Your association’s job board has a competitive advantage over generic job boards. Here’s how to use it to attract employers to your job board
You might not realize it, but your association’s job board has a competitive advantage over job board aggregators like Indeed or ZipRecruiter. You have a strong opportunity to generate non-dues revenue by attracting employers – who are focused on accessing top talent – to your online job board.
Let’s consider your association job board’s competitive advantage and how to attract more employers to your job board.
Why association job boards have a competitive advantage
Your association’s job board offers multiple benefits to employers. One big benefit is access to high-quality candidates.
Association members tend to be the most engaged and high performing professionals in an industry. They care about their profession, they work hard, and their employers take care of them. As a result, they aren’t actively searching job board sites as often as other workers might be.
You can help employers reach these passive job seekers who are not as easy to connect with through other channels where employers often spend their recruitment dollars. You can also help employers reach high-quality job seekers who are actively searching for jobs.
Let’s look at how to attract employers to your job board.
Top ways to attract employers to your association’s job board
Only your association provides access to such a concentrated niche audience of talent in your industry or profession. With the right tools and approaches, you can use this competitive advantage to attract more employers to your association’s job board. Here are some great techniques
Generate leads
Because of your association’s brand, some employers already know to go to you to reach job seekers by posting their jobs on your job board. But for every one employer that is posting on your job board, there could be nine other employers with relevant job openings that are not.
When employers could use your help, they hang out a sign declaring just that – in the form of a job posting on their website and other job board sites. So, if you have a salesperson or sales team, make sure they have a process in place to find these employers, reach out to them, and explain why they should turn to your association’s job board as a recruitment solution.
An effective way to find employers is to search for relevant open jobs on job board sites, and then reach out to the employers to explain why your association’s job board is ideal to help them connect with more qualified candidates (your members). One way to do this is to set up job alerts on big aggregator sites with terms that are relevant to your profession, so you will regularly get an email with new relevant jobs (leads).
You can also use more sophisticated methods, such as job scraping on the web to make sure that you know every open job out there that should be on your job board. This way, your association can reach employers with a relevant and timely message encouraging them to advertise with you.
Make a strong sales pitch to employers
Making a good sales pitch is crucial in attracting employers to your association’s job board. Best practices include placing a phone call, then sending an email, then following up in a day or so by another brief email. When making these outreaches, little tweaks in content can make a significant difference.
Here is an example of what NOT to do:
Weak sales pitch
In this pitch, the salesperson starts by talking about himself versus the employer and the value proposition. Employers are busy and more likely to respond if you get straight to the point.
This example also uses lots of different fonts and colors, which makes the email seem spammy. It also includes a photo of the sender, which can trigger a junk filter.
The email also would have been more impactful if it included job seeker data and demographics. Perhaps most importantly, the email should start with data about the talent that the organization can provide access to instead of leading with pricing and offering discounts.
Strong sales pitch
Now let’s consider a good sales pitch. This one is short, direct, and highly relevant, addressing the specific role this employer needs to fill. It also uses data to make its case. And finally, it closes with a clear call to action. This pitch shows that there are many compelling reasons for Binder & Binder to advertise its job with the State of Texas Bar Association Career Center.
Tell a convincing story to employers
In addition to generating leads, it’s important to market your association’s job board as professionally as you would other association products that you sell. An effective way to attract employers to your job board is to provide them with a compelling story about the job board.
For example, a short video that tells employers about your members and how your job board works can go a long way. Email marketing and landing pages are also great tactics when well-executed.
Giving employers a professional media kit that highlights the demographics of your members and how your various products help employers reach them is another effective technique. Providing a job board media kit will help ensure your recruitment value proposition is clearly understood, and that the products employers buy from you will get them the best return on their investment.
Job board media kit
Offer employers more ways to reach your members.
Another way to attract employers is to provide them with added ways to reach your members – beyond job postings
On-site career fairs – One “add-on” for employers is on-site career events. To extend their reach to more job seekers, employers will often sponsor booths to recruit on–site career fairs, for example – giving them more opportunities to reach job seekers and giving you another non-dues revenue opportunity for your association. You can section off part of your exhibit floor, use an adjacent ballroom, or even set aside a section of a hallway where employers can speak directly to job seekers at your event.
On-site event
There’s a lot that can be done to enhance your career events, too: résumé or CV reviews, private on-site interview booths, headshot photos, career coaching, and more. And there is a nearly endless list of products to sell employers, including booth sponsorships, signage, and job posting packs for your job board.
Virtual career fairs
Virtual career fairs work just as well as on-site events. Virtual career fair platforms can provide a great experience for both job seekers and employers. During a typical event, employers can live-screen dozens or hundreds of candidates, and candidates can screen dozens of employers, in just hours. Clean reporting and workflows make following up on both sides easy and organized. Many associations hold multiple virtual events each year, never charging members or job seekers, but generating non-dues revenue from the sale of recruiter booths and sponsorships.
Recruitment guides
If you are in an industry in which hiring is in high demand, consider offering a “recruitment guide.” Typically, these guides are created and distributed with an association’s annual conference or meetings. It is a stand-alone supplement, essentially a magazine publication, that is available in hard copy and electronically so that both in-person and virtual attendees can view it.
Recruitment guide
A recruitment guide offers another way for employers to tell their story as an employer brand and to highlight the relevant jobs they have open for your association’s members. Employers can even include videos in the electronic version to convey how they provide the ideal place to work.
Learn more ways to attract employers to your association’s job board
With the right tools and approaches, your online job board can attract employers in your industry and drive non-dues revenue for your association. Learn more about how YM Careers can help attract employers to your job board: Request a personalized demo.
