Over the past weekend, we attended the 19th Congress of the TAtech Industry Congress to continue our progress with working with association members to enhance all facets of talent acquisition. Here at JOBartO, we are focused on providing the technology to job boards to have a competitive advantage in their market, and as such, we have provided a summary and key points from the conference to help job boards.

Saturday afternoon, the keynote speaker, Carol McDaniel, Director of Talent Acquisition at All Children’s Hospital Johns Hopkins Medicine provided great insights into her desires from job boards on effective recruiting. Firstly, and as we are sure your sales team has expressed their challenges include reaching the human resource managers or directors. Carol jokingly, but I’m sure she may be accurate, spoke about receiving one thousand (1,000!!!) calls daily. Seriously..how does she get any work done. Ok, we digress, and let’s get back on track. However, she provided helpful tips for the job board sales team to make an impact and increase their chances of speaking with her.

Tips to help reach the human resource manager/director

• Research, research, and more research – Take your time to research the current human resource manager on LinkedIn or the corporate website to tailor the message specifically to the person. Carol spoke of several occasions of receiving voice mail messages from job boards addressing the message to an employee who is no longer with the company. I doubt they received a call back. A few minutes of research may help in the long term.
• Results and Metrics – For Carol, she is continually looking for the most effective recruiting avenues for her company and team. As such, for your job board to stand out of the crowd and make an immediate impact on her busy schedule is to provide an understanding of the potential results and metrics carol could expect by working with your job board. Let’s go a step further and provide a real-life example for job boards.

1). Review the corporate website careers page (if they have one, of course) and review any current job openings. Look for any trends, such as job titles, locations, etc.

2). Access your job board candidate database and find how many profiles/accounts match the desired job openings on the company website

3). Look for any similar postings on your job board and how did they perform on the site or what special offers could you provide this employer to advertise and reach the candidates

By conducting this research before calling the prospective employer, you have ample information into who you are calling, what they are potentially looking for and solutions the job board may provide. As such, establishing with your potential client that you are willing to take the time to research their needs and provide a potential solution.

Later in the afternoon, the conference split off into special interest groups to discuss topics in further detail. As such, we elected to sit with job board owners and learn more about their approach to monetization of niche sites. Throughout the forty-five minute discussion, the main topics centered around providing new revenue opportunities for the job board.

How are niche job boards monetizing their job board

• Nearly all 20 of the represented niche job boards stated 75% or more of their revenue is contributed to job postings
• A small select, approximately 10-15% of sites, listed their resume database as a revenue stream..interesting as Carol recommended this could be helpful knowledge for employers. Why neglect this potential?
• Other revenue opportunities included; banner advertising, Facebook posts (one site spoke of charging $20 for a Facebook post on their job board page) online job fairs, local job fairs and short listing candidates.

One job board site in particular, spoke of the success with deploying a targeted email campaign on behalf of their employer. The job board charged $1,500 to deploy a targeted email campaign to their candidate audience on behalf of the employer and concluded the experience as highly successful with user engagement and benefit for the employer.

To conclude the conference, The Job Board Doctor provided results from the 2016 Job Board Survey. The main topics covered included:

• ~60% of job boards looking to add new products for employers – Interesting caveat as Jeff spoke to this number remaining consistent to the job board trends from last year, yet, job boards are not acting on this desire. I wonder why?
• Quality applications are the most important factor for employers to renew with your job board
• Mobile traffic continues to increase as approximately 38% is visiting via their mobile device

The 2016 TAtech Industry Congress provided us with the opportunity to continue learning about challenges for niche job boards and how they are looking to improve their services for employers. We recommend job board site owners/employees to explore the option of attending the conference to continue learning the topics as included above. And, we hope this summary provides you with opportunities to better your services.