As an association, you are in a unique position to generate non-dues revenue by connecting your members to companies looking to hire qualified candidates in your field.
However, companies and recruiters are often slow to adopt new platforms. Read on to discover how to demonstrate the exceptional value of your association's job board to draw more employers to your niche job board.
A fully-managed job board solution like Niceboard can help streamline this process, making it easier for associations to generate non-dues revenue while connecting employers with top talent.
Understand your competitive advantage
Your association's job board has a competitive edge over more general job boards. This advantage lies in your ability to connect employers with a very specific audience of engaged professionals, and facilitate access to passive job seekers—typically high-performing industry employees who may not be actively searching for new roles but are always open to better opportunities.
Benefits for employers
- Access to a targeted pool of candidates: Your association’s job board is highly effective in attracting candidates with specific skills and experience. This is because your job board is tailored to a particular industry or profession, which means that job seekers who visit those site are already interested in and knowledgeable about the field.
- Cost-effective hiring solution with higher ROI: A niche pool of candidates means job postings are more likely to reach qualified candidates. Hence, employers save money on recruitment costs by reducing the need for expensive job postings on multiple platforms or hiring recruitment agencies. Using your association’s job board can help employers maximize their return on investment by attracting high-quality candidates.
- Enhanced visibility in your industry: By posting on your job board, employers can increase their visibility among industry professionals who may not frequent larger platforms. Especially employees for more senior roles can be found much easier through an association job board.
By emphasizing these benefits, you can effectively communicate the value of your job board to potential employers and get them posting their roles to YOUR career center.
But how exactly do you find, contact, and convince your ideal employers?
1. Generate leads
One of the first steps to attract employers is finding potential leads that would get value out of your job board. While some companies in your industry—particularly your members and advertisers—may already know about your job board, many others will not be even be aware of your platform and its benefits.
Strategies to find relevant employers
- Automated job alerts: One way to find employers hiring in your niche is to set up alerts on major job aggregators like LinkedIn using relevant keywords related to your industry. This way, you can receive notifications about new job openings and directly reach out to those employers.
- Job scraping: Use web scraping tools to identify open positions across various platforms. This approach allows you to compile a list of potential employers who could benefit from posting on your job board.
Job board software providers like Niceboard offer a similar option as part of their services: Backfill. You can automatically pull relevant jobs from other platforms, specified by country, category and keywords. - Cold outreach: If you have a sales team, you can task them with reaching out to these employers you found via job alerts and scraping. A personalized email or phone call at the right time (i.e. when an employer is currently hiring) may convince them to consider your platform. You’ll learn more on the exact strategy for cold outreach in the next section.
With these strategies, you should have steady stream of potential employers that you now need to convince of the value of your job board.
2. Cold outreach: How to craft an effective sales pitch
When reaching out to potential employers, having a convincing sales pitch to sell your job boards’ benefits is crucial. Your pitch should be concise and focused on the value proposition your job board offers for employers, not for your association.
Best practices for cold outreach
- Direct communication: Start with a phone call or personalized email that gets straight to the point. Highlight how your association can help them connect with qualified candidates in your industry.
- Data-driven approach: Use data about your members and their demographics to strengthen your case. For example, if you have data showing that a significant percentage of members with senior positions are actively seeking new opportunities, share this information.
- Always follow-up: After your initial outreach, send a follow-up email reiterating the benefits of posting on your job board and inviting them to discuss further with a simple call to action.
Example sales pitch template
Here’s a simple template you can adapt to your industry and association when reaching out:
Subject: Sr Quality Engineer in Reno
Hi [Employer's Name],
I noticed that your company VitalPath is currently hiring for a Sr Quality Engineer. The Medical Alley job board can help you fill this open position.
Our audience consists of 10,000+ medical engineering professionals and your job could get around 40,000 views from this highly specialized audience on our job board.
Are you interested in discussing how we can help you fill this role within the next 30 days?
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Association]
3. Content marketing: How to get inbound leads
In addition to reaching out to specific employers directly, you want to create marketing content around your job board to get employers coming to you.
And creating a compelling story around your job board can help attract more employers. Consider producing marketing materials that showcase the benefits of using your platform:
If you have the resources, you can develop a professional media kit that highlights member demographics and how the job board works. This kit should clearly outline how posting jobs on your platform will yield a strong return on investment for employers.
The same story can be told in a short video on your website or YouTube channel, explaining how your job board connects employers with top talent. You can even highlight a successful hiring story and let the respective employer or job seeker appear in the video. Visual storytelling is a huge trend for a reason—it's very effective.
Of course you can always highlight those success stories and other convincing data in your association newsletters, include them in your advertising kit or even show them prominently on your website.
4. Additional incentives and resources
To further entice employers, consider offering additional resources beyond just job postings to reach your members.
In-person career fairs
Hosting career fairs can provide significant value for both employers and your association. Often, companies will sponsor booths at these events, giving them direct access to potential candidates. As an association, you can offer services such as resume reviews or career coaching during these events to boost job seeker attendance.
Virtual career fairs
Virtual career fairs have gained popularity due to their convenience. To make them as effective as on-site events, you should set up clear workflows to share employer and candidate information, so that both parties can stay connected after the event.
The benefit of a virtual event is that employers can screen many candidates in real-time and your association can easily generate additional non-dues revenue by selling virtual booths and sponsorships.
Recruitment guides
Consider creating an annual recruitment guide that gives an overview of hiring and salary trends, upcoming positions, and other industry-specific information. You can offer employers the option to sponsor the guide, or even highlight their company as a prime industry employer by showcasing their company culture.
This guide can be distributed both digitally and in print during conferences or events, allowing employers to tell their story to a targeted audience of job seekers.
By leveraging the unique advantages of your association—mainly the access to your specialized members—you can effectively market your platform and generate interest from potential employers.