Employers, recruitment agencies and job boards

In a previous post we looked at job boards that only carry recruitment agency jobs, why they do so and why these job boards are generally a bad choice for employers. In this post, we look at how very differently recruitment agencies and employers look at job boards.

Why do employers post jobs on job boards? To fill specific vacancies

Employers advertise jobs in order to fill vacancies they have in their organizations. If a company advertises a job on a job board it is doing so in order to fill that vacancy. There is no other reason to advertise on a job board.

It is estimated that employers spend between £300 and £650 advertising each job online.  And they post their vacancy on between 1 and 5 sites. But the costs don’t end here. Unless you have a multiposting service, using job boards takes a lot of time and effort. Even with the best will in the world, registering and posting on 5 job boards will take many hours work for someone in your office. And managing the candidate applications (particularly in this recessionary environment with so many applicants) can take considerable effort. So not only is there the advertising cost,,  there is also the resource cost.

Putting advertising costs and resource costs together would give us the cost of hiring online. We could very roughly put this total cost at between £1000 and £1500 per job online. Of course, large employers will have volume deals with job boards and systems in place to reduce candidate management time but, in general, the figure of £800 to £1500 will apply for most SMEs.

And remember too, the cost of hiring is the same as the cost of not hiring. If your online recruitment campaign fails, you still have to cover that hiring cost. This is why choosing the right job boards is absolutely key for employers. Hiring success will depend on the choice of advertising medium.

Why do recruitment agencies post jobs on job boards? To register candidates

Strange as it may sound, recruitment agencies do not advertise jobs in order to fill them. They advertise jobs (and make use of job board CV databases) in order register candidates on their databases. Of course, recruitment agencies will place candidates in the job they have advertised; but most of the time they will simply register the candidate CV and use it later for another similar vacancy.

The cost of advertising for recruitment agencies is very different too. They pay a tiny fraction of the advertising fee employers pay. For example, a recruitment agency could pay as little a £1 per job listing compared to the £200 of a direct employer. The reason for this contrast in prices is that, firstly, recruitment agencies benefit from volume discounts and, secondly, job boards offer preferential rates to recruitment agencies in order to get their jobs. (Job boards needs jobs to succeed and recruitment agencies have lots of them. It is a strange symbiotic relationship)

And the resource costs of posting job ads and managing candidates are a lot less too. Most recruitment agencies have systems which automate both the job posting and candidate handling process. So the actual resource cost per registration is far smaller than that for the employer.

Again, a rough estimate of  both advertising cost and resource cost for registering a candidate is between £20 and £80.  From this candidate there may be a placement fee of anything between £1500 and £15,000.

The real difference between the use of job boards

So, employers and recruitment agencies have very different views of using job boards. Employers want to fill a job; recruitment agencies want to register candidates. And this explains their different use of job boards.

• the low cost of advertising and the possible upside explains why we often see recruitment consultants advertise the same job again and again; employers simply can’t afford to do this.
• it also explains why recruitment agencies will post their jobs on very poor quality sites. The minimal cost of advertising (often free) means that it is a bet worth taking; for employers it isn’t: it’s money down the drain.
• thanks to job posting and ATS systems, the amount of effort required to post jobs on different job boards is minimal for recruitment agencies; for employers it’s significant and very time consuming.
• candidates are where the profits are for recruitment agencies. Candidates are what recruitment agencies sell … to employers.  It’s not the same for employers.

Clearly, the online recruitment proposition for employers is very different to that for the recruitment consultant. Therefore, the approach to online recruitment should be very different:

Success is a filled vacancy. And the only way to ensure this is to choose your job board carefully.