options or variations of jobs distribution will I come across?
  5. Pros and Cons of Distributing Jobs
  6. Distribute Responsibly

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Feed Me, Need Me (Part 1): A Primer on Curating a Jobs Backfill

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

A lot of you who are starting or in the midst of running a job board want to learn more about or make better use of jobs backfills. But, it can get complicated when you get down to the nitty-gritty choices and variations available to you, so we’ve created a 2-part Backfill Primer blog series to help you become an expert!

 

Part 1: Curating a Jobs Backfill

  1. What is a jobs backfill?
  2. Why would I want a backfill?
  3. Can I use backfills to make money?
  4. What options and variations of jobs backfills will I come across?
  5. What are the Pros and Cons of Using Backfills?
    • Pros
    • Cons
  6. Backfill Responsibly

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Pieces of the Puzzle for Job Board Success

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

Whether you are about to launch a new job board venture or you’re an industry veteran, it’s common to feel like success is a puzzle and the pieces aren’t quite coming together the way they should. Here on the Careerleaf blog, we lay out the key pieces of the puzzle and give you some ideas for pulling it all together. Even if your particular business model is a little different or unique, there are common areas you can focus on to help create success for your job board.

Be aware: Everyone’s puzzle fits together a little differently

Notice I said help create success. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there are no magic bullets, no one-size-fits-all solutions to your job board business problems in perpetuity. What works today may be stale, awkward, and inefficient in a few years. Your dedication to staying aware and your ability to adapt will remain your most important assets.1

There are common building blocks that shouldn’t be overlooked when building a job board business, or using a job board as an additional revenue stream for an existing business. Starting with the basics, let’s review the purpose of your job board:

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3 Mistakes Job Board Owners Make

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

The days of “build it and they will come” are gone for online-based businesses, if they ever existed. Older job boards in particular seem to struggle the most when it comes to the ways that user experience expectations, changes in SEO, and mobile-friendliness have drastically changed their industry over the past two decades. But some brand new job boards can run into trouble as well.

What are some of the biggest mistakes you can make in running a recruiting site? How do job boards screw up their chances at success? Here are a few ways that job boards sometimes sabotage themselves.

 

1. Never Surveying or Re-marketing to Your Customers and Users

You don’t know what you don’t know, and neither do your customers and candidates. Maybe you offer great referrals to job search tools and services, but none of your candidates know about them. Re-marketing to your candidates – that is, marketing to candidates after they’ve been inactive – is a great opportunity to keep them engaged and help your customers reach more candidates.

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Why Recruiters Should Consider Adding a Job Board

by Maddyin Recruiting

We’ve talked about the sometimes blurred lines that distinguish between job boards, aggregators, and recruitment companies, as well as how their technology and business needs match up or overlap.

The traditional idea of a job board is morphing, changing, and growing to adapt to new employment trends and recruiting needs, so the idea of extending one’s job board services into the realm of recruiting isn’t a stretch.

But what about recruitment companies? Staffing agencies and contingency recruiting companies can benefit from consolidating how they advertise jobs and collect candidate information. Let’s take a look at the top three benefits of in-house job listing and candidate profiles.

Job Advertising Efficiency:

As a recruiter, you need to reach candidates where they are and bring them into the fold. With a job board that takes advantage of outbound feeds and sets up distribution relationships with other niche boards, aggregators, and recruiting networks, a recruiter can be done-in-one as far as their advertising needs go. 

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Why Job Board Owners Need a CRM

by Maddyin Technology

A CRM tool, system, or software, is one that manages customer contacts and their information, like a phone book or a rolodex (yeah, yeah, even a Millennial like me knows what those are–I saw them on Mad Men). Usually they come with other features to help you organize and funnel those contacts, track them over time, and keep notes.

Some CRMs combine themselves with marketing, analytics, and VOIP/telephony tools, so that you can tie all your outreach and communications with clients together under one metaphorical roof.

Recruiters use CRMs, too, but in this industry they usually take the form of the ATS, or applicant tracking system, with which so many have a love/hate relationship. And as with a CRM, the ATS often comes with features that elevate it beyond a digital phone book with notes. I’ve sometimes seen ATSs referred to as “recruitment CRMs”, which just confirms their similarity of concept.

If you’re a job board or a recruitment company, you potentially have two or three use-cases for CRMs and their equivalents.

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When One Job Board is Not Enough – Part 2 of 2

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

Picking up from where we left off last week with Part 1 of 2, we’re delving into a couple of scenarios/arrangements where your business might involve multiple job boards, and today we’re covering…

 

SCENARIO 2: ONE BOARD TO RULE THEM ALL

You have big ideas. A vision! You know there are a lot of job boards out there who could be more successful, and make their customers more successful, with increased traffic. And you’ve got a plan to make that happen.

 

WHAT’S MY BUSINESS MODEL?

You’ve identified your job board partners, each of which is independently owned. Either you’ve arranged to work together with several of them to get started, or you’re ready to pitch your plan is to create one job board site that will take in all the jobs from your partners’ boards, and list them on your site.

You’ve got a plan to promote and market your board, which will then send job seekers to your partner job boards through the jobs you list. Your differentiator is that you list all the jobs from all your network partners, making your job board a one stop shop. Your strategy and positioning is very important, here.

If you plan to focus your job board network on the retail sector, your partner sites could specialize in different areas within that industry, such as merchandising jobs, point of sale jobs, management, customer service, or different regions. You could then position your job board network as the go-to source for retail jobs everywhere, and your job board partners would benefit from the increased exposure you deliver to their jobs.

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When One Job Board is Not Enough – Part 1 of 2

by Maddyin Job Board Strategy

You’re in the job board business, or you want to be, and you’re thinking big. One job board isn’t the limit for you, and you like the idea of multiple job boards working together. But how does that work in terms of technology, not to mention your business model?

 

This week and next, we’ll simplify the problem by looking at two possible scenarios or arrangements. But before we dive in, I want to highlight some themes to keep in your mind at all times when considering a multi-board arrangement:

 

  • Business Partnerships: working with other sites/businesses.
  • Data Ownership: customer and candidate data.
  • Technical Connections: you don’t need to know how to build it, but you should understand the basics of your set-up.
  • User Experience: Never forget about the experience of the user, be it customer, candidate, or yourself.

 

Now let’s have a look at one scenario, affectionately called a “family” of job boards, sometimes known as a parent/child set-up.

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