Every year, Jeff Dickey-Chasins, also known as The Job Board Doctor, conducts a global recruiting survey regarding job board trends. The 2016-17 edition has been released, and I thought I would recap some of the findings here. The full report is available online (free registration is required), and it’s worth your time to read it. Survey respondents came from all regions of the world, with participation up more than 20% from the previous year. The survey included a range of questions covering topics such as demographics, site performance, organizational business model, business plans, and perceived threats and opportunities.
Some of the information that I found most interested included the following:
- As reported by nearly half of respondents, the average job posting received more than 16 clicks.
- My take: If your click counts are routinely lower than this, invest in some education/training to help you improve the quality of your job postings.
- Almost 50% of respondents have been operating for 11+ years. The remaining respondents were fairly evenly divided, with roughly 10% each in the 9-10 years, 7-8 years, 5-6 years, 3-4 years, 1-2 years, and less than 1 year category.
- My take: Clearly there continues to be regular start-up activity in the job board world.
- Mobile accounts for more than 40% of traffic for more than 40% of respondents.
- My take: I am still seeing a ton of global recruiting sites that are NOT mobile-friendly. Please, if you are working with job seekers in any capacity, get your site optimized for mobile. If you do NOTHING ELSE this year, make that a priority. Candidates are coming to your site from mobile devices. If their experience is poor, they may not give you a second chance from a desktop system.
- Approximately 45% of respondents use PPC (pay-per-click) services from an aggregator to increase traffic, while almost 40% use organic job listings.
- My take: Make sure you are getting good analytics on your PPC investment. Companies like Recruitics can help you analyze and monitor your job board spend so that you get the most return on your investment. Brush up on your SEO knowledge as well to make sure you are following current best practices to improve organic traffic on your own site as well as any aggregators you are using.
Job boards are still an effective tool for finding candidates and connecting them to your open roles. New solutions and changing technology continue to dot the landscape. Look for good partners who can help you manage the changes effectively.
