Another year and another busy time for recruiting. In this issue we look at how to use candidate screening questions effectively in your job board advertising. In our continuing series of articles on the advertising products offered by job boards, we take a look at keyword sponsorship. We welcome two new job board partners to whatjobsite. And once again we give you a round up of the latest offers from our partner job sites in the UK and Ireland.

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.

Many thanks to fish4jobs for the sponsorship of this newsletter.

Editor
Karl Schweppe

One of the most common complaints of employers when they come to use job boards is that they are inundated with candidates. You might think that having lots of candidates applying for your job is a wonderful problem to have; but think about it like this: you'll have to check each application, review the CV, read the covering letter, evaluate the candidate and respond to them. This process is burdensome at the best of times, but it can be a real pain in the proverbial when so many of the applicants are utterly inappropriate for the job.

Thankfully, job boards are aware of this issue and most now allow you to set screening questions to filter out inappropriate candidates during the application process. This typically means that, along with your job ad, you can ask questions to establish a candidate's suitability.

The questions can be in a yes/no form, multiple choice, or may require a text input by candidates. If a candidate answers one of your questions "incorrectly" you may choose to terminate the application process there and then. More usually, however, the candidate is allowed to continue the application process, but their application is "marked" or "scored" or "tagged" as having "failed" or being "inappropriate." When you later come to review all the applicants, you'll quickly see these failed applicants and will be able to respond to them appropriately.

How you write your screening questions will depend on what is offered by your job board. However, there are some common "themes" used in creating efficient screening questions.

1. Valid permit/work visa. You can get lots of applicants from overseas candidates. This question will help to filter these out.
2. Qualification or skill set. If your job requires a qualification or specific skill set, be sure to indicate this. It will filter out those candidates that do not have the required qualification or skill set.
3. Experience. If your job requires the candidate to have specific work experience in order to do the job, you can put this into your screening questions.
4. Availability for work/interview. If you require candidates to be available immediately to start work or to come for interview, say this. This will filter out those candidates who are not available immediately or who may be on longer notice periods.

Do be careful in how you ask your screening questions. In both the UK and Ireland it is illegal to discriminate against applicants on the grounds of sex, race, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief and you don't want to inadvertently fall foul of legislation.

Effective screening questions can really help reduce the amount of work for you. If the job board you are using offers this service, do take it up. We hope this article has been of help to you. For more information on online recruitment and job board advertising visit the whatjobsite Recruitment Advice area.

In addition to standard job ads, most job boards offer products to help improve the response of candidates to your ad. One of the most effective —but seldom used by employers— is the keyword sponsorship.

If you have ever used Google or Yahoo to search for something, you will already be familiar with keyword sponsorship. Those little text ads that appear above or alongside the search results are keyword ads. Advertisers have chosen to have their ads appear only when particular words are used in a search.

Job boards offer a similar product. Let us suppose that you were looking for a sales manager and along with the standard job ad you also purchased a keyword sponsorship of the keywords "sales manager." Every time a job seeker searches for "sales manager" jobs, your job ad will appear in the premium position at the top of the search results (or wherever the job board features the keyword sponsor ad). More job seekers will see your ad, click on your ad and, we'd hope, apply to your ad. The best thing is that only people looking for "sales manager" roles will see your keyword ad. It is a very targeted product.

In our research for this article we found that the cost of keyword sponsorship varied greatly from one job board to another. We found prices starting at £50 going right up to £500. However, it is worth asking about keyword sponsorship when you are talking to your job board as it can often be added as a free or low cost bolt-on to standard job board advertising.

We hope this article has been of help to you. For more information on online recruitment and job board advertising visit the whatjobsite Recruitment Advice area.

This month we welcome two new sponsor sites to whatjobsite. If you are recruiting for staff in their areas, be sure to take a look at them.

• fish4jobs is the UK’s most popular recruitment website. It attracts over 2.8 million job seekers every month. It advertises in over 400 regional newspapers and distributes its classified search facility on over 180 regional websites. Find out more
• CareersinAudit.com is the first and only job board specifically aimed at pan-European audit professionals. It advertises audit and audit-related vacancies across all sectors and at all levels. It offers a searchable candidate CV database of over 5000 job-seeking audit professionals and simple job posting functionality. Find out more.

Here's our round up of the latest advertising offers from our job board partners:

• CareersinAudit.com, a niche site for audit jobs, is offering direct employers a single job ad for £100 (normal price £150) and £750 for 10 job ads purchased during January. Call 020 7553 6350 for more details.
• CareerStructure.com, the site for the construction sector, is offering discounted online job posting for £210 (normal price £249)
• CWjobs.co.uk, a specialist site for IT jobs, is offering £195 for online job posting (normal price of £550)
• Fish4jobs, the popular generalist job board, is offering online job posting for £99 (normal price £149)
• Joblux, a site dedicated to the luxury products sector, is offering 30% off its job ad packs as well as free job posting for internships.
• RetailChoice.com, a site focussing on jobs in the retail sector, is offering online job posting for £297 (normal price £350)
• Salestarget.co.uk, the specialist sales job site, is offering a discounted online job post for £165 (normal price £195)

Click on the links to visit the whatjobsite site profiles and contact the sites directly about their offers.