A Warning to Job Board Software Vendors

In case you haven’t noticed the world of online recruiting is a vastly different one from whence job boards first emerged.

The sheer amount of ways to recruit online, from sourcing tools to aggregators, has created a vast ocean of choices for employers to find talent. This means that if your recruiting tool, whatever purpose it serves, does not evolve to serve these employers it will slowly fade away.

Job boards have been facing this threat for many years and you have all seen what it has done to the likes of Monster, CareerBuilder and others. They have faded and now are forced to play catch up.

The same is true for the software vendors that serve our industry.

It is time for you ALL to revitalize your product offerings to stay ahead of the curve. The status quo is not good enough to survive the future.

If I were running a job board software company today, here are the features and tools I would be building into my product to help job boards not only survive, but thrive in this new world of digital recruiting.

Foster More Community. I believe today’s online job markets need to be a community, not just a place to post/search for job listings. This means allowing for things like user generated content, friending and close integration with popular social media channels. Let job seekers talk to one another. Aggregate industry news. There are lots of ways to let a community interact. I remember the early days of platforms like Ning.com which were social networks in a box. If they only had a job board attached I would have put all my boards on it! As a job seeker I’d love to see a newsfeed of whats happening on the site and be able to comment/like/share.
Social Profiles. Most job boards allow seekers to upload a resume but do a poor job of letting them connect their social media accounts. A seeker is more than a resume. Their public social media accounts are great for personal branding. Let them connect if desired. It could be something as simple as a clone of an about.me page.
Texting. Where are all the job board vendors when it comes to integrating texting? The chatbot vendors have learned that text recruiting is the future. Heck even big players like Indeed have surprisingly been missing out on this trend. Job seekers should be able to get text reminders for jobs they visit like what Emissary.ai is doing. They should be able to get a text alert when a company on their favorites list posts a job.
Better Marketing Tools. Job boards are internet marketing businesses and need the tools to promote themselves. There should be tight integration with social media so that a full RSS feed of “activity” can be broadcast. When a job seeker joins and posts a resume I want to see that message pop up in the twitter account. “Nice! John just posted a resume. Welcome aboard” it might say. Perhaps the ability to offer “push” notifications to users so they can get those handy desktop notifications.
More Backfill Options. There are at least 10 different aggregators to get backfill from. Some pay better than others. I’d like to see more options to choose from to help boost the bottom line. Backfill is an important asset to offer especially in the first year of a new job board and vendors aren’t doing enough to maximize this revenue.
Email. We need built in email marketing functionality to communicate more often with both seeker and employer. This means more automatic emails, drip reminders and automation to help drive traffic back to the jobs. I give credit to Kyle from Jobarto for building a platform with an email first perspective and see that he now offer SMS too. Email is a critical channel for job boards.
Data sharing. There are several thousand niche job sites that have lots of resume data hidden behind a silo. Imaging if they let the new breed of sourcing tools such as Entelo, Hiretual, HiringSolved and others see that data and help recruiters uncover new candidates. The data could be anonymized and the recruiter sent to the job board to pay for access to the contact info. Thats an revenue stream waiting to be tapped.
Employer Branding. Employers on any job board should be allowed to maximize their profiles by doing what Glassdoor allows, uploading of pics, posting of short updates, etc. The employer profile page needs a visual upgrade in most cases. Indeed recently revamped their employer pages, so should the rest of you.
Streamlined E-commerce. We need better checkout functionality overall. Posting and paying for a job should be a quick and painless as possible. And we need more types of product beyond the typical job posting feee. We need monthly subscription models and even the ability to charge job seekers for more things (reverse job board).