What does your content say about your job board?

Job boards have long believed – or were taught to believe by search engines – that job ads were ‘their’ content. In other words, a job board was nothing without the primal content of job ads. After all, refer to the moniker ‘job board’ – a digital ‘board’ that has reams of job listings. Obvious, eh?

Well, not so fast, buddy! What to make of a job board like LinkedIn, with its endless streams of user-generated blather? Or a job board like TheMuse, with its copious employer spotlights? Or StackOverflow, with its numerous questions and answers? Or a job board like Archinect, with its profiles of firms and projects? Or… The list goes on and on. Sure, these sites have plenty of job ad content – but they also have plenty of other content. 

Perhaps a more useful question to ask is: Why do job boards have content that isn’t job ads? Why – if job ads are so fundamental to a job board’s identity – would such content be added?

Hmm. Maybe the content that isn’t job ads turns out to be important to the job board in the long run. Maybe the content turns out to be the job board’s source of success. Double hmm.

(And yes, there are plenty of successful job boards that rely almost entirely on job ad content – like Indeed. Remember, there are many paths to nirvana!).

But if you’re in a competitive market – like (ahem) everyone! – then you’re probably looking for an edge. A way to drive candidate engagement. A way to stand out. And a way to weather the ups and downs of the labor market – through boom and bust. And guess what? Content can provide that edge – content that is cohesive, that has an attitude or personality, that informs and engages, and that speaks directly to your candidate audience. The right kind of content, delivered regularly and consistently, can define your job board – in a positive way.

Think about those earlier examples. LinkedIn’s goal is to make its users feel like they have to read it – every day. Sure, a lot of it is blather – but it’s blather put out by people you know (or want to know). StackOverflow’s Q&A serve the dual purpose of helping users solve problems – and build their own visibility as experts. The use of content by these job boards is not an accident – it is very much by design. 

So…what does your content say about your job board? Think about it.

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