A recent Community Brands study shows that job opportunities are one of the most important benefits to members, yet association pros don’t always place as much value on them. The study also shows that job opportunities are fundamental for recruiting and retaining members (especially those in the first five years of their careers) and continuing to support them throughout their career journey.
Data from the study reinforces a trend seen across multiple Community Brands studies: Job opportunities are important for acquisition as well as retention. However, only 12 percent of association pros say their organization is doing very well delivering job opportunities. Members say their organization is doing a better job than association professionals think, but still only 27 percent of members say they’re doing very well.
So, does your association value its job board enough?
The disconnect shown in the study suggest that associations should focus more time and attention on how they help their members get the right job and advance their careers. One place to start is with your online career center. With the right technology and some proven techniques, your online career center can be a great source of member engagement (and even added revenue) for your organization.
Using job board software with job alerts, personalized searches and recommendations, and the ability for members to import their resumes from LinkedIn and log in through social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, will go a long way toward boosting engagement and member satisfaction. In turn, your organization will be more competitive, and members will spend more time interacting on your association site – which translates into increased member participation, networking, and renewals.
Another Community Brands study shows that lapsed members in particular place significantly higher value on job opportunities and help with career advancement. In today’s environment of high engagement, it might be easy to forget about those members that get away each year – your lapsed members. But, as the saying goes, it’s cheaper to keep a member than to attract a new one. One great way to increase member retention is to understand how to keep members from lapsing in the future.
To drive even more goodness for your association, it’s important to optimize your online job board for visibility and access to non-members – in effect, using the job board to drive membership and increase revenue. One highly effective way to achieve this is by integrating your job board with your association management software (AMS). For example, YM Careers is part of Community Brands’ integrated software suite for associations. Unlike other job boards, YM Careers ensures associations have visibility and recruitment access to non-members who are using the board – tracking their activity and writing it back to their record within the AMS, all to drive membership and increase revenue.
At the least, your online career center and job board software should:
- Make your association the main source of hard-to-find talent for employers
- Propel your members’ careers upward
- Grow your member base by attracting new members
The data is clear: it’s time to deliver the job opportunities your members want.
