Employers: How Do You Measure The Effectiveness Of A Job Board? | Bubble Jobs Blog | Bubble Jobs
By Amy @BubbleJobs
Recruitment advertising is a funny old business. You put together your best job advert, stick it up on a jobs board and then cross your fingers that the job board promotes it across the industry and the right candidates apply.
But what if that doesn’t happen. What if you don’t get the ideal candidates applying. Or you don’t get any candidates applying at all. Where does the blame lie? Is it the job board’s fault and is it a sign that the job board in question just hasn’t performed? Or does the blame lie closer to home?
Well, as you can imagine, this is a bit of tricky one for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it comes to job boards, just like any other form of advertising, there are no guarantees. With recruitment advertising, it’s all about the current market, whether the candidates you’re looking for are actually pro-actively searching for a new job at that time and whether they actually come across your ad and want to apply.
Of course, it’s a job board’s responsibility to promote your vacancy and to try and make sure your ideal candidates see it – but if we take a step back and think about for a moment – that’s really all they can do.
At its heart, a job board is just an advertising platform – it’s a place where you can post your vacancy and where candidates can apply. It’s not a pro-active recruiter who can target specific candidates and convince them to apply – and it’s definitely not a recruiter who can decide not to
put a CV forward for a role because it’s not suitable.
All a job board can do is promote your vacancy and provide the platform for candidates to apply. Yes, screening questions can be put in place in an attempt to encourage only relevant candidates to apply – but they rely on the candidate answering them honestly – and unfortunately, not all job seekers are honest when it comes to applying for vacancies.
Like I it’s a job board’s responsibility to promote your vacancy and to essentially get eyes on your adverts – so in this respect, it’s the view count that really matters. In most instances, the more views an ad gets on a job board, the more applications it receives – but if your ad has received lots of views but hardly any apps, the blame could lie with you and your business, rather than the job board itself.
A job board can only work with what you give them, so while they might be able to steer lots of prospective candidates towards your ad, if the copy of the ad just isn’t exciting and appealing, you’re going to have an issue.
Like I mentioned in a , a job board can lead a horse to water but it can’t make them drink – and by that I mean a jobs board can drive a candidate to your advert but it can’t make them apply – that lies with the copy of the ad, the reputation of your company and the way you’re presenting yourself on that particular platform.
Of course, as this post is being written by someone who works for a job board, it might sound like I’m trying to pass the buck a bit here… but I’m simply stating the facts. With job boards, it can be easy to just judge its effectiveness on the number of apps you receive – but I’d really urge you to rethink this state of mind.
Yes, the number of apps are always going to play a part – but if you’ve posted the same ad on multiple boards and you’re not getting any apps through any of them, it suggests there’s a problem with the ad you’re using, rather than the boards themselves.
Coming back to the question of how you can measure the effectiveness of a job board, like I said before, it’s important to consider the stats for both views and apps on your ad – but I’d also look at the wider picture. Consider the quality and relevancy of the apps you received and how much sorting of CVs you had to do before you came up with your final list. For instance, you may have only got three applications from one job board, but if they were all relevant and you want to interview them all, I’d say that job board is definitely more effective than another which has given you 30 apps – only one of which was relevant in any way.
It’s also worth looking at what the job board said it was going to do and what it has actually done in terms of promoting your vacancy, how helpful they were in helping you to create your account and post your vacancies initially – and if they alerted you to the fact that your ads weren’t performing.
If they did alert you to the fact your ads weren’t doing great, consider how they suggested improving the ad to attract more views and apps and if this improved the performance at all. The most effective job boards will work to ensure your vacancies get the attention they deserve and will also work with you to make sure your ads performs as well as they can.
It’s also worth considering how well the ads have performed on other platforms – and how the job board in question stacks up against others you’ve used in terms of performance, price and overall attitude. Sometimes you’ll find that the niche boards (like Bubble) may work out more expensive than more generalist boards, but if they can deliver quality, relevant apps and lots of ad views, I’d say they’re definitely worth considering in terms of a long-term partnership.
A I’m keen to hear what you think on this issue. Do you agree that it’s unfair to judge a job board on the number of apps you receive alone? Or do you still think this should be the main performance indicator for job boards? Leave me a comment below.
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About the Author
Amy Edwards is the DIgital Marketing Manager for Bubble Jobs. With a strong background in online content and copywriting, Amy is responsible for the SEO, Content Management, Email Marketing, Banner Advertising and Online Partnerships for Bubble Jobs, the Bubble Jobs Blog and The Bubble Digital Career Portal. You can follow her on Twitter
or add her to your circles on Google+ .Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen Shares His Advice On How To Be Successful
Harvard Business School Professor , one of the
best known for , has just put out another book, "?"
He uses business case studies — like how the Honda Super Cub took over America — to show people how they can achieve personal success.
See our interview with Christensen below, edited for clarity.
On how to be successful
If you don’t have any idea of what kind of person you want to become, it’s all pointless. You really need to figure out, "What’s the purpose of my life? What kind of person does God want me to become? How do I need to invest my time and energy?" Without that you’re in a boat without a rudder.
And not go to jail like his former HBS classmate Jeffrey Skilling Just hoping that you’ll become a certain kind of person isn’t enough. Hold to your standards all of the time. Every time you have an opportunity where you can depart — even "just this once under this circumstance"— well, your life is just an unending stream of "extenuating circumstances." Everyone decides "just this once."
To become the kind of person you want to become, you’ve got to have discipline. It's easier to keep to your standards 100 percent of the time versus 98 percent of the time.
On how to manage your time
Most people have never thought through how they're going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance. I never work on Saturday. I don’t ever work on Sunday either. If you make that decision on a macro level once, when all the incremental decisions arise on an incremental basis, life is easier.
In a company you have a lot of different businesses. As a manager you ask, "Which products are we going to invest our capital into?" It's called the resource allocation process. In our personal lives we have a lot of businesses going on. I have a profession, I'm a father, a spouse, a good member of my community. How much of my time and energy can I allocate to each of those things? What I allocate becomes the strategy I have for my family, and everything else.
We have a bias to allocate based on short-term results. Companies focus on short-term returns vs. long-term returns. People under-invest in family because it doesn't pay off until the long tem.
On why people shouldn't try to be
In business you have very successful companies like , and companies that want to be successful want to emulate Apple. People have an idol they want to be like and try to follow what the idols did. But when you do, you find out you’re not very successful and you’re not very happy. You try to copy these models, and it doesn’t yield successful results. The key is not to figure out what the best people are doing and try to emulate it — rather, figure out what causes people and companies to be successful.
On religion
It’s easier if you really believe there’s a God. What kind of person does God want me to become? What are those characteristics? ... If you believe in God, you believe you're going to be judged. If you don’t believe there’s a God, you’ll still be judged. Do you want to live a life so that when you die, whoever knew you will quickly forget about you and never refer to you again? Or will people refer to you with great admiration for years and years to come?
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