At the most basic level, job boards are a section of your association’s website where job seekers can search for highly relevant jobs and post their resumes, and employers can post jobs and search resumes. But there is so much more to your career center that can support your organization’s mission.
Importance of niche job boards to talent acquisition:
- Provides access to thousands of relevant job openings for members
- Delivers a valuable source of non-dues revenue to associations
- Gives recruiters access to qualified professionals (your members)
- Career destination for members – career coaches, resume critiques, interview tips, career pathing, salary benchmarking, etc.
Your association can turn America’s labor shortage into non-dues revenue. Let’s dive into how to maximize this opportunity.
Your organization can play a big role in helping to solve one of the biggest challenges our economy is facing – a serious labor shortage. And in doing so, you will help propel your members upwards in their careers. If your association is THE resource professionals turn to for career growth, then you’ll generate revenue because employers will pay to access the talent community that you, and only you, have assembled in your niche space. As an association, you are the only channel through which employers can access such a concentrated audience of like-minded professionals. And when they need to recruit members of the audience that you interact with, they will pay you for the privilege of doing so.
C-Suite’s Top Concern
Having a sufficient talent pipeline is among the top three concerns of leaders today. Things like technology and regulations change so quickly in the modern workforce that employers are having a hard time finding the skilled talent they need fast enough to stay ahead. Organizations can’t grow if they can’t hire the talent they need to support that growth, and today there is a massive labor shortage. This demand for talent has created a tailwind for association job boards, which is exactly what YM Careers saw in its business for associations in 2021.
2021 YM Careers Job Boards Fast Facts
Although association job board sales were down more than 10% in 2020 when the pandemic hit the economy, advertising sales on association job boards were up 80% in 2021. Many associations needed this revenue to make up for financial pressure they faced in 2020 to keep funding their critical programs that are paid for with revenue from their career centers.
In 2021 alone, employers posted more than five million jobs on the association job boards powered by YM Careers. Talent retention and acquisition are critical priorities, and your association can be an important part of the solution for employers. And you really want to be, because career growth is a priority for your members. According to Community Brands’ Digital Evolution Study, career advancement benefits – including training, certification/credentials, and networking – are important and/or increasing in importance to members of professional membership associations.
The same study shows that career advancement benefits are especially valued by members who are early in their careers. 76 percent of members join associations in school or within the first five years of employment. These early careerists are highly interested in job opportunities, value personalization, seek training to drive career goals, and start building a professional network.
To turn America’s labor shortage into non-dues revenue, your association needs to elevate its engagement with members and professionals. And you are in a unique position to do so as a career growth resource. To generate revenue from recruitment advertising, talent is your product for employers to buy – not job postings or other ads. Talent itself is your core value proposition, so you need to become the first place talent turns to when looking for opportunities.
A great job board offers professionals much more than just job postings to engage them as a talent destination. The more high-quality content and resources your association has that draws in potential candidates, the more valuable you’ll be to employers who pay you to expose their jobs. Career content can be about career planning, career paths in your niche, resume reviews, skills and educational resources, and so much more.
While offering career resources will help you engage with talent, there are still many alternatives that job seekers turn to: Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, etc. So why would an employer pay to post on your job board instead of theirs, you might ask? The answer: you have a competitive advantage for recruitment ad revenue. Unlike job board aggregators, your association’s job board allows employers to target the candidates they really want within your industry.
The “right” candidates that employers really want are not actively looking for jobs because they’re already employed. They are high performers, often the best in their field. However, that doesn’t mean that these high performers wouldn’t consider making a switch if the right opportunity crossed their paths. America’s labor market is certainly seeing proof of that in this “Great Resignation” where employees are leaving for better opportunities if feeling underappreciated, underpaid, underchallenged or lacking career growth in their current company.
In fact, around 85 percent of your members are these passive job seekers who aren’t actively looking but would move for the right opportunity. Employers can’t reach them through Monster, Indeed, or Zip Recruiter. But your association can – and only you have access to them. You interact with them through your website, newsletters, emails, social media channels and events. If you incorporate job content into these channels, in a way that is perceived as valuable by your members, you will get jobs off your job board and out in front of the passive job seekers employers covet. This will also help you engage members and grow your non-dues revenue.
You don’t need to hire staff, find a budget, or spread yourselves even thinner to capture this revenue opportunity. Partners like YM Careers can manage everything for you: providing the technology platform, customer support to job seekers and employers who use your career center, career resources, recruitment advertising and more. We take all the heavy lifting and make sure your career center becomes one of the most trafficked and valuable sections of your association’s website.
