Job Site Products and Services Job sites, job boards and recruitment websites offer a dizzying array of products and services to help you in your recruitment. We take you on a quick tour of the main products.

  

Job Listing Products

Job Listings: The Job Slot

Job Listings are the starting product for job sites and job boards. The job listing consists of a text description which allows you to detail your vacancy, searchable fields for location, salary, industry sector etc. as well as contact and application information for candidates.

Job listings typically run on a job site for a four week period, but you'll find some sites offering one week job ads and others offering ads of up to 60 days' duration. In almost every case, the job listing will also be included in an email alert sent to relevant candidates.

Job listings are usually purchased on a per unit basis. That is, you buy one job listing for X number of pounds —and X can be anything from free to up to £1,000 per ad. Obviously, volume discounts are available and the more job ads you buy the better the unit price. In some cases job boards offer unlimited job postings for a set fee.

 

Job Listings: The Job Slot

Some job boards sell job listings as "job advertising slots." The job slot works a little differently to the classified job ad in that you can advertise different jobs in the same job slot. For example, let us suppose you purchase a single four-week job slot. Once your initial job is filled you can take off that job ad and put a new one into the slot.

Therefore, with a single job slot you could advertise one job for four weeks, or two jobs for two weeks each, or four jobs for a week each, or 28 jobs for one day each —it's really up to you. The only constraint is on the number of job ads you advertise at the same time. One job slot means one job at a time. Two job slots means two.

Although job slots are a different way of charging, the actual cost of advertising is generally comparable with the standard classified job listing above.

 

Job Listings: Pay Per Performance Ad

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of job boards offering pay-per-action pricing or, as it is more commonly called in recruitment, 'Pay-Per-Performance.' Rather than paying for advertising time on a recruitment website, you pay for the performance of your job ad on the website.

In general, performance is measured in relevant applications to your job (but you may also find job boards that charge for job views or clicks.) Effectively then, this means that you only pay for the applications received to your job. Obviously, there are processes that ensure that there are valid quality applications and you can set budgets for your job ad so your cost don't run away with themselves. However, pricing for this products is generally consistent with other job vacancy advertising products.

 

Job Listings: Other Products

While new job board recruitment products are being launched all the time, most tend to rely on either the job ad or the job slot and differ only in how they price their offering. For example, some job boards are now offering 'Pay Per Placement' job ads. That is, you post your job on their site and when you make a placement, you pay them a fee. Other job boards are offering 'Pay Per Engagement' or 'Pay Per Contact' pricing allowing you to pay only when you yourself contact the candidate. 

 

Jobs-by-emails alerts

In addition to job listing on the job board, most job boards also email candidates newly-posted jobs on a daily or weekly basis. In general, candidates create email profiles and preferences so that they only receive the job they are interested in. Just like on the job board itself, they can filter the email alert by job role, salary, industry and keyword. Virtually all job boards will automatically include your job (if it matches user preferences) on their email lists and you shouldn't have to pay extra for it. However, the email offers additional vacancy and wider advertising products and options for recruiters.

 

Sponsored Jobs-by-emails alerts

As most email subscribers and registered candidates will receive a jobs-by-email alert, recruiters have the option of sponsoring this email alert. This sponsorship can take the form of a graphical ad or a textual message. As everybody who receives the email will see your ad sitting at the top of it, it can be a very effective recruitment or recruitment branding option. Email sponsorship is generally priced on a per subscriber basis and so, costs do vary widely. However, we have found a number of job boards that offer standard flat pricing.

 

Targeted Sponsored Emails

Sometimes, both for cost savings and relevance, you will want to target your message to a specific email demographic. Many job boards also offer this option. You can choose to send your email message to people looking for a job role, or in a particular sector, or location, or an age group. Each job board is different in how they can split up their audience. As a consequence, pricing for this product tends to be variable. But again, as your job is going to your chosen demographic only, it can offer a very effective advertising option.

 

Branded Job Listing: Display or Semi-Display

Branded Job Listings are similar to standard Job Listings except that they also include some kind of graphic (usually your company logo.) Nowadays, most job sites will include your logo as standard in a job listing. However, some job boards also offer more extensive job listing branding options.

Display or semi-display ads, for example, are a more 'graphical' than both the standard and a job ad with a logo. Display or semi-Display ads include the standard text description but in a more designed or formatted layout that can be tailored to match your corporate brand. In many ways, display or semi-display job ads are like display ads in newspapers.

 

Premium Positioning and Keyword Sponsorship

Premium Positioning and Keyword Sponsorship is about having your job listing appear in a better position in the search results on a job board. Typically, when a candidate searches for a job on a job board, job listings are returned in a list. With Premium Positioning you can opt to have your job listing appear in a 'premium' or 'top of the list' position in these search results. Keyword sponsorship is much the same but the positioning only happens when a user searches for your chosen key words.

 

Featured Job Listings

Featured Job Listings are about giving enhanced promotion to your job ad on the site. In this case the job listing is usually promoted on the home page, or in a section of the job board, or along the side of the search results. Different job boards have different products but common to them all is your job listing gets enhanced promotion on the site with the objective of attracting more candidates.

 

 

Non-Job Listing Products

Job boards offer recruiters other advertising products beyond job listings. Which one you choose will depend on what you hope to achieve with your advertising.

 

Banners, Buttons & MPUs

Banners, buttons and MPUs (Mid Placed Units) are advertising images, animations or video files that appear on the pages of a job boards. 'Banners' are broad thin images that usually appear at the top of a web page; buttons are smaller and tend to appear at the side of the page. 'Mid Placed Units' (MPUs) are larger images that are usually placed within the editorial of the site.

These products can be 'run-of-site' (meaning that they are shown randomly) or targeted (keyword, user, or location-related etc.) Pricing for such products is usually on a cost per thousand basis. That is, you pay a certain price for every thousand times your ad is shown. 

 

Profile Pages

Also called Corporate Profile Pages or Brochure Pages, these are effectively a careers mini website or profile of your company on the job board. They often act as an 'About us' page on the job board, where you can talk about your company etc. In addition, candidates can usually search your live vacancies from this page.

 

CV Databases

CV databases are becoming increasingly popular products for recruiters. Most job boards allow candidates to create CV profiles or online CVs and upload these to the job site database. For a fee, recruiters can view these CVs and contact the candidates.

Some job boards also allow recruiters to set up alerts to notify them when CV with their requirements are uploaded. For example, if you were looking for a Web designer with Ajax skills, when a candidate who had Ajax skills added his or her profile to the site you would get an email notification.

The CV database product has traditionally been popular amongst recruitment consultancies. However, in recent years job boards have witnessed increasing numbers of employers using it and, as a result, often include CV access as part of the standard job listing.

 

Applicant Management

Applicant Management (also called candidate management, application tracking etc.) is an online account offered by the job board from where you can manage recruitment. Within the system you can post, edit, remove job ads, set up screening and filtering questions, see how many times your jobs ads have been viewed and how many applications have been made.

The systems also usually provide tools to allow you to manage the applicants: e.g. viewing applications and the applicants' CVs, make notes on the applications, score and rank candidates, and communicate with candidates. Many job sites provide employers with an online candidate or applicant management tool as part of their standard job listing offering.

 

This is not an exhaustive list of job site products and services. And many products offered are combinations or variations on what we have outlined above. Indeed, many of the same products are called different things. The job board market is competitive market and job sites are always creating new advertising options. Our advice as ever is do your due diligence and talk to job boards about what they offer.  

 Next Steps? Read the articles

• How to choose a job site
• 10 questions every employer should ask a job board
• When is a job board not a job board
• Unique users, audited users, relevant users, registered users, email subscribers
• CV Databases: an introduction

Photo:© Lyllyflow | Dreamstime.com

 

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