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.
The Changing Competitive Landscape
The scenario that Cox suggests, is that using multiple, large-scale hiring platforms to recruit means those candidates who apply there may be persuaded to register, create profiles, and be recruited by your competitors.
It’s not just giant, generalist job boards that are adding recruiting to the services they offer, but smaller, niche job boards too. If you’re a job board that has established relationships with employers and candidates, knowledge of and experience in your industry, offering recruiting services isn’t a huge stretch. Offering a variety of recruiting packages also makes sense when the employer-customer may not be ready to dive into full recruiting services. They might range from help writing and promoting a job post, to screening, shortlisting, and interviewing services.
Recruiters may see this expansion of job boards into recruiting territory as a threat. But with a hybrid recruiting job board, recruiters can take a leaf out of the job board’s playbook and rethink their own recruiting website.
Recruiting Expertise Combined With Job Board Innovation
Established recruiting agencies got to where they are now because of the depth and breadth of their relationships, their industry knowledge, and their experience. Try as they might, Indeed (or anyone else for that matter) is never going to have exactly what you have. But you do need to sit up and pay attention when it comes to your online presence and being accessible to employers and talent.
I look at a lot of recruiting agency websites on a regular basis. Some are remarkable and awesome and don’t need much help, but they are the exception. The average recruiting company website leaves a lot to be desired.
Transforming Recruiting Agency Websites
On your typical recruiting agency site, there’s a 70% chance it’s not mobile-friendly. There are job listings, most of which don’t feed applications into the company’s ATS, costing recruiters time that could otherwise be spent actually recruiting. It also means that unless they hear back from someone, the candidate isn’t necessarily reminded to return to the site, missing an opportunity to nurture and engage.
There is information available to employers, but the path for an employer to reach out isn’t immediately interactive. It’s probably a contact form, a phone number, or an email address. Which is fine, but when you compare it to a job board, where an employer can register, create profile, and take a look at pricing, the standard recruitment agency comes across as opaque and a little mysterious.
By reinventing your recruiting agency website as an interactive job board, a place where both candidates and employers can be engaged by your requisitions, your services, and your marketing, you’re not just playing to the same old crowd. You get to maintain your existing client base by attracting more great talent because your recruiting platform is as powerful as that of the big job boards. But you also get to woo a new kind of client, who maybe has never used a recruiter, who might want to start small, but has the potential to grow (with your valuable help).
Hybrid Recruiting Job Boards
There are strong parallels between niche job boards and recruiting agencies who are grappling with new standards of technology and a changing competitive landscape. Niche job boards seek to increase their value to customers by extending their services to include recruiting, and recruiting agencies are investing in transforming their online properties into interactive and streamlined recruitment marketing platforms that target both candidate and client.
The solution for both is looking pretty similar. It’s exciting, and the team at Careerleaf is full of ideas to help both recruiting agencies and job boards step into this brave new world.
What do you think about this apparent convergence between traditional recruiting and online job boards? We’d love to hear your thoughts.