If you haven’t heard, the big news this morning is that Indeed was acquired by Japanese internet firm Recruit.  This news is important as Indeed is one of the most popular job destinations used by recruiting organizations today and any time there is a change with a job destination you count on to find qualified hires you should always take note.

As you can see in the press release, Indeed will remain independent of their buyer which hopefully signals that there will be little change in the short-term in what they will continue to provide to recruiting organizations and candidates.  I’m not here to predict that big change is coming for Indeed but it’s something that is always a possibility in these scenarios and something to keep a finger on if you use them in your job campaigns.

The job board market in itself is experiencing change by the day.  With the quarterly calls for its death to continuous news about Monster to acquisitions such as Indeed, the landscape is and will continue to evolve and change.  But what does that mean for recruiting organizations?

I think most importantly, recruiting organizations need to continually evaluate and keep tabs on all the sources they use in their recruitment advertising.  From understanding what sources bring in the most qualified candidates to the ultimate ROI they derive from each source.  It’s no longer an environment where you sign a yearly contract and are set from a job destination standpoint but a ever-evolving recruitment marketing mix that your organization improves with every job posting.

Becoming Job Destination Agnostic

With the increased accuracy and sophistication of recruitment metrics, recruiting organizations have thrown the old “Post and Pray” model out the window.  And this has changed the market in a few ways:

Deal Negotiation: Back in the day, job boards could charge all they wanted as they were in the only game in town, no organizations had accurate metrics and let’s face it they were easy to use while filling jobs.  Fast-track to the present day and job boards no longer have this luxury.  Recruiting organizations are beginning to capture their own metrics and understand the true value of each recruitment source they use.  Add in the influx of other channels including niche sites, social media and recruitment SEO and there is much more competion for the same budget.

With these new metrics and plethora of options, recruiting organizations have begun to make better use of their budgets.  And this means negotiations with job destinations is becoming commonplace.  I know of many recruiting organizations that use their internal metrics to negotiate terms with job destinations on a daily basis.  This not only saves them a considerable amount of money but it has also got them out of signing longer term contracts that restrict their flexibility.

Important of Recent Performance: With this influx of metrics, now organizations are evaluating and setting up their recruitment mix solely based on performance.  It doesn’t matter what you did for these organizations 2 years ago but what you’ve done for them recently.  This makes it even more important for job destinations to find better ways to connect the right candidates to the right companies.

Niche Job Posting:  It used to be that all jobs went out to the same 4 places and that’s where you got your candidates.  Job Distribution has since evolved to really determine recruitment mix not globally but for each specific discipline that you are recruiting for.  That means that tech jobs go to these specific locations while engineering jobs use another group of destinations.  I fully expect job posting to be more and more targeted based on the type of candidates you are looking to find.

All these trends point to recruiting organizations that are job board agnostic.  This means that they do not take into account brand name or past relationship but focus more on current results to make better recruitment advertising purchasing decisions.

Continuous Evolution of Recruitment Ad Distribution

Job boards have been considered a thing of the past for years now (just check the conference agendas from the last few years) but they still can hold value in today’s marketplace.  The key is to watch the evolution of job boards along with niche sites, job search engines, social recruiting channels and other recruiting destinations and determine where they fit in your recruitment mix.

Your options for finding candidates will continuously expand and evolve and it’s important you are measuring the impact of all these sources so you can guide your organization safely through the recruiting chaos.