Seven continents. 7.9 billion people. 960,000 recruiters. One thing they have in common: they all use job boards.
The latest LinkedIn global trends report reveals that job boards are the #1 channel used by candidates for job search to date.
Yet most recruiters simply post jobs and hope to receive candidates who match their hiring criteria by the end of the day. They lack knowledge about the unique capabilities of individual job boards, the smart tools which make job boards management efficient, the strategic thoughtfulness required to make their sourcing stand out from the crowd, and so on.
In this article, we discuss the common mistakes recruiters make with job boards, which hold them back from growth and success.
#1 Not focusing on employee branding
Unfortunately for most recruiters, publishing a job onto job boards equals sourcing strategically, but there isn’t a more untrue statement in the universe. OK, maybe there is but you get the point.
Recruiters are often working on jobs that needed to be filled yesterday. While functioning out of urgency, the intangibles such as employer branding or candidate experience take the back seat, leaving heavy dents in the overall sourcing strategy.
Today more and more top candidates are attracted by the employer brand. Sourcing software helps tap into this opportunity by empowering recruiters to set up a personalized career site in minutes – where they can showcase stories about their company, its culture, achievements, leaders, and employees. Candidates want to know who they are going to work for! Intelligent recruiters align their sourcing efforts to meet candidate expectations.
A good employer brand can amplify sourcing efforts and improve the quality of candidates exponentially. Otherwise, sourcing can simply feel like shadow-boxing.
All the major job boards such as Indeed, LinkedIn, Adzuna, and ZipRecruiter provide recruiters with options to set up employer profiles, showcase and communicate real-life stories which radiate the organization’s brand to potential candidates. Recruiters and sourcing teams should take full advantage of them.
Furthermore, job boards like Indeed allow employees to share reviews about their employer, giving other potential candidates an authentic view of what it’s like to work for the employer. Recruiters should empower and encourage employees to share their convictions about the employer on such platforms to build the brand story.
#2 Manually juggling multiple job boards
It’s common practice for recruiters to use multiple job boards to access wider pools of talent and discover the superstars. In the process, recruiters log in and out of multiple job boards every day to keep track of what’s happening on the job postings – this is inefficient and exhausts their productivity which they could otherwise spend on creative sourcing strategies.
With simple job board software like Freshteam, recruiters can manage all the job boards in one place and through one centralized interface. You can publish to multiple job boards in a single click, make edits that will seamlessly be synced on all job boards, and applications will automatically fall into your software where they can be screened, shared, and discussed with the team.
Job boards software not only makes publishing easy but also proves to be cost-efficient. You can post to premium job boards such as LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter for free through Freshteam. First-time Indeed users, even get a $100 credit to sponsor their jobs for visibility.
Besides the above, job board software allows recruiters to create other magnetic touchpoints to attract candidates such as a self-developed career site (which does not need developer help), vendor collaboration, referral portal, internal job portal, and social media job publishings.
#3 Not tracking the metrics that matter
In business, measurement and analysis enable optimization and growth. Without it, recruiters are just endlessly stuck with the hypotheses of what is working or not working.
Ambitious recruiters track metrics to part ways with such limiting hypotheses and truly understand what’s happening in their sourcing engine. They ask good questions:
● Which job boards are yielding quality candidates?
● What’s the time to hire for each job board?
● What’s the cost-per-hire?
● Is there any correlation between attrition and source?
● Is there a correlation between pipeline speed and source?
● How are the job boards faring as a source against other candidate sourcing channels like employee referrals, billboard ads, etc?
● Is there an increase in the number of applications since we put out our people’s experience stories on the job boards?
A good recruiting team asks a lot of reflective questions to make sure they are on the most viable path to hiring, and a smart HR reporting tool has the answers to them.
In less than a minute, you can pull out reports that visually show you – time-to-fill by source, cost-per-hire by source, time spent in interviews by source, number of hires by source, number of offers accepted by source, and the list goes on.
What’s more fascinating is that HR reporting tools empower recruiters to pull out custom reports tailored for any unique scenarios in their organization using simple filters and widgets. These reports are worth a million PowerPoint presentations. They can back the recruiters up in meetings and help them communicate to the top management with clarity and confidence.
That’s a wrap!
Recruiting teams don’t realize what these mistakes are costing them until they make the changes and witness their hiring process transform firsthand. Often within a week, you will see an increase in recruiting productivity, gain visibility into what’s happening in your sourcing process, identify bottlenecks that need attention, and be more confident about sourcing decisions (since data will back you).
Inevitably, with time, you will notice an increase in the morale of the hiring team, and you can’t put a price on it because only teams with high morale make success sustainable.
About Freshteam
Freshteam by Freshworks is modern HR software with intelligent job boards management capabilities. It has redefined sourcing and hiring for recruiters around the globe, enabling them to streamline the entire sourcing process from candidate sourcing to new hire onboarding through one simple-to-use and intuitive software. Try Freshteam free for 21 days by signing up here.