You might have already heard about many of the actions you can take to improve your job board’s performance, such as creating category landing pages, mobile optimization, marketing through newsletters and other content, or participating in real-life job fairs.
While these can definitely work for your job board, it’s important to have a strategic outlook and plan for long-term growth of your job board.
This guide offers high-level strategies to help you decide where to invest your time and money when your job board isn't growing.
1. Research your market
Knowing the current job market dynamics in the niche of your job board is essential. Not only does this allow you to adjust your offerings, but you can also adapt to changes in employer and job seeker behavior.
For example, we are seeking job seekers wanting to know about the salary range before investing time in an application, due to time intensive recruitment processes in today’s job market. Hence, implementing a requirement for salary ranges on all job postings on your site could improve user experience and attract more qualified candidates.
Another key trend could be emerging job types within your niche. The respective action item here would be building category pages for popular job categories. This can enhance SEO and increase the chances of your job board being discovered via organic search.
2. Diversify your product offerings
Giving your employers options to boost their job ad visibility and get their job filled quicker is a sure way to satisfy your employers and generate more revenue. Upsells such as priority placements, applicant screening or social media features can provide additional value.
Building on the previous market research, if you discover that your customers are struggling with job applicant quality due to receiving applications from candidates without employment permit in the respective country, you could develop a verification process and sell it as an add-on. This would ensure that only qualified candidates apply, improving the overall experience for both employers and job seekers.
Here are some further ideas for product upsells:
- Priority placement at the top of your job board
- Shoutouts on social media, newsletters or Slack channels
- Short video Q&A about the role
- Increased duration of the job listing
- Support with sourcing candidates, such as initial resume screening or personal recommendations
By offering upsells, you can cater to different needs and budgets of your clients, making them come back to your job board site.
3. Try different revenue streams
Testing or adding a different revenue model to your job board is another way to react to altering market demands. Whether it’s changing employer/job seeker preferences or a switch in the power dynamics of the job market in your niche.
One such scenario could be the change from a job seeker’s market—meaning there are more job seekers than available positions—to an employer’s market, a job market favoring employers due to a decreasing supply of jobs. In a case like this, monetizing job seekers instead of employers can quickly up your revenue.
Consider the following revenue models:
- Candidate-pay job board: In niches with an oversupply of talent, job seekers are more motivated to put in extra effort to get hired, making it feasible to charge them for access to job listings. However, you must provide a unique and valuable offer to make it worth their while.
- Talent pool/sourcing site: Employers pay for access to a database of qualified candidates. These subscription-based models provide ongoing revenue and work well in specialized niches where specific skills and experiences are in high demand. Focus on collecting detailed profiles and resumes from job seekers within your niche to make this effective.
- Pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-application (PPA): Employers are charged every time a candidate clicks on a job listing (PPC) or submits an application (PPA). This model requires a large volume of traffic, so investing in SEO and search ads is a good idea.
Diversifying your revenue streams not only helps in offsetting declines in job posting revenue but also provides a more stable financial foundation for your job board.
4. Automation & AI-tools
We’ve focused mainly on ways to increase your revenue, but the other side of profitability is reducing costs. Many job boards run on old software or inefficient processes that consume your time and money. With AI and automation tools you can streamline your backend operations, such as customer support, job scraping/sourcing, job processing, automatic social media ads, and customer onboarding and reporting.
For instance, automating job classification and parsing can help in quickly categorizing and listing new job postings, speeding up the process. Job scraping automation ensures that your job board always has fresh listings, attracting more visitors.
Automating social media advertising can help you reach a wider audience without spending too much time on campaign management. Customer support automation, such as chatbots, can handle common queries and free up your team for more complex tasks.
Tools like Zapier can automate a lot of these processes to save you time and money without requiring extensive technical knowledge.
Growing a job board in a competitive market requires you to think strategically and be open to adapting to changing demands. What it often comes down to is understanding the needs of both employers and job seekers and finding clever ways to meet those needs.