The problem of duplicate job postings

You know what gets a job seeker truly steamed? Clicking on a link for a job posting – and discovering that it’s exactly the same job he looked at a few seconds earlier. Same job, different listings = unhappy job seeker.

How does this happen? Well, any job board that allows 3rd party recruiters to post their open positions runs the risk of duplicate postings. Let’s say that ABC Company has an listing for a mechanical engineer. The HR person posts it on their company site and also drops an email to three favored recruiters announcing the opening. The recruiters turn around and post the job under their own accounts – because after all, if they can get it filled, they’ll receive a handsome commission.

So what’s the problem? After all, the HR person just tripled their chances of a response by encouraging the recruiters to post the job separately. In fact, if the recruiters are using different job boards, the position could get even more exposure.

But the job seeker is unhappy. His or her anger will have two likely targets: the job board, and the company.

The company may not care if the job seeker is unhappy – after all, the market is tight and there are (in general) more seekers than jobs (although I would argue that companies should care about their reputation with job seekers, as they want to attract the best talent).

The job board should care quite a bit about making the job seeker unhappy. After all, quality candidates are the lifeblood of a successful site. But eliminating duplicate postings is tough. If recruiters purchase the right to post jobs, why can’t they post a listing that a client has given them?

Another twist – when an aggregator like Indeed or SimplyHired serves up duplicate job postings, what can anyone do? Between cross posting by the job board itself, recruiters, and (occasionally) use of multiple job boards by the company, it’s not unusual to see the job listed in search results many times.

This may be a problem that is never resolved – but both companies and job boards should be aware that it creates negative attitudes toward them on the part of the job seeker.

Your thoughts?

Comment by Sandra McCartt on April 7, 2010 at 1:37pm: My first thought reading this is that recruiters as a whole can get more bunched up about more things than any other group. Advertise or don't. The objective is to find a candidate that fits and quit worrying about where they came from, how many job postings or calls they get from multiple recruiters or not. If a candidate is turned off because he sees the same job posted twice he/she needs to join a convent and even there the same thing may be said more than once by more than one person. Active/passive/sorta/semi/sourced/ dug out of the LaVrea Tar pit/asleep until i called them. Who cares if they fit and send me a CV that i am able to send to a client.

The question i have is why in the world do we worry about this stuff just go find a candidate and place them. Go read ads for a day or two and you will find thousands of ads that look and sound just alike for the same location that are not the same job.

Believe it or not many times candidates will contact a recruiter before they go direct for the same job because we do not require them to fill out an online application that drops into the black hole and they get to talk to a person.

Comment by Stuart Musson on April 8, 2010 at 9:21am: Barbara you are very correct that our job is to find the passive candidates that our clients are not able to find on their own through advertising efforts. That is why they pay us the investment for top talent.

I also understand that in order to get "applicant flow" sometimes it is good to advertise the open requirements on the job boards available. However it has not been mentioned yet in this thread and I can only assume that the agencies that are getting the job description are only "de-googlizing" and removing the client company information but not editting anything else prior to posting which allows candidates to notice it as a multiple posting.

Instead of just cutting and pasting the information given to you by your client to the job boards, like they do, why not take the time to use your creative juices to create a Job Advert that will attract the right candidate to your posting. Use some of the key motivators that will attract the top talent to apply to your posting over the other generic postings. Make your posting really enticing for candidates to apply to you over the other duplicate postings.

Stand out from the crowd!

Cheers,

Stuart Musson
President
Precision Recruiting Services Inc.
LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/in/stuartmusson
Twitter: www.twitter.com/PreciseRecruit

Web: www.PrecisionRecruiting.ca