Job boards: The hiring evolution

Recruitment has certainly come a long way in a relatively short space of time. But as Sue Weekes discovers, reports on their demise have been largely exaggerated
April 2014 | By Sue Weekes

FROM APRIL 2014's RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Recruitment has certainly come a long way in a relatively short space of time. And job boards have evolved at an even quicker pace. But as Sue Weekes discovers, reports on their demise have been largely exaggerated

Recruiters are never far from another diatribe predicting the demise of the job board, especially since the rise of social recruiting. Paradoxically, equally strong opinions also hold about how they are here to stay. The truth is that the vast majority of jobseeking begins on a job board and it’s likely to stay that way for some years to come.  

Generalist boards do face a particular challenge though if they are to remain first choice for job hunters, and owners know they need to find new ways to add value for both the candidate and the recruiter. “We can’t arrogantly assume job boards will remain in this position,” says Sophie Relf, marketing director of the generalist board Jobsite. “If you look at the life decisions people make such as buying a house, work is up there with all of them but we need to start behaving as an important part of people’s lives.”

The evolution of the job board over the past 10 years has been largely due to technology but as John Salt, website director at Totaljobs, points out it is “never just about technology”. “Otherwise everyone would have a market-leading job board,” he says, reminding recruiters that many job board owners probably have to spend as much on sales and marketing as they do on technological development to keep their position. “You can automate more but you will always need a large outfit capable of serving the sales channel. It isn’t a self-service market and I doubt it ever will be.”

Threats to generalist job boards arise from a number of challengers, not least the niche sites, which provide in-depth specialist advice and often work hard at creating a real sense of belonging for visitors. 

Bubble-Jobs.co.uk, which focuses on the web, digital, e-commerce and related recruitment market, has built a community around its brand, which means that it consistently has something to offer the passive candidate as well as the jobseeker. “We have 175,000 visitors per month, 40,000 of which are unique, which means we have a high returning rate,” claims Amy Edwards, search engine optimisation manager at the site. “We try to offer something relevant to jobseekers, recruiters and employees at all stages.” 

As well as the niche sites, generalist boards are also up against the power and spread of the big aggregators sites such as Indeed and Simply Hired and, of course, the professional networking capabilities of LinkedIn. “As we predicted three to four years ago, the job market is moving towards its extremities,” says Giles Guest, director and owner of Enhance Media, which publishes the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS). 

At one end, he says specialist job boards can provide targeted candidate reach for a premium, and Guest wonders whether they are moving closer to recruitment consultancy sourcing. At the other end, he says the generalist job board market is consolidating into a small number of players, adding: “As the aggregator income model requires them to advertise direct client vacancies, the difference between a job board and aggregator will become blurred or indistinguishable.”

Guest believes that the biggest opportunity for many job boards to increase revenue is by diversifying their services. “Job boards already have a large number of clients and yet in a campaign in which a client might be investing £20k, many job boards are satisfied to take a £300 job posting as their share.”

Over the next five years, there is likely to be an introduction of new services as well as a reinvention and refinement of existing ones. Clearly little will change when it comes to the job board’s overarching mission of matching candidates to jobs but “relevancy” and “effectiveness” are two words that consistently crop up when talking to job board owners who know the level of service they offer to an increasingly savvy candidate and recruiter will be a differentiator. 

Mark Rhodes, marketing director of Reed.co.uk, says delivering an effective service “cuts across everything” it does and will be the most important factor in defining how the job site evolves over the next five years. “Whether it’s our commitment to growing our audience in response to the needs of our clients and the market or developing class-leading products, on desktop or mobile,” he says. “Our size and expertise enable us to offer a service that works.” 

And, while as Salt points out, it will never just about technology, ensuring job boards stay at the forefront of technical innovation will undoubtedly play a huge part in ensuring their position. Most of the leading generalist sites have some form of semantic or intelligent-matching software built into them to match people with jobs and this will be increasingly expected by the candidate. 

Monster has invested millions of pounds into its 6Sense semantic search technology. “A large number of roles is nowhere near sufficient in offering a valued service,” says Andy Sumner, managing director at Monster UK and Ireland. “It is also essential that there is cutting-edge technology in place to connect people with the right, most relevant opportunities.” 

Jobsite introduced its Jobtology semantic search and matching technology last year, while Totaljobs implemented the StepMatch algorithm at the beginning of the year, which continually learns to improve job matching. 

The need to cater for an increasingly mobile jobseeker will also drive technological development over the next few years. Patrick Harrison, regional market manager for the UK at Indeed.com, one of the world’s leading job aggregator sites, believes those job boards that can adapt to the “explosion in demand” for mobile functionality will be the winners. He lists mobile as one of Indeed’s priorities and says a certain number of jobs can already be applied for directly via a mobile device and this will increase. “It is always about how we keep the job search process focused and transparent for the user but also about enabling them to do it on all devices in a seamless manner,” he says. 

Indirectly, the shift to mobile is likely to bring about other changes that will impact jobseeking online. Already the emphasis is shifting away from uploading a traditional CV to either linking a potential employer with an online profile or else integrating with cloud-storage devices like SkyDrive and Dropbox. The move to mobile is likely to accelerate this. 

Salt also highlights websites that aggregate people and professional data and in doing so make profiles more “living and self-updating”. “Job boards could do more to make use of their CV databases,” he says. “We should be looking at assets like these and seeing how we can bring them alive for recruiters and the jobseeker. These are all things that could happen over the next five years. People still want CVs but that general first spark of interest comes from a job profile and that’s where LinkedIn has been a game-changer.”

Generalist sites also know they can learn from the niche sites in terms of delivering a more relevant experience for the jobseeker. The strength of a generalist board is in offering a wide choice but Relf says recent research carried out by Jobsite showed that candidates and recruiters do not want a ‘one-size-fits-all’ experience. “They don’t want you to talk to them with templated advice and want something specific,” she says. 

What was also clear from Jobsite’s research was that recruitment consultants still control the recruitment process in the UK. A large number of respondents said that if they saw a job on a job board, they would be likely to contact the recruitment consultant and ask them if they could submit their CV. 

“In that way the job board has become almost a shopping guide or reference point,” says Relf. “So at Jobsite we’re striving to connect the candidate more closely with those making the hiring decision and not giving bland advice which you can get anywhere. It’s about making things real for people.”

Clearly high-quality content will continue to be important for job boards and providing information on workplace and industry issues as well as standard career advice will also help to mark them out. Corporates and large employers in particular will expect more meaningful and heavyweight content than previously provided by recruitment sites, believes Relf. 

“They want to know what we are saying on topics like flexible working. They also have big things cooking in their industry and want everyone they partner with to in some way communicate that to candidates and employers,” she says. “So as a job board we need to do more to communicate the commercial drivers of recruitment for our advertisers.”

• Want to comment on this story? The Comment box is at the bottom of the page. Sorry for the glitch but just scroll right down and share your opinions!

Boorman: Facebook passwords at interview fears a ‘storm in a teacup’

In the wake of concerns about employers asking job applicants for Facebook passwords at interview, social media guru and founder of #Tru events, Bill Boorman, tells Recruiter that such cases are still rare.

27 March 2012

headline 1

In March last year a major extension of the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) code of conduct came into force.

27 March 2012

Finnish cloud firm Hammerkit opens office and creates jobs in Liverpool_2

Finnish cloud firm Hammerkit opens office and creates jobs in Liverpool
20 January 2012

Independent help with bright ideas_2

With expansion a top priority, e2v needed to standardise its recruitment processes and turned to RPO experts Independent

25 January 2012
Top