The Problem with Job Boards Is…

Too many unqualified applicants. Poor candidate pipeline. High cost-per-hire.

Sound familiar? 68% of recruiters have said they are dissatisfied with the job boards they are currently using to post open jobs and recruit talent to their organizations, based on a recent Glassdoor survey.

Personally I like job boards. I’ve mentioned this before but I think of job boards as the food court of the search for candidates. There are so many options from candidates to the job board itself. And job boards get tricky when you start to consider that there are almost as many job boards as there are social media networks. There’s almost every conceivable tint and hue in the employment spectrum. If it exists, there is a job board for it somewhere. Are you looking for ex-Military North Dakota natives who support the Chicago Bears? You want to check out www.NorthDakotaVets4ChiBears4Life.com. Well apparently their website is down currently but you get the idea…

And there are more coming each day. It can be difficult for recruiters to keep track of current and evolving options let alone evaluate the effectiveness of what they already have because bottom line, we just want to fill the job.

If you are currently navigating the selection process to determine which job board will be best for your firm, join me and the team from Glassdoor for the webinar 5 Steps to Selecting the Right Job Board on June 2, 2015 at 2pm ET as we share some best practices along with helpful metrics and vendor scorecards to help you out.

I’d also love to hear from the community on what tips you’ve found most useful in your experience along with any job board pet peeves in the comments below. Hope to see you there!

Comment by Linda Ferrante on May 28, 2015 at 3:38pm: Recruiters may have many different options, but I would like the answer to come from the candidates. Which job boards do you find the most effective? I have yet to hear a good answer to that question!

Comment by Daniel Fogel on May 28, 2015 at 4:58pm: Thanks Linda - Great idea! I suspect it varies for candidates as well based on industry, locale, experience etc. But I don't have any stats to back that up... If anyone has read anything recently worth sharing, let me know.

Comment by Teresa Balke on May 30, 2015 at 12:12am: Hi Daniel & others,

I can tell you from my experience that I will not pay to post a job unless it is a high paying position. For general run of the mill type positions I will post on regular job boards (free) and can tell you that 8 out of 10 responses will be horrible. It's been a joke with my other recruiter friends that responses are just coming in from those who need to apply for work to continue their unemployment requirements.

I have had pretty good results from Indeed. But then I'm only extending a Poke (e-mail) to those whose resume matches what I'm looking for.

Other than Indeed- I haven't found any site where you pay to post that has provided good candidates.

I would actually like to find more sites that allow for FREE resume searches. The job boards such as Career Builder, Monster, ext charge way too much for small company's like mine. I went to You're Hired and they don't even offer resumes to view.

But because I can't guarantee that I will get good matches, it's not worth the money I would spend for the posting unless it was a specialty position and the pay justified the cost.

Comment by Linda Ferrante on May 30, 2015 at 10:34am: Craigslist has been the BEST source, hands down, for just about any position we fill. Our positions go up to about $150k. Depending on your location it's $25/post, so it's really cost effective. I am more interested in where candidates are going so we can change target if we need to.

Comment by Maddy B. on June 3, 2015 at 12:26pm: In recent years when job searching, most of the jobs I was interested in were found on industry niche job boards. On the one hand, a site like Monster does allow for more granular searching, but I found fewer jobs of the type and quality I was looking for.

@Linda - It's fascinating to hear about so many recruiters (with legitimate, awesome jobs to fill) posting on Craigslist. I think it's always tricky for job seekers to know what is legitimate on Craigslist, what's worth applying to, and what might be a scam or something else that's sketchy. I'd love to know how you construct your job ads and tailor them for Craigslist!

Comment by Alasdair Murray on June 4, 2015 at 5:28am: To me, the problem isn't so much the boards (though there are some dreadful ones out there) as the poor quality content a lot of advertisers post on there. No decent candidate was ever attracted by a sterile cut & pasted job description with no sense of sell or allure and yet that is what the web is full of. If any other form of advertising was treated with such an apparent lack of effort it too would lead to people questioning the medium.