Online Recruitment Archives

January 16, 2017February 14, 2017 by Maddy

Hybrid Recruiting Job Boards

A recruiter is angry at job boards.

Why? hybrid-recruiting-fishing-1

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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New Years Resolutions for Recruiters: Sympathy for the Candidate

January 2, 2017January 2, 2017 by Maddy

New Year’s Resolutions for Recruiters: Sympathy for the Job Seeker

If you’ve ever been unemployed, underemployed, or even an employed-but-active job seeker in the past decade, you know a certain kind of pain. Heck, even those passive job seekers who entertain the courtship of a recruiter know the feeling.

They say it’s a candidate’s market out there right now, especially for highly skilled and specialized workers, and yet, they suffer the same poor candidate experiences as those young and unskilled workers just joining the workforce. (Not that anybody deserves such treatment – you may also want to hire that young and unskilled person when they gain more skills and experience.)

When you’re on the other side of the fence as a recruiter or employer, it’s easy to get bogged down in your own processes and difficulties, and neglect to sympathize with job seekers who don’t have the benefit of your point of view.

To refresh your memory, the average job search goes something like this:

After a lot of searching, you find a cool job post and think it’s a great opportunity that you’re qualified for and would enjoy. Maybe it’ll change your life!
You carefully craft a cover letter, update or tweak your resume to suit, and hit “apply”.
Then you click “apply”, and wind up in an Applicant Tracking System that makes some of your previous work feel repetitive. You fill out your contact info again and copy and paste the content of your resume and cover letter into a plain text format.
You might have to re-enter your education or work history with names and dates, and at the end, answer a few screening questions about diversity, your qualifications, or your legal working status.
Those last few questions tacked onto the end are probably designed to knock you out of the application process if you don’t answer the right way, giving you a sinking feeling as you hit the “submit” button.
The whole rigamarole is sometimes followed by an email confirmation of receiving your application, but most often it’s silence.
Lots of silence.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

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November 30, 2016February 27, 2017 by Maddy

Recruitment Tech News for November

The month of November has brought with it some interesting news that’s ripe for discussion in the recruiting industry.

Both Facebook and Google are testing products relating to recruiting and job search, so today we’ll give you the highlights on these news stories along with our key takeaways for job boards.

Facebook Jobs

The Story:

Facebook is testing a new feature that will allow companies to not only add a “Jobs” tab to their Pages, but also post jobs directly to the social media platform. It also includes a basic application delivered as a Facebook Message.

The Reaction:

Some view this development as a certain threat to LinkedIn and Indeed, while others wonder if using a primarily personal social media platform for recruiting may ultimately backfire on Facebook, and change the way its users share and interact on the platform.

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simply hired shutdown alternatives timeline analysis

June 3, 2016August 19, 2016 by Maddy

The Simply Hired Shutdown: News and Next Steps

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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May 23, 2016August 19, 2016 by Maddy

Diving into the Numbers: Job Board & Recruiting Stats for 2016

TA Tech and Job Board Doctor released the results of their 2016 Global Job Board Trends Survey recently, so this week we’ll be taking a gander at those job board stats, as well as a look at some other research released this year, and explore what it those numbers might mean for your job board business.

Job Board Doctor & TA Tech 2016 Global Job Board Trends Survey

Released May 2016 – Surveyed 211 job boards from across the globe, nearly half which were US-based.

In it for the Long Haul

Nearly half of respondents have been in business for 11+ years, and over 13% have been in business just 1-2 years. It’s easy to start a job board, but it’s harder to keep it going for a decade. The fact that so many have been in business for over a decade demonstrates there is success to be found, but that it’s more difficult to achieve than many entrepreneurs initially assume.

(Sidenote: at Careerleaf we’ve got some projects brewing to help support and guide job boards through the murky waters of those first couple years. Stay tuned!)

Lots of Jobs on Lots of Job Boards

47% of respondents reported a monthly count of 500 job posts on their board. That’s a lot of jobs! It seems job boards continue to provide a return on investment for recruiters and employers through job advertising and employer branding.

You Gotta Track That Data

One worrying statistic to come out the survey is that 32% of respondents weren’t tracking how many applications paid postings were receiving! It’s a good stat to measure and track, not only to measure your own success, but to market your services to your customers. (Not sure what stats to track? Check out our Quick Crash Course on Job Board Analytics.)

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April 15, 2016August 19, 2016 by Maddy

Pieces of the Puzzle for Job Board Success

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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January 11, 2016August 19, 2016 by Maddy

Why Recruiters Should Consider Adding a Job Board

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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September 28, 2015August 19, 2016 by Eric

‘Women in Leadership’ features Afifa – Careerleaf’s CEO and Lead Chocolatier

It’s no secret – when it comes to the CEO position, women are grossly underrepresented in the Canadian workplace. If this list of Canada’s top 100 earning CEOs serves as an appropriate sample, women only represent 3% of these business leaders. Just three percent! The rest of the workplace is 47% female.

It’s a contrast for those of us at Careerleaf, where we’re led by our CEO Afifa Siddiqui. As it turns out, we also came upon the opportunity to feature her for Women in Leadership, a national charity that aims to inspire Canadian women to fulfill their potential by assembling communities, providing mentoring, and organizing networking events.

Curiously, WIL was more interested in telling Afifa’s story as an entrepreneur, rather than her role as our office’s primary merchant of chocolate. Even so, we jumped at the chance, and the feature has just gone live. Check it out here!

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September 21, 2015March 24, 2017 by Eric

Reimagining your Professional Association as a Recruiter

I think bamboo is a fantastic material. From construction scaffolding, human edible food, and entire luxury houses, the grass has been employed in an endless variety of ways through some creative reimagining of what the material was and what role it could play.

The human brain does, in fact, act oddly when faced with different assumptions and frames. Simply asking a question in a different way, or considering a different perspective can derive a different result. Consider the following based on Kahneman & Tversky’s often cited study:

An outbreak threatens to kill 600 people. There are two possible courses of action:

Program A will save 200 people.
Program B has a ⅓ chance of saving everyone, and a ⅔ chance of saving no one.

Now, imagine the same scenario, but different options:

Program C will kill 400 people.
Program D has a ⅓ chance of saving everyone, and a ⅔ chance of saving no one.

All four plans theoretically deliver the same result – save 200 people – but 72% of those surveyed would choose program A over B (certainty instead of risk), yet 78% would choose program D over C (risk instead of certainty). The dramatic difference can be accounted for the way A and C are framed – one is positive and one is negative.

So for professional associations out there looking to do more for your membership and increase revenue: it’s time to reimagine your organization…as a recruiter.

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August 3, 2015August 19, 2016 by Eric

Enhancing Recruitment Marketing with SEO

I can still recall, quite vividly, the days when my whole household had one cellphone, and it was carried by the family member who could justify the greatest need for it.

In 2007, I reluctantly purchased my first cellphone that I didn’t share with a family member. I was 22 at the time and being a late adopter was a point of pride – I wanted to see how long I could hold out before being swallowed by the mobile revolution. Tell that to my parents, and they’d laugh thinking about the technology they had when they were 22. Tell that to one of my cousins in high school, and well, they’d probably laugh as well – who waits till they’re 22 until getting their very own phone?

Fast forward to today, and I’m more likely to leave my house without my wallet than my cellphone – a sentiment that I believe is quite significant in terms of how the Internet and proliferation of mobile devices has truly changed our society.

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