With the busy recruitment time of January fast approaching, in this issue we take a no nonsense look at job board advertising. We also update you on changes on whatjobsite coming in the new year. And once again we bring together the latest advertising offers from our job site partners.

Please feel free to forward this issue to a colleague, and let us know if there are any topics you'd like to see us cover in upcoming issues. We'd love your feedback.

Editor
Karl Schweppe

Job board advertising offers employers one of the most cost effective ways to recruit. However, many employers make the mistake of thinking that because the cost of job board advertising is so low, they can be cheap with their effort. But the price you pay for job board advertising doesn't change what you are trying to do. You are recruiting. You are trying to find the best person for your company. To do that you have to run the best recruitment campaign you can.

1: Know what job you are filling.

You'd be amazed how many employers begin recruiting without really knowing what job they are trying to fill. An account manager in one company can be very different to an account manager in another. What you want your office manager to do could be utterly different to what another company expects.

The easiest way to be clear about what you want your new employee to do is to sit down and write a job specification. Writing a job specification will help you define the tasks, duties and responsibilities of the job. It will help you decide what skills and qualifications are absolutely necessary to do the job and those that, while not necessary, you'd like your new employee to have. It will also help you get a feel for the kind of person you are looking for. You want to find someone who'll "fit" in your company.

2: Choose the best job board.

Well, this is what whatjobsite aims to help you with. You can use our search engine to find job boards. But you may find job boards in other ways. You may have used one before, or someone may have recommended one. Whatever way you go about finding job boards, be sure that you are using the best one for your vacancy.

This means finding the job board with the best audience for your vacancy. And this involves a little bit of work. We always recommend you talk to a job board to find out about the people using it. And you'll have to talk to a few to get an idea of comparison. Once you've done that, you'll be much more confident that you have made the right choice.

3: Writing a job ad.

The purpose of job board advertising is to fill your vacancy. But to do this you have to ensure that job seekers find your ad and that they apply for it. How you write your ad can determine success. You'll need to think about keywords and key phrases so that job seekers actually find it. And you'll need to think about what you say to ensure that the best people apply for it.

Of course, once your ad is being advertised, do check that it is working. If it isn't, talk you your job board and ask for help. They'll have some ideas. And, most important of all, be sure to respond to candidates promptly. It'd be shame to go through all this effort and then blow it by not responding to applicants.

Find out more about creating job specifications, choosing job boards and writing job ads in our Recruitment Advice area.

In our research for the launch of whatjobsite we found over 1200 job boards in the United Kingdom and Ireland. This figure has no doubt increased since then. Each week brings another job board launch.

But we do not include all of these job boards on whatjobsite. This is because we do not think that all of these job boards are good places for you to advertise your jobs. We have an editorial policy that helps us separate the wheat from the chaff. However, we feel it's time to amend our editorial policy.

As we want you to find the best job boards to advertise your jobs, we do not include recruitment agency websites on whatjobsite. However, many recruitment agencies are now operating stand-alone job boards. We do not see anything wrong in recruitment agencies operating job boards, once this involvement is made clear.

For this reason, from January 2008 we will only include job boards owned or operated by recruitment agencies if the recruitment agency ownership of the job board is made clear either in their whatjobsite site profile or on their own website. Whatjobsite will apply absolute discretion in this matter.

Another change to our editorial policy is that we will require job boards to abide by legislation in their respective jurisdictions. Similar legal requirements operate in both the UK and Ireland so from January 2008, all sites on whatjobsiite will be required to show their company name, registered office address and registration number on their own websites. An email address must also be visible on their website (and not simply a contact form.) The company's geographic address must also be given (not a PO Box.)

In addition, though this is not specified by any legislation, we will require job boards to provide a telephone contact number. Again, this can be provided on the job board's own website or on its whatjobsite site profile.

These new changes to our editorial policy will mean that we may lose some job boards from whatjobsite. However, our goal is to provide you with the best job boards for your vacancies. In doing that, we will always err on the side of caution.

Here's our round up of the current offers from our job site partners:

• CareerStructure.com is currently offering a discounted price of £210 (normal price £249) for online job posting.
• CWjobs.co.uk is currently offering a discounted price of £195 (normal price £550) for online job posting.
• JobLux.co.uk is offering free job posting for internship opportunities on JobLux.co.uk. In addition, selected special offers are available until the end of the month.
• RetailChoice.com is currently offering a discounted price of £297 (normal price £350) for online job posting.
• Salestarget.co.uk is currently offering a discounted price of £165 (normal price £195) for online job posting.

Go to the whatjobsite Special Offers Zone for more details.