Combining job boards for recruitment success

 
Sometimes you will need to use more than one job board in your online recruitment campaign. This may be for many different reasons but usually it’s because the role you are tying to fill is especially difficult.

Why use more than one job board?

A successful online recruitment campaign is all about reaching the maximum number of relevant quality candidates —and that is all about choosing the right job board for your vacancy. For most jobs you are trying to fill you may be able to get away with advertising on just one job board.

For example, if you were looking for a straightforward and nothing-too-complicated administrative assistant, you should be able to fill the role from one job board. This is a standard role with lots of people able to do it so there’ll be no shortage of candidates.

However, if you are looking to fill a more complicated role you may have to think about using more than one job board. The more complicated the role, the fewer people will be able to do it, and the more effort and investment you will have to put in to get quality candidates.

Key considerations when combining job boards

• What’s the job?

If you have completed a job specification you’ll have a good sense of what the job is and you will be able to get a feel for where you should be advertising it. If you are looking for a Marketing Manager, for example, then look for job boards that cover marketing manager jobs. If you are looking for a sales person, find job boards for that.

• What’s the niche or specialism?

This is key consideration for many as experience in a particular industry sector or skill is often crucial in more senior roles. If, for example, you are looking for a Marketing Manager in FMCG then, along with standard job boards for marketing managers, look also for job boards in the FMCG sector. With over 1200 job board in the UK, there is one for every specialism so be sure to think about this carefully.

• Choose job boards carefully

In order to decide what job boards will truly meet your requirements, you’ll need to ring up and chat to job boards about their audience. In many ways, what you want to do is choose complementary job boards. For example, it’s often inefficient to advertise on directly competing job boards as most candidates will look at both competing job boards anyway. What you want to do is to find job boards that will bring other different candidates to your job.

• Do it in stages

When using more than one job board, it’s best stagger the advertising. Most online response comes in the first 3 to 5 days. Wait and see what kind of candidates before you decide whether you need to advertise on the other job boards. Start with the job board that you think will be the best and then, only after a week or so, add the others.

• Give yourself plenty of time to recruit

Remember, the more complicated the job, the longer it’s going to take to fill. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to do it well.

In general most online recruitment campaigns for more specialised roles usually comprise three or four job boards. Often, recruiters select a quality generalist job board and include niche of specialist job board to get more specific candidates. However you choose do it, the fundamental objective still applies: to recruit the best candidate you can.

Next step? Check out these articles

• How to choose a job site for your vacancy
• Ten questions every employer should ask a job board
• Generalist job sites versus Specialist or Niche job sites
• The dangers of free job boards for recruiters
• How to choose the right niche job board