What is the future for job boards?

Job boards and job sites have existed for a long time. They are still the first reflex for posting a job, and their strength is real. So are their limits, which is why many recruiters add targeted advertising, within the same budget.

Strengths and limits of job boards

The facts:

The welcome and job search interface of a classic job board generally looks like this:

It can be seen as an “Employment” section where job seekers indicate the position they would like to access or the sector they would like to discover. There is also a “Location” section to locate the candidate's preferred location in order to know where he would like to work.

What they do well

• They reach candidates who are actively looking, people ready to apply.
• They bring volume, fast, for most roles.

Their limits

• Lots of volume, often poorly qualified. Job boards are open to everyone, and sorting the applications falls on the recruiter.
• Visibility limited in time. The ad slips down as new ones are published. You have to renew it, and publish it on several sites at once to stay visible. Each site adds to the cost.
• No guaranteed result: a sponsored ad is paid for even if it brings no application.
• Scattered reports: each site has its own statistics, unless you use a multiposting tool.

None of this takes away their usefulness. But for hard-to-fill roles and people already in a job, it pays to run them with targeted advertising, in one budget.

Niche job boards

Niche job boards have their own strengths. These job boards specialized according to the sector of activity, region or level of experience are numerous.

They succeed in convincing recruiters to invest in their solutions, thanks to a more targeted audience.

How can we explain such success? They play the card of the relevancy. Indeed, it is as if they had already pre-filled in part of the two standard search fields (job title or workplace). This pre-selection work is beneficial to both candidates and recruiters. It saves time for candidates and increases the accuracy of applications for recruiters who are more likely to receive qualified applications.

Their limits are those of other job sites: an audience of active candidates, visibility to renew, and a per-ad price that is often higher, with no guaranteed result.

LinkedIn and other professional social networks

why Social networks Are professionals attracting the attention of so many recruiters? A clue: it's not for posting job offers. Professional social networks make it possible to target so-called passive job seekers and to get in touch with them. This is a powerful lever, as it completely democratizes sourcing and headhunting.

However, the cost of posting job offers on professional social networks is high, for two main reasons:

1. Professional social networks make it possible to broadcast job offers in what could be called the “natural habitat” of professionals. When people are on LinkedIn, Xing, or Viadeo, they are busy with their jobs and careers. It is therefore the perfect environment to be receptive to job offers and even more so if they are relevant.

2. The advertising platforms of social networks offer precise targeting criteria (job, interests, location), which make it possible to show a job offer to the profiles closest to the role, without ever knowing who they are. They are targeting channels too: Seeqle reaches the right people there with its own data, 5,100+ job profiles and 400,000+ criteria built by Seeqle Intelligence, never by reading individual candidate profiles.

Many turn to social networks on top of job boards. It works, provided you use targeted advertising rather than simply posting jobs, and run both in one budget.

Targeted social recruitment on all social networks

Social networks are used by more than 40% of the world's population. Their advertising platforms make it possible to show a job offer, anonymously, to the profiles closest to the role.

Targeted social advertising then makes it possible to reach them with the appropriate job offers directly on these social networks that they use every day.

Targeted social recruitment therefore makes it possible to deliver the right job offer to the right candidates - and ONLY to the right candidates since they can be targeted according to their interests, demographics or online behaviors - and in the right place. Little more : it is a good tool to reach both candidates who are actively looking for but also the hidden market for passive candidates - that is to say candidates already in position but still listening to opportunities - who are often the most experienced and the most sought after.

Targeted advertising has its own demands. It costs a little more than a job board ad, without a big gap. It takes advanced technical skills: targeting, bidding, visuals, conversion tracking. And each platform delivers its own reports.

This is where Seeqle's Attract Agent comes in: it reads your job posting, suggests the targeting and launches the campaign on social networks, the web and apps, then brings the results of every channel into a single dashboard.

To learn more about recruiting on social networks, read our white paper.

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