Winning the Recruitment Battle: Why Job Boards Aren’t Enough

01.27.2022 Sara Brasfield5 min

No matter what industry you work in, recruiting has become a difficult and time-consuming process that all too often results in failure. From low unemployment rates to surging job growth, recruiters have for months been faced with a perfect storm of saturated job supply that has given potential applicants more options than ever.

These challenges aren’t as simple as being forced to compete with other employers for top applicants—although this remains an ongoing obstacle to winning tough recruiting battles for many businesses. In many cases, businesses are struggling to simply make their open positions visible to the audiences most likely to deliver qualified applicants from which that company can make a new hire.

While online job boards have long been one of the core strategies used to drum up applicants for open positions, overreliance on these job boards can be a recipe for disappointing recruitment performance. Research suggests that while 88 percent of job applicants were generated by job boards, only about 29 percent of hires were candidates who had applied through a job board listing.

Although job boards can still offer value in generating visibility for your listings, the inefficiency of this strategy can lead to wasted ad dollars and recruitment resources. Read on for tips on how to improve your quality of job applicants while delivering better ROI from your efforts.

The Limited Reach of Job Posting Sites (Alone)

Job boards make it easy to cast a wide net in your applicant search—especially when your job posting is cross-listed on multiple boards.

The problem is that those job boards may not help you reach your ideal applicant. While your business is posting its job listing to these boards, the same is true of other employers targeting the same applicants. The sheer volume of jobs being posted to job websites means that your listing is likely to get lost in the shuffle with some applicants.

In addition, the online job search is evolving and fragmenting across a greater number of avenues—and some job-seekers may invest more of their time into these alternatives. Professional networking sites and social media, for example, have steadily gained in popularity as tools through which job-seekers are looking for their next gig. Recent research suggests that 85 percent of jobs are filled through networking, rather than cold applications through an online job board.

As potential applicants spread their attention across many different job search channels, it’s in the interest of your recruiting performance that your recruitment strategy adopt a similar approach.

Smart Advertising Efforts to Accompany Job Board Posts

Successful, efficient recruiting isn’t as simple as driving as many applications as possible. Your recruitment staff is busy, and time and resources are limited. This is where recruitment advertising can pay big dividends: it gives you a more proactive strategy for connecting with the right potential applicants, and improving the quality of your applicant pool.

Some of the most successful approaches to recruitment advertising include the following:

  • Targeted social media ads. With job-seekers actively conducting their search on social media, targeted ads that leverage user behavior can be an effective tool for identifying and connecting with those prospects.
  • Display ads on professional networking sites. Give your job listing premium placement in digital spaces where your ads can be displayed to a relevant audience. These ads can be targeted according to many different data points, including demographics, user behavior, and activity on that specific website.
  • Geotargeted advertising. Save yourself the expense of advertising to areas outside of your employee’s likely commute. With geotargeted advertising, you can deliver digital video, mobile and other advertising to an audience within specific geographic areas, including down to local ZIP codes.
  • Retargeting campaigns. Keep your job opening top-of-mind with prospects who have viewed the listing. Retargeting lets you maintain visibility and engagement through ads delivered to that specific user across a wide range of channels, including display and mobile.

Even as you continue to post your job listings on job boards, these campaigns could help diversify your approach and improve your recruiting outcomes.

Optimizing Recruitment to Deliver More Value

By diversifying your approach to digital recruitment, your business can leverage a new ROI opportunity: optimizing resource utilization and advertising spend based on your recruiting performance metrics.

As you identify top-performing channels, for example, your department may decide to shift some of its spending toward those higher-value recruitment strategies, while scaling back your investments into other channels. You might determine, for example, that retargeting offers a much higher ROI—in terms of applicant quality—than certain high-cost and low-reward job boards. By moving some of that spending into your retargeting budget, you can deliver higher-quality applicants who are more likely to say yes if offered the position.

As recruiting remains an ongoing challenge for your business, a digital advertising partner can assist you in developing a multi-channel strategy that uses targeted ad delivery and other engagement strategies to drum up a pool of highly qualified applicants. Ready to get started? Contact us today.

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About the Author

Sara Brasfield

Sara is a Marketing Manager on Cox Media’s corporate team in Atlanta, with a passion for writing and delivering relevant insights for advertisers. With more than nine years of experience in B2B marketing, Sara aims to help Cox Media’s current and future clients connect with their customers find new and unique ways to grow their business. Outside of the office, Sara loves spending time running, reading, and supporting her favorite sports teams (Go Braves & Gamecocks!).

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