A few years back, employers flocked to the job boards motivated by the significantly lower prices than press advertising (plus people moving to the net, yada yada). Soon they noticed that the more attractive the roles were the higher the amount of applications they had to deal with. Perhaps that was about the right time to call in someone to help with response management, screening, etc., or resource up, or change candidate management methods.
The outcome of not deciding on any of those options were – on one hand – job seekers that possibly never heard back about their applications, and – on the other – frustrated/overloaded hiring/recruitment managers.
The candidate overflow produced a cost to employers that – quite likely – had not been factored in as job ads moved online.I recalled this as I was thinking about the investment employers would need to make should they decide to use their own site to engage candidates:
- Build a career website that covers the basics of content and functionality (John Sumser and CareerXroads come first to mind regarding where to look to start on the right track)
- Engage in optimization work to produce the right levels of visibility. I would speculate that the local job boards spend serious money on optimization based on how visible they are on ninemsn, Google, Yahoo! etc
- Coordinate these efforts with the overall employment branding effort to make the most of the the investment mentioned above.
- Have the process in place to cope with increased volumes, increased expectations, and a demand for a better direct candidate experience.The numbers might still close, especially if employers can leverage of the work and infrastructure of vendors in the space.
