Brenda Burch Dumont's Blog

The continuing dominant utilization of job boards as the main recruiting tool in a retail recruiter’s toolbox is under siege.  What makes a good job board?  What to ask them when deciding which one? Will social media replace job boards?  Read on………….

Most of you know my background, but here is a brief overview as my career relates to Job Boards.

In 2000, after operating Canada’s first retail-only search firm for 7 years, it seemed apparent to me that certain job categories in the retail industry would be filled in future online.   In March 2001, I launched www.canadianretail.com.  This was Canada’s first retail-only job board and it was a little ahead of its time.

I then went on to run canadianretail.com until 2005 and sold it to CanWest where I ran it for them until recently – a total of 10 years working directly in the Job Board business with both a niche and a generic job board background.

Today’s Job Board industry is unrecognizable from 2000.     Then the industry was dominated by Monster and Workopolis was just launching and all Job Boards mostly just listed postings.  Alerts were thought to be very clever technology.

Today there are SO many job boards online competing for a decreasing number of dollars as the recruiter toolbox diversifies and changes once again to include social media and digital products.

So, from a previous job board owner, manager, salesperson, customer service person, designer, and recruiter’s perspective, please consider the following when allocating your job board dollars:

1. Without a doubt the biggest and most important consideration in choosing a job board is what they are doing to drive job seekers to their board (or to one of their products in a network) to view your postings.  Just displaying ComScore numbers won’t begin to guarantee good results for YOU. A job board can have a billion visitors a day, but if those billion aren’t the type you hire, and their sales and marketing efforts are targeted to the types you hire – where is the return?  Specific explanations should be provided on the contents of their sales and marketing plans and the majority of the initiatives better be towards attracting job seekers and building brand and not fancy sponsorships at sporting events where no retail employee will ever go.  And, if their sales and marketing plan says ‘uses Twitter’ – then you’ll want to know how many followers, what do they Tweet (a steady diet of just tweeting jobs doesn’t interest anyone and entirely overlooks the social in social media).
2. Job Boards should be all about the job seekers.  The design should be all about getting the visiting job seeker to the appropriate posted jobs for him/her, plus providing information on the companies and industries they are interested in, including job seeking advice in a meaningful and targeted way, and include rich features that let them save postings they have applied for, set up a Job Alert, etc.  Job Boards should be creating platforms that all job seekers the ability to easily move from Facebook to the job board to LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. but I haven’t seen that yet.  If a visit to a job board you are considering working with reveals a website that seems more geared to you than a job seeker – it won’t give you a good ROI.
3. Along the same lines, spend some time on the job board yourself.  If you can’t easily navigate to a job posting you’d like to see, can’t find any information on the company you’d like to work for, or can’t register quickly and easily – neither can the job seekers you are hoping to attract.  Believe it or not, this is still an issue in the job board world.
4. Be wary of Job boards with taglines like ‘an evolution in recruiting’ or Talent Portals or Career Hubs, etc. etc.  At a quick glance they are simply job boards with snazzier names trying to bolster perceived value.
5. Don’t be impressed by how many ‘registered’ job seekers are available on a job board.  The vast majority of job seekers today use several job boards and social media sites and most don’t register on the job boards.  Reverse recruiting scares many of them as do the heavily reported security breaches of job boards than appeared in 2007 and 2008.
6. Ask specifically about the customer service.  Posting jobs, retrieving responses, setting up wraps, etc. are certainly not self-evident on most job boards.  In ten years of experience I concluded that every client required some hands on help to obtain the best results.  If customer service exists as a help desk manned by several people on a rotational basis then consider another board.  Ideally, and particularly if you are a larger company with a multi-posting agreement, you should be assigned a single individual with whom you can build a relationship.  There are still many Canadian retailers that require job posting services and don’t have their jobs automatically wrapped to the job board.  If the board doesn’t provide job posting services, and help with crafting, wording, and designing the job postings, consider looking elsewhere.
7. Ask about their plans to connect with social media platforms that include jobs.   Ask which aggregators harvest their jobs.  Ask if each posting and their company profile (if company profiles are offered – they should!) can include a ‘Share’ button so the profile and/or the posting can be easily posted on Twitter or your Facebook page.

Believe it or not, there is actually much more to this topic.  But, as it is, I am way over the length recommended for a well-read blog!  And here I am supposed to be consulting on effective social media recruiting, job board utilization, career site creation, and serving as a professional tweeter.  I should know better!  Connect, LinkUp, follow, etc. or DM me if you’d like more…………..

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Retail, recruitment, social media by cobblehillgarden