Recruitment trends are always in a state of flux. From the manual era to the current digital information age, companies and recruitment agencies have adapted to the change and embraced new hiring channels to stay ahead of the game.
Amidst the ever-changing hiring environment, job boards have retained their status as one of the essential recruitment channels for recruiters and job seekers around the globe. Developed from traditional recruiting methods, online job boards have emerged as a modern hiring channel since 1995 after six major American newspapers joined forces and created an online portal that listed job advertisements called ‘CareerPath.com.
Like other hiring methods, job boards too have evolved and allowed recruiters to be more efficient when it comes to advertising career opportunities while making it easier for job seekers to access companies’ job advertisements.
As recruitment has gotten more and more competitive, time is the main component of a successful hiring over competitors. The fact that job boards allow job advertisements to reach a mass group of job seekers from every corner of the world 24/7 is why it must be placed at the core of companies’ recruitment strategies.
The quicker you get familiar with job boards, the sooner you expand the talent pool with higher-quality candidates. To help you stay ahead of evolving recruitment trends and steadily drive towards success at the center of the competitive market, we’d like to invite you to rediscover the importance of job boards in today’s recruitment practices, the benefits they offer, and how to make the most out of them.
What are Job Boards
In modern recruitment, job boards are online platforms that allow companies and recruitment agencies to advertise job vacancies. Job seekers use job boards as platforms to find opportunities in their desired companies.
There are different types of job boards on the market. Two distinct types are generalist job boards and specialist job boards. Generalist job boards like CareerBuilder, Seek.com, Lensa, or JobsDB are used for advertisers of all types of positions in various industries.
On the other hand, specialist job boards are those that focus on specific positions or industries. Examples of these are NRMjobs for professionals in the agriculture, education, and energy industry or Behance for a creative type of professional in industries such as fashion design, web design, or architecture.
Job listings on these boards typically contain all that you would expect in a vacancy advertisement. Companies and recruitment agencies would define the role’s specification, requirements, responsibilities as well as compensation and benefits to attract candidates. On the opposite side of the field, job seekers can search online job boards for opportunities and apply through the platform. Or, be directed to apply via a company’s main websites.
After that, the process goes into the usual recruitment pattern, with recruiters reaching out to applicants who are likely to qualify for the positions, followed by interviews. And the rest, is as we are all accustomed to.
By distributing job advertisements across job boards, companies and recruitment agencies are likely to increase the chances of their advertisements being seen by a larger group of the target audience faster compared to traditional recruitment methods like print advertisements on newspapers. At the same time, it also speeds up the recruitment process by connecting candidates directly to recruiters or employers.
To recruit through job boards more efficiently, a well-designed digital tool like Manatal, that aims to optimize the recruitment pipeline allows its users to share their open jobs across multiple channels at once.
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How Job Boards Help You Recruit Better
Reach a Wider Audience Group
With the pandemic accelerating the use of digital tools - coupled with ‘The Great Resignation’ wave of 2021 - it is no surprise that both recruiters and hopefuls have turned to job boards as one of the primary channels to seek out employment.
Distributing job vacancies through these platforms boosts visibility as advertisements can be viewed by thousands of audiences only within a few minutes after publishing. This allows you to reach candidates of all levels.
You can discover higher-quality candidates as well. On the other hand, specialist job boards, as mentioned above, enable users to reach skilled professionals in specific fields.
Moreover, the majority of job boards are now mobile-friendly, resonating with the surge of job seekers looking for job opportunities on their mobile devices.
A Way to Establish Your Online Presence
As you consider the strategic use of job boards to achieve your recruitment goals, remember that it is important to establish your company’s employer brand at the same time. This is especially so if your online presence is still nascent or if your career page does not generate enough traffic.
Through job boards, companies and recruiters can attract more job seekers and increase their chances of discovering the right talents with the ability to share company profiles. Displaying your history as an employer, letting job seekers know what it’s like to be part of your team while sharing your core values and goals will help strengthen your online presence.
To further promote your brand image, job boards also allow you to add links that direct audiences straight to your main website or social media accounts as well.
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It Saves Time
In the very competitive recruitment industry today, time is everything. As job boards allow the hiring process to be ongoing 24/7 and in real-time, you can immediately interact with candidates once you’ve received the CVs. Also, posting job advertisements on job boards would not require more than five minutes out of your valued time.
For example, take a look at one of the traditional hiring methods like advertising jobs via newspapers. Imagine how long it would take for candidates to send CVs to you by the post office. By the time you’ve made a candidate list, weeks would have passed.
By bypassing this time-consuming step, you will recruit faster. At the same time, by steering recruitment yourself, especially if your company is a small or medium sized business, you will be able to get an insightful, first-hand look at the market and see how competitive your vacant positions are.
It Can be Integrated with an ATS
For companies that receive an overabundance of CVs, sorting out each application may take a large amount of your valued time. Some might say that having a mountain of CVs is a good problem to have. But the reality is that there is a lower chance that all of these applicants would meet your requirements. More often than not, a big chunk of applicants do not match the skills and experience required for the role.
There is a solution to this problem. You can make your days much easier by integrating job boards with an Applicant Tracking Systems. One of the powerful ATS systems on the market today is Manatal, which allows your recruitment process to flow faster and more efficiently. With Manatal, you can push job advertisements across several job listing sites at once. On the other end of the process, Manatal also allows you to directly receive CVs from multiple job boards in a single platform.
How to Master Job Boards
Instead of relying on just one job board we’d like to recommend you try pushing your advertisements across several sites and take the most advantage of this recruitment portal for maximum visibility.
To help you create standout job advertisements and attract more candidates, here are our tips and tricks for mastering the job boards.
Write A Gripping Title
It only takes a second or two for job seekers to decide if they’re interested in a particular job advertisement or not. One of the main factors that determine if you get a candidate’s attention is the job title. To know what a good job title is, you must know what to avoid when it comes to writing an attractive job title.
Firstly, stay away from internal terms or technical words that people outside of your company would not understand. Also, absolutely drop the special characters like ‘! or &’. These would not make the title look cool. Rather, it would cause a negative effect on its search relevancy, and reduce the visibility you’re aiming for.
Secondly, you do not need to put location into your job title. It is unnecessary. There is a section specifically made for that in the description. Keep the benefits and requirements for the description section as well.
Lastly, you might think, ‘well, since it's a title, it should of course be written in ALL CAPS, right?’ WRONG. Don’t do that. Instead, capitalize the first letter of each word in the title. Proper capitalization would give credibility to your ad and attract job seekers to learn more about your open title.
‘Digital & Content Marketing Manager/ Full-Time - Top Benefits/ Click Now!’ is a bad example for a job title. In some job boards, the full title would know even be displayed if written this way. All candidates might see ‘Digital & Content Market...’ By writing the job title this way, instead of creating curiosity, it takes away the credibility of the ad because it looks more like spam. Candidates would turn away from it immediately.
Job titles need to be compelling and capable of capturing attention while creating curiosity at the same time. What you should do is keep the title short and clean. Two to three words are enough to make an effective job title. For example, ‘Digital Content Manager.’ This title is clear and says it all about the position. Job seekers would recognise the role and understand the scope immediately. This would increase the chances of job seekers clicking on your ads to learn more about the requirements of the job and what your company does.
Target Relevant Keywords
Search engine results are one of the main factors in successful online job advertisements. To develop a successful job advertisement, you need to keep in mind that relevant keywords to the open position or the industry are a must.
The best way to optimize the visibility of your advertisement with keywords is to write a job description and highlight words that are relevant to the position. Then make a list of keywords that job seekers might use to find positions that coincide with your description. You can also take a look at your competitors’ advertisements for similar positions and highlight the keywords they are using.
When it finally comes down to the moment of filling in actual keywords for your job ad, try to remember that although they have to be relevant to the open position, you should also avoid general terms like ‘Executive Assistant.’ Instead, go with more specific keywords like ‘Executive Assistant to CEO.’
Also, it is good to consider keywords like your location as well as terms that are related to your company. Or, words that you use to market your product that job seekers might be familiar with. For example, Bangkok, Thailand. If your products are related to the footwear industry, you might want to use words like ‘ laceless sneakers’ or ‘fast track runners.’
Be Descriptive
A shallow job description will only attract mismatched candidates, which means you would spend more time than you would like sifting through irrelevant applications. Provide details of available positions and address the benefits of each position - particularly opportunities for growth and progression - in addition to showcasing the positive points of your company.
Be clear and specific about what kind of individuals you are looking for to fill in the roles you have available. Take your time to explain to candidates what to expect in the position and provide them with an idea of what the job is like.
For example: ‘We are looking for a self-motivated individual with a growth mindset to lead our marketing team. As we are expanding, we need a Chief Marketing Officer to define our marketing vision and make our apparel more desirable to fashion-savvy people around the world.’
Also, write the requirements for the position. What kind of skills, personality traits, and experience candidates should possess to meet your standard. At the same time, make compensation rate and benefits easy to see as well. Is there an annual bonus? Is there compensation for overtime work? At the same time, let candidates know where your office is located as well as your working hours.
If you are struggling to make an attractive job description, let Manatal be your guide. With our help, you can access over 200 ready-to-use job description templates. From IT and development to finance and accounting to the media field and much more, you have the ability to choose the template you like, tweak them to fit your organization’s identity, and let candidates know why you stand out from other entities in the industry and get closer to finding the right talent.
Browse through our collection of ready-to-use job templates here.
Bringing it all together
While there are several hiring channels out there, job boards are the ones that must be part of your modern recruitment strategy. As competitive as the recruitment market today gets, companies and recruitment agencies need to find the best way to attract and approach candidates quickly. With the help of the right recruitment technology, job boards will help push you towards successful recruitment over your competitor.
The ability to reach a broader audience group much faster while showcasing your employer brand would strengthen your online presence and these are the reasons that job boards are a must-have for talent acquisition teams today.
To make the most out of job boards while staying ahead in the recruitment market, it is highly recommended that you integrate job boards with an efficient digital tool. A well-designed digital solution aimed towards simplifying and optimizing recruitment like Manatal is able to push you towards successful job advertising campaigns via job boards.
Manatal’s innovative features allow you to funnel processes from multiple job boards into a single platform. Get ahead of your competitors with the ability to post job advertisements on several online job listing sites at once with attractive job descriptions that we have prepared for 200 positions across several industries.
Start your 14-day Free Trial now and learn more about how Manatal can help you leverage job boards and efficiently spot the top talents in a heartbeat.