Inside and outside: job boards have to work both places

How does job board functionality get messed up? It’s easy to do: you work and obsess over building the perfect job board, making certain that posting a resume is easier than sneezing – but then you forget about the world outside your site. Or you spend hours on backlinks, blog postings, and email campaigns, only to discover that your site just isn’t that easy to use.

Job boards have to function equally well both inside the site and outside the site.  As a colleague once said, “You can build the best store in the world, but you’ll fail if no one knows about it.” Alternatively, you can put your store in Beverly Hills, but go bankrupt if you forget the cash register.

Inside the site, you should make it as simple and intuitive as possible for job seekers to find and apply for jobs. Resume posting should be a breeze, and you should make it easy for them to manage their applications and jobs. For employer, make it easy to buy and obvious to use. Don’t hide functionality.

Outside the site, your job board should be visible where the job seekers congregate. You should provide multiple paths into your site and plenty of reasons to go there. Your site design and structure should be SEO-friendly, and you should be aggressive in reaching into your audience’s world with surveys, polls, and other engagement techniques.

Yes, it’s a balancing act, and there never seems to be enough time to do it all. But if you keep the idea of working inside and outside your site at the front of your mind, you’ll be more successful. I promise.

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