3: No employer jobs

In our continuing series of posts, we look at another way of spotting bad job sites. This time it’s no employer jobs appearing on the site.

As you search for job boards on Google or Yahoo, you will find page after page of job boards in whatever tiny niche you search for. If you look at these job boards, however, you will find that while they might carry lots and lots of jobs, all of the jobs are from recruitment agencies. Why is this? And why is it a bad thing?

Like any business sector, the job board sector is well-established there are natural market leaders in it. These can be the popular generalist sites like Totaljobs, Monster, Fish4jobs etc. In the case of niche sites, although Google will confuse you with its 57 varieties of jobsinXsector, jobsinXsectorinYsector, jobsinXsectorinYsectorinZlocation, actually there are natural market leaders too.

Whether generalist or niche, these market leading job sites tend to attract most candidates and advertisers. And they attract both recruitment agency advertisers and employer advertisers because they have reputation of working.

New job boards, or job boards that aren’t amongst the market leaders, struggle to get paying clients. In general they attract recruitment agencies by offering them free job posting.  They do this in the hope that more jobs on their site will attract more candidates; and more candidates will in turn attract more recruiters; and so on it goes in a hopefully  virtuous circle. One day, they might even succeed in becoming market leaders. But the key point is, right now, they aren’t market leaders. They won’t attract candidates of the market leaders. The candidates will be on the market leading job sites.

What’s more, as an employer you’ll usually have to pay a couple of hundred pounds to post a job on such a site, while a recruitment agency advertises a couple hundred jobs for free.  Clearly, it’s not fair. But, alas, that’s the way it is.

In other words, if you want to advertise on a site, advertise on a site that companies like yours are also advertising on. Market leaders are market leader because they are good. And what they all have in common is that other employers have used them. So, be sure to check for employer jobs wherever you advertise.

Of course, vacancy advertising on a job board offers no guarantee.s You have to choose the right job board to advertise on and write good copy. And even then, it mightn’t work. But you’re giving yourself the best chance of recruitment success if you choose a good job site and avoid the bad ones.

< Go to ‘How to spot bad job sites part 2′