Job opportunities are one of the top reasons people join a professional membership organization. So, it makes sense that offering your members an online job board to connect them with their next great job opportunity is a must-have when it comes to delivering member value.
But, if you think about your online career center as simply a place for job postings, you’re missing out on an opportunity. Your career center can be so much more. It can provide even greater value for your members, your association, and your industry.
Here are three ways to expand your online career center beyond a basic job board:
- Connect job seekers with hiring managers in new ways.
Allowing employers to post job openings and job-seeking members to apply for them is a great baseline member benefit. But there are additional ways to connect prospective employees with hiring managers. For example:- Offer a virtual career fair. Virtual career fairs offer a convenient, dynamic, low-cost way for job-seeking members to network and engage with employers when attending onsite events aren’t possible. These types of online events offer many of the features of an onsite career fair without the need for employers, job seekers, and your organization’s staff to travel. Members and recruiters can meet one-on-one, online, in the comfort of their office or home.
- Offer an online internship board. Set up an internship board that allows members who are students and new grads to kickstart their careers by searching and applying for internships online. For example, using YM Careers InternBoard, you can set up an intern board that allows internship seekers to easily create their own accounts and profiles, and add resumes and cover letters. They can search internship postings and apply directly within the job board or externally by following employers’ instructions.
- Provide career resources to help members land their next job.
You can do much more to connect members with their next great job than simply allowing them to search for job opportunities. You can also give them the support and know-how they need to land the jobs they’re seeking.Make sure your online career center includes these offerings:- Career path mapping – Give your members a clear roadmap to reach their professional goals. For example, using Career Journey by Community Brands, you can give your members an online tool to map out their career path based on the job they want. It gives them a well-defined path to get there, including the skills, learning, and job titles they need to reach their goals.
- Résumé review – Offer free résumé critique through your career center.
- Job seeker articles, tips, and recommendations – Offer articles and other content including résumé writing tips, interview techniques, job search ideas, and tips on social networking.
- Career coaches – Connect members with certified career coaches to help with things like job search strategies, interview tips, and résumé writing.
- Networking – Integrate social media with your career center site to allow job seekers who view a job in your job board to instantly see any LinkedIn connection they have who works at the company. This is a useful technology integration that can help them open doors to new opportunities.
- Professional education – Use your career center to promote your association’s online learning courses and credentials. For example, recommend relevant learning courses that will make your members more qualified for the jobs they seek.
- Turn your career center into a revenue source.
At a minimum, you can drive revenue from your job board by charging employers a fee to post their job openings. But you don’t have to stop there.You can offer employers additional paid options to get their job openings in front of more candidates. For example:- Offer banner advertising – Allow employers to maximize their recruitment efforts, promote their brand, and improve the return on their investment in job postings by placing a banner ad on your job board. Eye-catching banner ads help ensure employers’ job postings stand out from the crowd.
- Provide a re-targeting campaign service – Re-targeting keeps employers’ job openings and brand in front of potential candidates after they’ve left your career center. Here’s how it works:
- Job seekers visit your career center.
- The job seekers then move on to browse other websites.
- The job seekers see an employer ad that appears on the sites they spend time on.
- The job seekers click through to a link of the employer’s choice.
- Offer social media outreach – Give employers the option to pay an added fee to put their job postings in front of passive job seekers through your social media networks. This approach helps employers extend their recruitment reach beyond the pages of your career center.
Take the next step.
YM Careers by Community Brands offers job board software and career center solutions that power the ideas listed in this article, and more. Find out more: Explore YM Careers
