We’re living in a world of plurality. Never before have there been so many ways to find information, entertainment, and distraction in the form of social media, videos, articles, animated gifs of cats, you name it. There is the same level of “noise” out there for the job seeker, and it affects how they search and apply for opportunities that interest them.
Job seekers are using every resource at their disposal to help them in their search. They will make use of job boards, aggregators, social media and networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, and others still make use of referrals and networking in person.
The dilemma facing job board operators then becomes: how can my website stand out and become a place where users return regularly? You can’t post every job in the world–there’s always another offering you haven’t thought of somewhere. Maybe you are a niche industry job board and your competitor is a regional board–your job seekers from that location check both on a regular basis. But you’re also competing with Indeed and LinkedIn, because your job seekers also search there.
The solution is to embrace the inevitability of your users’ wandering eye, and provide them with tools on your site that genuinely help them in their job search without restricting it.
How do you do this? The usual ways to get job seekers to keep coming back to your job board are to offer the jobs they’re looking for. If you’re a niche job board, this is all based on the market conditions in your niche. If employers are hiring, there is the potential for lots of traffic. If they aren’t hiring, things slow down. If the job ads coming to your board are from multiple sources, then it really is a matter of tossing a whole lot of job opportunity spaghetti at the wall and hoping enough of it sticks.
We believe attracting and retaining job seekers to your board comes down to the tools that are provided to job seekers.
Give us a call to learn more.