Because the internet is now such an integral part of our lives, it’s no secret that many people use the web and social media to look for jobs. These days, it’s more common than ever to seek employment via an online job board than in person.
With so much traffic on the internet, it’s not easy to pinpoint the best recruiting strategies among competitive industries and job search engines. This is where job board support comes in.
Implementing the best job board software can put your association’s employer membership in front of the right audience to help them meet their business needs and demands quickly and effectively.
What Is a Job Board?
The definition of a job board is a website employers use to advertise their available positions to qualified job seekers. The meaning of a job board is to provide mutual benefits for employers and employees by helping both parties meet their goals. While employees can search for new opportunities, employers can fill vacancies with knowledgeable workers.
Typically, online job boards allow employers and recruiters to use features — such as job postings and advertisements — for free and charge a fee for unlimited access to candidate resumes and databases. Some internet job boards cater to every industry. Others focus on niche industries for employers looking to fill a specific type of role.
How Can Associations Help Employers Use Their Job Boards?
While job boards are helpful to widen the reach to potential candidates, your members must know how to properly utilize marketing tools and features to make the most of an employment website. Here are some points to consider when guiding members in implementing professional job boards:
1. Choose the Right Job Board Software
There are countless job board websites available today, but it’s important that your members choose the right software for their goals and needs. For example, think about which job board tools will stretch a company’s recruitment budgets the most and bring in skilled, qualified candidates that match their requirements. Investing in the right job board software can help companies bring in a high return on investment (ROI) that makes it all worthwhile.
Do your research as a professional association to find the best job boards that allow your members to advertise to and attract and keep high-performing applicants. Unique platforms that support niche industries will help them narrow down the search for talent and help candidates find their company faster and easier. Making the right software choice will provide your association with an additional way to acquire and retain members.
While your members may have experience using different job websites, spreading their resources too thin can make it difficult to manage and keep track of resumes and data. Using recruiting software means members can handle their job posting boards, applications, referrals and other necessary tools with increased visibility and ease.
Ensure candidates have access to available positions and company information on any device, including mobile interfaces.
2. Collect Resumes from Job Portals
Waiting for potential candidates to send in resumes as they apply is a good practice, but it can take a long time to sift through them. Specialized job boards allow targeted applicants to upload their resumes into a searchable database, so your members can search for people who meet open position requirements and criteria. This way, your members can identify their perfect candidate before they even become aware of the job’s availability.
The most important step employers take is determining what criteria they wish to put in their search. To target certain experience, education, certifications and skills for their open positions, suggest your members be specific about what they have in mind for the role. For instance, they can make it clear they want their candidate to have a master’s degree and live within a particular radius of their company.
3. Create Effective Job Descriptions
The job description is the first component of a listing an applicant sees when looking for a job in the industry, so your members’ advertisements should be clear, engaging and informative. Here are some tips to keep job descriptions more transparent which you can provide your members:
- Provide all necessary information about the role, including daily tasks.
- Avoid jargon or slang words in your description that may make it difficult for the ad to appear to job seekers.
- Confirm the position title accurately reflects the job role.
- Always disclose whether the job is on site or remote — if on site, give the office’s location.
- Describe the job’s responsibilities and what skills the position requires.
4. Present the Company’s Brand
Guide your membership to use the job board as an opportunity to display their company’s brand to maximize their outreach. This gives them the chance to describe what sets their business apart from others in the industry and briefly discuss the story of their brand and workplace culture. They should list any unique perks and benefits that might entice qualified candidates to apply, too.
Here are some ways your association members can make their company stand out on a job board:
- Use a video or write a short story to give background on how the business started.
- Describe the company’s missions and values.
- Display pictures of the workplace and company events to help candidates envision themselves there.
- Include quotes from current employees about what they love about their work and the company.
Once they’ve completed the steps to create a well-rounded company page, make sure members have it updated as needed to keep applicants in the loop.
How Do Job Boards Work for Association Members?
Now that you know how to use a job board, let’s look at the primary functions and purposes of job board services:
1. Make It Easy for Candidates to Engage
If employees can’t find your members, they can’t apply for open positions. The same goes for employer associations looking to discover new employers to assist in their search.
Through a job board site, candidates can apply to multiple positions at once without manually — and repeatedly — entering the same information. Whether members want to post general, entry-level positions or specialist roles, they can set up diverse job descriptions on the same platform.
Using job board software makes the process easier for candidates and prevents them from becoming impatient with or confused by the website and clicking off before submitting their application.
2. Provide Greater Convenience
With the updated technology job board software offers, members don’t need to keep hiring managers, recruiters and other administrative staff to monitor postings. With accessible, searchable platforms, potential employees can clearly view the job description and apply 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
When candidates can access postings at any time, upload their availability for potential interviews and see employer contact information, it provides an added benefit of convenience.
3. Contact Passive Candidates
While your members want to remain in view of candidates actively searching for a position in the industry, it’s a good idea to keep their options open for passive candidates. These candidates may already have resumes uploaded online that fit the job requirements, but they haven’t applied for the position yet. Using job board software allows your association members to search for, identify and contact candidates and see whether they’re interested in their available positions.
5 Benefits of Using Job Boards
A job board is valuable for hiring managers and recruiters who need to find new talent — they streamline the job search process, help identify candidates that meet niche position requirements and include a myriad of other benefits. These advantages trickle down to the users themselves, which is why employment websites are also good for job applicants. They’re also a valuable tool that many members are looking to professional associations to provide.
1. Reduce Costs
Saving money when possible is a top priority for most businesses, and using a job board is much more cost-efficient than advertising on your own website. Job boards can help employers minimize labor costs by reducing the amount of work their hiring staff must complete during the recruiting and onboarding process.
With a job board, your members can advertise to a much wider audience on their own terms, rather than paying someone else to find candidates for them, which is often more expensive. Job board software enables members to independently manage their ads and postings within a platform that already secures the best candidates — helping them avoid competition and reach their intended audience.
2. Expand Your Reach
If you’re a small business that isn’t very well-known and struggles to maintain constant website traffic, association-hosted job boards provide you with the boost you need to access more candidates. Job board software is especially user-friendly and makes it easy for potential employees to interact with advertisements and complete the process quickly and easily.
The purpose of job boards is to ensure visibility and help your members receive more traffic, so within minutes of a posting, they’ll reach thousands of candidates they may not have been able to reach in the past.
3. Simplify Your Processes
Using job board software makes it simpler for employers to get off the ground. Trying to find employees to fill an urgent position takes time and resources, especially if they’re looking to hire several candidates at a time.
With job board software, you’ll upgrade your constituents’ candidate pools and encompass a wider audience of qualified candidates while removing those who are not a good fit, shortening the recruitment process. Overall, this benefit can save your employer members money and effort by optimizing their recruitment campaigns.
4. Obtain Better Quality Candidates
Job board software will offer members a better variety of high-quality, diverse candidates. On their own website, they may only get to reach a small number of applicants that seem like a good fit — making it more difficult to fill a specialized position.
Unlike general-purpose job boards, niche job boards allow your members to directly access skilled applicants in their field. With better-quality candidate options, they have a greater chance of finding someone to meet their expectations.
5. Provide Advantages for All
While employees have a better chance of finding a specific industry or company through job boards that meets their skills and interest, employers and employer associations can also benefit. Utilizing job board tools increases exposure, audience and revenue growth and has other positive impacts that make it a valuable asset for everyone involved.
5 Industry-Specific Job Board Advantages Associations Can Provide Members
While attracting a large number of employers and candidates is certainly important, niche job boards take this a step further and ensure the available talent actually fits your members’ needs. When implementing a job board, it’s a good idea to use software that can help you quickly sift through the options from a sample of applicants that fall within your members’ field of expertise.
1. Narrow Down Competition
Niche job boards help members find strong, relevant candidates looking for employment in your specific industry in one place. For employers, this is beneficial because it helps narrow down the competition that general-purpose job boards offer.
Employees will spend less time looking at other options, finding a particular company quickly with targeted searches. This helps employers fill positions faster than those who advertise among dozens of other competitive industries. It’ll also filter out a large number of people seeking jobs, making the playing field a bit more even for applicants. This tool benefits associations looking for employers as much as employers that are looking for the right candidates.
Whether your professional association members have been recruiting for a while or are just starting out, niche job board software offers more value than simply putting a job ad on a website. Having the tools to better understand the applicant pool helps associations establish themselves as authoritative and valuable resources for their members.
2. Increase Visibility
Perhaps one of the most significant benefits to industry-specific job boards is that they cater to all companies and associations regardless of the ability to successfully compete with other industries. Job board software puts your members on a platform to get discovered quicker without maxing out their budget trying to get talent to find their website.
3. Manage and Control Posts
An added benefit for employers that use job board software is having more control of their job ads and how candidates view and share them. Employers will have more access and input into how the job board promotes and distributes their job postings to targeted candidates. This gives employers valuable insight into what recruitment strategies work best for their industry.
4. Improve ROI
Your members are likely researching which job boards fit their industry. It’s a good idea to identify which job boards deliver the most ROI for your association and for them. Niche job boards that keep you involved in the account management process help you get the best ROI for your association and your members’ businesses.
Whether members need assistance choosing job titles for your ads, developing their employer brand or targeting the roles to the relevant audience, the staff behind the job board will need to ensure they meet your members’ recruiting needs.
5. Discover Tips, Tricks and Trends
Letting your members work with a team of people who understand their hiring market is an added advantage. Job boards put them in touch with the right people who are familiar with the latest hiring trends, challenges, competition and industry news. They can also benefit from learning insightful advice and effective recruitment strategies that help them decide which roles or job titles work best on the job board.
Utilizing Job Board Management Tools
Job board software and management tools are the ideal solution to your members’ career planning and recruiting needs. Aside from their many benefits, niche job boards can maximize your association revenue while improving your existing processes and engaging members.
Here are some additional ways you can enhance your user experience:
- Provide opportunities for early-career professionals: Your job board can pave successful career paths for all candidates, including students and recent graduates looking for a way into the workforce.
- Mobile interface: Your users will benefit from a clean, customized and optimized mobile experience — increasing your visibility across devices for job seekers and ease of use for your constituents.
- Streamline communication: Contacting, communicating and interviewing candidates takes a long time, especially if your members have dozens — or even hundreds — of prospective candidates lined up.
- Reserve resources: Job board software is a cheaper alternative to designating, scheduling and setting up in-house recruiters that require an employer’s time and resources.
- Utilize and expand social media reach: If your members already have social media platforms, they can link them with their job board listings to reach a larger network of candidates and grow their career center.
- Offer personalized job matching: With a job board, you can increase member engagement by helping your members find the right people to view existing job postings based on personal qualifications and previous search history.
Implement Job Posting Solutions With YM Careers
If you’re an employer association, both you and your professional members can benefit from the flexible, effective job board software tools that YM Careers has to offer.
Regardless of your industry, these features provide your organization the means to attract new members and retain existing ones while providing you with an additional source of non-dues income. Request a personalized demo today to see how our products and solutions will provide your members with the right career advancement resources and generate new revenue for your organization.
