This makes your association not only more valuable to your members, boosting member acquisition, retention, and engagement, but also benefits employers in your industry. But one of the main values of a job board for your association is the potential to earn non-dues revenue with minimal investment of staff time.
Career center vs simple job board for your association
Professional membership organizations are seen as the best source to land a quality job, and are even preferred over LinkedIn or Indeed. As an association, you should lean into your members’ trust and build your own career center for them.
Members are not only looking for suitable jobs. They are expecting career development resources, such as career support articles, support on writing successful resumes, and industry networking opportunities.
So instead of relying solely on a job board, your career center should provide resources such as:
- Resume and cover letter writing assistance
- Success stories from job seekers with different (maybe unconventional) career paths
- Career data to learn about necessary qualifications, skills, and salary expectations
- Personal branding and networking advice
- Interview techniques and training
- Job search and career growth ideas
With Niceboard you can host career development resources on a connected job board blog and create custom pages with further content for your job seekers.
But now, let’s get into the details of earning additional revenue with an association career center.
An example of what is possible: one of our association customers has brought in up to $100,000/year in revenue from the job board alone.
We are a non-profit, so if you can get $50-100k/year coming in with minimal staff time, that’s a huge win. It’s big.
- AIA Colorado
How to generate non-dues revenue with a career center?
As an association you likely rely on dues and donations to fund your work. But by creating a full career center, you can tap into a new source of revenue that is not reliant on membership fees or contributions.
And this is how it works:
Employers looking to hire talented individuals in your industry are willing to pay a fee to post job openings on your niche job board. The fee can be a one-time charge or a subscription-based model where the employer pays a certain fee per month or year to access your career center’s services.
By charging for job postings and access to your members, associations like yours can easily generate non-dues revenue that can be reinvested into programs, benefitting your members.
As you drive more traffic to your career center, employers will want to tap into your targeted audience of job seekers.
Here are five different ways to increase non-dues revenue with your career center:
1. Charging employers for job postings
Since you have an existing, niche job seeker audience, namely your members, you can charge employers a fee to post job openings on your association's job board.
Get started by contacting your member companies, advertisers, and donors. Reach out to those employers in your industry that you already have a relationship with. Explain how your job board can help them reduce their cost per hire by accessing candidates that have specific skills and are passionate about the industry (= your members).
2. Selling access to a resume database
Yet a different revenue stream can come from employers paying to access your database of candidates and corresponding resumes. You can offer this option once you have enough of your members' profiles on your career center site.
This way, employers can actively search your talent pool and contact potential candidates directly.
3. Offering upsells to employers
In addition to selling simple job listings, you can charge employers for additional exposure of their brand and jobs via upsells.
Some options are:
- Priority job placement at the top of your board
- Increased reach of a job by posting it on your social media platforms.
- Support with sourcing candidates, such as first resume screening, interview scheduling or personal candidate sourcing. The easiest way to do this is by partnering with a recruiting firm in your industry.
- Freelancer/contractor marketplace
- Short video Q&A about the role
- Increased duration of the job listing
- Actively advertising the job on your website with a job widget
Niceboard lets you set separate pricing plans for featured job postings and other premium offers. You can also decide to give a rebate to your members via job plans or discount codes.
4. Advertising through your job board
Offer your existing advertisers to have their ads displayed on the job board’s site, or contact the most active employers on your job board to pitch advertising options. Your career center can also act as a pipeline to drive corporate sponsors and advertisers to your association.
Career fairs managed through your career center give employers another opportunity to connect with qualified candidates; and for you to generate additional advertising revenue.
A great way support your job seekers while earning revenue is writing targeted recruitment guides for your niche. Employers will pay you to include their jobs or company information in these publications.
And members will get insights into the current job market, learn about the newest roles, and get access to further career development topics. You can include tips for negotiating with recruiters, a salary database, and example resumes.
To display ads directly on your Niceboard job board, you can make use of our Adsense integration or use custom banner ads from advertisers.
5. Selling data collected from the career center
You will collect information from the actions taken by job seekers and employers on your career center. This data can inform industry and job market guides that are valuable to companies in your industry.
State of industry reports for employers may include job seeker preferences, desired salary ranges, comparisons to offerings of other employers, and local job seeker trends to help companies attract the best available talent.
For example, the AIA Colorado job board provides employers with a yearly report of architecture salary, hiring, & benefits specific to the industry, helping hiring architecture firms make well-informed decisions.
A career center is a valuable resource for both your members and employers in your industry; and a real must-have for every modern association. Plus, it opens up a new way to generate revenue, independent from dues or donations.
If you are looking to unlock a new revenue stream for your association, your own career center is the answer. And Niceboard can provide the most intuitive platform for it!