Job Board Doctor Blog

What you think: early peeks into the Job Board Industry survey

The data is still rolling in (and I’m a bit behind), but after 190 (yes, that’s right – 190) responses, I believe we have some very good information about the state of the job board industry in 2012.

The full details will be ready soon (perhaps next week), but here are some tidbits that you may find intriguing:

  • The top reasons you believe clients use your job board: Quality of applicants (74%); Price (50%); and Quantity of Applicants (46%). No other answers came close to these three.
  • What kinds of quality-enhancing tools are you offering your employers? 69% offer candidate-to-job matching and 65% offer screening questions. Only 14% offer psychometric assessment.
  • Mobile isn’t quite there yet. Only 45% of job boards offer mobile-friendly versions of their websites, and just 17% offer either an Android or iPhone app.
  • The big threats to your job board? LinkedIn leads with 48%, followed by the recession (34%), a negative public perception of job boards (30%), and social recruiting (30%).
  • What’s the plan for your site in the next year? 64% plan to put money into SEO, 46% plan to add new products, and 46% plan to improve their search technology.
  • Is your site for sale? 10% say yes (which of course means that 90% of you would prefer not to!).

There were also some interesting comments:

While I selected LinkedIn as a cause for concern, we aren’t seeing a huge impact. LinkedIn is helpful to recruiters BUT most are finding that it is much more work compared to job boards.

Most concerning to us is the way Indeed has chosen to treat job boards. I am less worried about social media and LinkedIn than I am about Indeed.

We see that education of employers is necessary to help them to understand that social media is not the ‘silver bullet’ of recruiting. The old rules still apply as it relates to attracting top talent to your company.

Full results will be available soon for download. Thanks again to everyone that participated!

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This Post Has One Comment

  1. Not surprised by any of these findings. Job boards need to step their mobile efforts to really bring value to their competitors. LinkedIn is great for finding more executive and higher level candidates than the job boards unless you choose a particularly niche one.

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