The 2019 Job Board Summit Sum Up

 

Job Boards Need to Innovate

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This was a message that kept cropping up. Since the inception of the online job board in 1992, things haven’t really changed too much at all. Granted, most sites tend to look a bit nicer (most of the time at least), but the fundamental design and implementation of online job adverts are still the same –  loads of text-based job adverts in a list.

Stephen O’Donnell, an experienced recruitment industry professional, and founder of the NORA’s (National Online Recruitment Awards) noted some of the things that many users of job boards want, but aren’t always experiencing when they look for work online. Creating a more inclusive and diversity-friendly experience is also something job boards need to get up to speed on – a point well made by Vercida CEO Morgan Lobb during his presentation.

One issue here perhaps, is that people are so used to using job boards in their current format, they may not easily transition to new forms of presentation and interaction. That might be true to some extent, but as we found at the conference, there are many opportunities and options to innovate that aren’t limited to job adverts alone.

 

Video vs Text

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Most industry professionals will have heard that video is the future of the online job advert at some point. It’s not a new idea, and tends to be one of those things that gets discussed all the time. ‘Video job adverts are coming’, we often hear. Despite these predictions, and the massive uptake and response video has online in general, we’re still not seeing all that many recruitment videos. Why is this? Derek Jenkins from Monster had some insights into the reasons, especially given the fact that Monster has recently launched a video editing app for recruiters.

The company found that while the results for these video ads were excellent, there was still a lot of resistance from many employers, job boards, and recruiters. Interestingly, key blocking factors like cost, ease of use, and video production time are easier to address than ever, so what are the reasons for the slow acceptance of video in the industry? Age could be a factor, as the older generation is less keen to adopt new formats. It could also, perhaps, be the fact that many of us are camera shy! Either way, video is extremely important for the upcoming generations, and this alone means we’re essentially guaranteed to see increasing amounts of video content on job boards at some point in the coming years.

 

Job Advert Quality

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A real bugbear for both jobseekers and industry professionals is spammy or bad quality job adverts. The key takeaway was this: No one wins from copy and paste job adverts or mind-numbing lists of meaningless bullet points. Recruiters won’t find the candidates they want because jobseekers won’t read the advert, and job boards lose on both sides. Recruiters complain they aren’t getting applications, and jobseekers complain about obnoxious content.

If you’re a recruiter or employer, then it’s really worth the time to make sure your job advert is readable and relevant to your applicants. Make sure to have a read of our guides on how to create an engaging job advert, as well as why you should avoid job post jargon.

 

Becoming More Than a Just a Job Board

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There was a lot of talk at the event about what job boards can do to offer more value to visitors in general, whether this is creating online communities or a wider range of online resources for jobseekers.

We are always looking to innovate and improve at JobLookup, so whether you use our site as a jobseeker, recruiter, or any other capacity, we’d love to hear how you think we could make things better for you. Feel free to drop us a line at any time using our contact form with any suggestions, feedback, or features you’d like to see.

Thanks again to jobg8 for hosting the event, and see you all next year!