Job Board Success?
I was listening to an online radio show recently, and was surprised to hear the founder of a major jobs board publicly state that only 12% of jobs are fulfilled through job boards.
It wasn't that this ratio came as a surprise to me, either
as a recruiter or a Professional CV writer. It was just that it was a jobs
board owner stating what those of us in the employment industry already know.
When you start a job search, and its probably been a while
since you have done that, you learn about the new and easy way of getting
employed. Jobs boards seem to have multiple advantages over the old style
newspapers:
Greater variety of more jobs
More employers
You can spot/avoid the recruiters
Well, all that is true. But, the reality of the job search
market is that:
One third of positions are never advertised: they are
fulfilled by internal promotion
One third are fulfilled by known job applicants: these are
either people from existing suppliers, partners or competitor companies. This
is the biggest growth sector in employment, through companies offering
incentives to existing employees to find new recruits, representing now around
8% of the employment market
Residual third are fulfilled by some form of job advert
system: either through recruiter networks, or employers directly placing job
adverts
Therefore, having grabbed almost half of the total
potentially available market share in around five years, shows the great
success of the jobs board market, but there had to be a downside.
Human jobs boards?
As a job application made and reviewed via computer entry
system is no longer a human interaction, the average applicants chance of
standing out as different to everyone else are limited. Hence, the chances of
your being rejected are higher.
Many corporations recognise this human interaction problem,
by putting some form of test in the application process, based on some form of
psychological theory. The concept is that only the type of people who both show
the right type of skills and who would fit with the culture of that
organisation, will get through to the point in the process where the applicant
interacts with an employee of the company.
Even if you agree with psychological testing and screening,
what does it say about a company that wants to employ human beings, and yet
asks them to deal only with computers when they want to join them?
Jobs board business model
The second major problem is the jobs board business model.
As the market is fairly easy to enter - £2000/$3000 or less - competition is
fierce. The result is that the major business model which survives is the one
where job seekers are a commodity, and hence are offered the service for free.
Money is made on recruiters and employers paying to access databases of open
profile job seekers, and advertise.
However, as competition is so fierce, the cost to advertise
is continually decreasing, and hence job boards owners needs new techniques to
make more money. One of the simplest is the repeat advert, or the multiple
"buy one, get X free." Both techniques encourage advertisers to keep
the same adverts rolling around again, and again, and again. The outcome is
that in a recent survey on regional job boards, less than 20% of the adverts
were both still open and the only copy of that text.
Successful job application
The outcome of both of these problems, as the market showed
and the job board owner summarised, is that only 12% of jobs are fulfilled by
jobs boards. Job boards should not be dismissed from your job search, but be
aware of your chances of being employed when you hit the "click to
Submit" button. There are better and quicker ways of getting employed than
one which at best returns 12%. Contact LatamRemote.
Good Luck!
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