Job Boards

The phrase is the bane of consultants everywhere …

“Too soon”

We’re so impressed with your qualifications! As soon as we do all the groundwork and get this project up and running, we’re totally going to bring you on board!

Um, no.

You can't be trusted to brown ground beef on your own.

That’s called being penny wise and pound foolish. If you’re so impressed with the expert sitting across the desk from you, why would you make all the investments in building infrastructure, developing branding and communications and all the other details to your project before bringing that expert’s insights into the process?

If you’re going to take the trouble to bring in an expert for a project, then bring that expert in as early as possible. Early decisions block off later possibilities. That technology platform that looked so good a few months back becomes a dog once you realize that it can’t support the kind of online interaction you need for the project to succeed.

You wouldn’t be talking to the expert if you didn’t have enough self awareness to know what you don’t know. You need the knowledge, don’t shield yourself from it.

Principles of Job Board Marketing

The following items are a list of suggested tactics and approaches to marketing an online job board – particularly ones in the early stages before you’ve had a chance to build a base of employers and candidates.

Not all the elements below are a fit for every association, and there are likely some new ideas unique to your organization. The purpose of this document is to give some guidance on developing an easy-to-implement program of your own.

Do a few things well.

In many ways, that “easy-to-implement” part is the key to a successful job board. Your primary responsibility is running the marketing for the entire association. That means that core elements like membership, events and publications are a far higher priority than the job board.

Realistically, you won’t have the time to implement everything on this list, or everything you can think of to drive job board growth. That’s okay. Do a few things well. As you grow, you’ll have the resources to add more elements. Even if you only do a little bit to market your job board, as long as you do it consistently you’ll see results.

Balanced Equation

Keep in mind that a job board must have organic balance to grow. Candidates come in expecting to see jobs worth pursuing. Employers post jobs expecting a flow of plausible job candidates. You can’t have one without the other. Even though revenue comes from the Employer side, without healthy Candidate traffic you have no inventory to sell.

Your marketing must focus on developing both sides of that equation.

Passive Marketing

In most cases, the marketing for a job board is passive. You can’t predict when an Employer or Candidate is looking. You’ll know, of course, if someone creates a new profile or logs in, but that still depends on the Employer or Candidate acting first.

Look for ways to stay in front of Candidates and Employers without being intrusive. Stay on their radar, and when they need your job board’s services they will come.

Email newsletters are an excellent tool for this, but the newsletter has to have useful content that someone would want to read. Don’t send them that same “resume writing skills” article published on about 18,000 other websites. It’s cheap and easy to copy it into a newsletter and blast it out to your list. As a result, your members and prospects have now experienced a low quality, slapped together piece of spam with your logo on it. That does not engender loyalty.

Take the time to write a short article specific to your field. It can go beyond the standard resume/interview/dress-for-success garbage that fills most job board newsletters as long as the article topic has a plausible connection to careers. Write well. Look for opportunities to modify the articles you’re already writing for your blog and give them a career twist for the newsletter. Be efficient, but most important of all, keep a strong quality focus.

Existing Collateral

You already have several existing platforms to communicate with members ranging from your website to print publications, member newsletters, events and social media. All of these items should be leveraged for your job board marketing.

A few principles:

• Automate – The two leading job board platforms, Boxwood and JobTarget, both have strong RSS feed systems. Create an RSS feed box somewhere in the sidebar of your website. If you want to get fancy, coordinate the RSS feed with the type of content in that section of the site. Always have a low-key display of specific jobs on the pages of your site. People join associations for networking and career advancement – meet that need.

• Specific Jobs, not House Ads – The path of least resistance, particularly for print publications and email newsletters, is to simply develop a graphical house ad about your job board and run it when you have unsold inventory. This is better than nothing, of course, but let’s face it, no one cares that you have a job board. Your members respond to the specific title and company in a job listing. They’ll click to investigate a Director of Operations position at ACME Inc., but will completely ignore a generic house ad talking about your job board. Display three or four specific jobs rather than just an ad.

Care

I know, that’s all soft and fuzzy. But let’s consider for a moment the typical experience of an HR manager.

This person likely has about 20 open positions sitting on her desk. She’s likely not familiar with the details of many of the jobs, she only has the utterly boring job description. Ideally, an HR manager will post a job on one of the mass market job boards, then try to find a niche job board. Mass market produces volume (100 applications, maybe 1 worth pursuing). Niche produces quality (15 applications, but 4 worth pursuing).

She posts her job listings, sets the paperwork aside and hopes for the best for the next 30-60 days while the job ads run.

In 99% of cases, as long as the credit card she used to buy the listings checks out, the job board considers its work to be done. Thanks for the cash, best of luck with the search.

Be different. Take a few minutes to review your open job listings and, if one isn’t producing enough applicants, give it some extra love in your next newsletter. More importantly, tell the HR manager that you’re doing it. When the listing is done, send a survey to see if you produced good results (and find a way to make good if you didn’t).

I guarantee that of all the job boards that HR manager interacts with, you were the only one who gave a damn about whether she found the right candidate. She’ll come back.

This is often the most difficult element to implement of all the suggestions in this document. It takes time and you have a direct mail piece due out this afternoon. Book a standing appointment with yourself each week. Spend an hour, or half an hour, focused on service. It pays off.

Job Boarding is a Team Sport

I know, Job Board is not a verb.

It is, however, extremely difficult to build a viable job board alone. Large associations can do it to some extent simply because a large membership can sustain sufficient volume. Even large associations benefit greatly by teaming up. For a concrete example, take a look at a case study about some of my work with the American Marketing Association.

Your Candidates want to see a list of attractive jobs. Your Employers want a stream of attractive Candidates. Neither particularly cares where these items come from.

If you can team up with other associations, you can share Candidates and Employers and support each other. Together, you and your (I know) bitter enemies can each present a strong, viable job board resource to your member Candidates and Employers.

Both Boxwood and JobTarget do an excellent job of developing these networks. In many cases the networks can even include some revenue share benefits. That way a trade association with a large Employer base can source candidates from an individual membership association, and vice versa. Both sides make money.

Be careful to make sure that your data is secure. Many of the mass market job boards will bring attractive sounding offers for partnerships or even free use of their platform for your site. They’re actually after your member list. That list is your most valuable asset, so protect it.

By implementing the ideas above on a consistent basis, you’ll see steady growth and progress in your job board results. When you grow to the point where the elements above start taking up too much time, give Little Wolf a call, we can help.

I’ve been doing a lot of work in the past year to introduce online video as a marketing tool.

Video is a compelling, easily digested form of content that is rapidly becoming the dominant messaging medium on the Internet. We’re not just talking about Diet Coke and Mentos fountains on YouTube. Businesses use them to showcase products or present thought-leadership pieces.

Individuals use them to discuss anything from politics to car repair or cooking techniques.

Video killed the radio star

Ultimately, the Internet is a visual medium. The written word is a powerful thing, but when given a choice between reading a white paper or watching a video – most users will go for the video.

I decided to practice what I preach so I put together what is intended to be the first in a running video series of “Two Minute Teachings.” These will be short, one-topic videos that cover specific marketing topics, ideas and observations. I’ll record some, and I’d like to bring some other voices into the mix as well.

Businesses should avoid the swamp that is YouTube. I posted this on a video player platform called VP Factory that I’ve been quite impressed with. At the moment this in on the free platform, but I’ll likely switch to the paid packages in the near future. It offers quite a bit of customization and analytics.

Let me know what you think.

Would it surprise you to learn that association job board candidate lists can be comprised of 70% to 80% nonmembers?

Allright buddy, I'm going to need to see a receipt for that membership.

I know what you’re thinking … those people will never join. They’re just using us to find a job and we’ll never hear from them again.

That’s probably true. The majority of those job candidates will never join your organization.

Of course, the majority of the people who take advantage of your “one time only” discount to the next conference won’t join either. The majority of people who received a complimentary copy of your trade publication won’t join. The majority who went through your certification program won’t join.

Here’s the difference. In all those other programs, the lead generation program cost you money, and those “never join” prospects are a drain on your resources.

For an association job board, the candidates are your inventory. Even if those people never join your organization, never attend and event and never subscribe to a single publication, their applications to jobs on your job board are what allows you to enjoy the non-dues revenue profits.

In other words, on that job board that you’ve been grumbling about you’re not only meeting what is probably your members’ core need – career enhancement – you’re building your member prospect list and getting paid to do it.

Non-dues revenue is critically important to professional associations.

Yes, your association job board should be making you money.

That’s true as a general rule, but it is critical today. The past two years have been a difficult period for the professional association. It’s not uncommon for some of these organizations to have lost 20% to 30% of the membership in a year.

Laid off workers dropped their memberships. Cost cutting companies stopped paying for those that were left.

It was – and still is – a disturbing period for executives at these organizations.

This was after several years of eroding membership because many people assumed that social media could replace the professional association membership – for free. (It can’t, but that’s another post.)

Short version, professional associations need some time and resources to retool and re-define the business. The worst time to try and do that is when revenue has a severe downturn.

When run properly, job boards are a fantastic tool to drive both non-dues revenue and provide a tangible member service.

The key phrase there is “when run properly.”

Job boards are not typically seen as a core offering. As a result, it has about third- or fourth-level priority for the marketing team and tends to just … sit there.

I just posted a new presentation on how to market an association job board.

Enjoy!

Almost 10 years ago, the American Marketing Association faced a dilemma similar to that faced by many professional associations.

Hey you! DMA! What are you up do down there?

Non-dues revenue had the potential to provide a cushion against variations in the organizations core offerings, but the online job board was stubbornly refusing to cooperate.

It did generate money. It could even be argued that it generated a significant volume of money – just not quite enough to provide that cushion.

The answer turned out to be teaming up with rivals.

I got my eye on you AMA!

Many associations faced this exact dilemma, and through the leadership of their common job board technology vendor – Boxwood – AMA led in the creation of the Marketing Careers Network.

The Network allowed a group of rival associations to maintain individual branding and databases, but still share resources and drive each other’s online job boards to amazing levels of success.

Read the details in a new Case Study – Winning Job Board Glory.