Job Board Business Model: Resume Database

This article explores the pros and cons of talent pools. And you'll learn in which cases you should consider adding this monetization option to your job board.

But first, what is a resume database? It is essentially a gated directory of job seeker profiles with their respective CVs. Employers pay a fee to access or unlock specific candidate's profiles to actively recruit for their open positions.

Pros of resume databases

For job board owners

A resume database can serve as an additional revenue source, especially if you already have a significant job seeker audience. By offering employers access to a curated pool of candidates, you can provide more value to employers and diversify your income streams at the same time.

For employers

Resume databases provide employers with another option to find suitable candidates. Instead of sifting through hundreds of applications, they can proactively search for and contact candidates that fit their requirements. This approach is particularly attractive in a candidate's market, where qualified applicants are in short supply.

For job seekers

For job seekers, being part of a resume database offers another avenue to get in front of employers and market their skills. This is helpful on niche job boards—like yours—where the chances of being noticed by an employer in their specific industry are much higher. Especially compared to applying to jobs that already have 1,200 applications…

Cons of resume databases

• For job board owners, maintaining a high-quality, up-to-date resume database can be difficult.
• The quality of resumes is declining due to the use of AI tools. Hence, employers often look for more than just resumes; they want a more realistic view of a candidate's capabilities.
• Many new job board platforms lack the functionality of building a talent pool (but yes, at Niceboard we have the option for you to add it).
• There are other, free sources of resumes, such as LinkedIn and other career websites. These platforms offer extensive databases that are easily accessible, making it harder for smaller job boards to compete unless they offer unique value (e.g. niche-specific candidates).

Should you implement a resume database? 3 deciding factors

As a job board owner, you need to evaluate yourself whether a resume database is be a good addition to your job board. But if one or many of these factors apply to your job board, a talent pool might really be a great fit for you.

1. Your industry is in a candidate's market

The way most employers recruit is by simply posting a job listing and waiting for the applications to come in. This makes a lot of sense if the current hiring market in your industry is favoring employers, i.e. if there are generally more candidates available than open positions so that candidates need to do the work to get hired.

However if your industry's hiring market is the other way round, employers have to compete for a small number of qualified job seekers. And just posting a job is often not enough to attract them. In this so-called candidate's market, it pays off for employers to actively search for and reach out to potential candidates.

So you need to figure out: is it employers or job seekers that have the leverage in your niche's hiring market? Then you can adjust your job board's offerings accordingly.

2. Larger companies are your customers

The business model of resume databases can be very profitable if your employer audience consists largely of mid-sized to large companies with resources to actively recruit candidates. Indicators of this might be the presence of in-house recruiters or an HR team solely dedicated to sourcing candidates. These companies will be more willing to invest time in searching through resumes on your database to find the best candidates.

3. You have an existing job seeker audience

If you start out with a decently sized audience—whether it’s a professional community or a newsletter list—you will be able to create a valuable resume database much faster. This can also be the case if you are primarily focused on driving job seeker traffic.

Of course, a job board business means building a two-sided market place, with both employer AND job seeker traffic.

However, one strategy to solve this issue is starting out with building a solid job seeker base while listing roles via a scraping, XML import or just manually finding suitable roles on job aggregators. Once you have a substantial audience, employers will be more willing to pay for access to your pool of candidates.

If you want to pursue this approach, here are our top tips for increasing traffic from job seekers:

• Provide value in existing communities in your niche, establish yourself as an authority, and offer to run a job channel with backlinks to your board.
  A great tool to find a community in your niche is The Hive Index, which allows you to exclude communities with existing job boards.
• Focus on building a following on one social media channel, by posting jobs but also job seeker information (think: how to land a job in [niche], optimize your LI profile for [niche]). Keep it super niche specific!
• Create a job board newsletter: a great way to build an email list, keep passive job seekers coming back to your board, and monetize your audience with sponsorships.
• Maintain a job board blog: find keywords that job seekers in your niche are searching for and create content around it to show up on Google to funnel visitors to your board.

How to set up a resume database on your job board

If you notice that employers in your industry are shifting to actively recruiting candidates instead of just posting jobs, you might have found yourself in a candidate's market.

In this case, having an up-to-date resume database becomes a real competitive advantage for your job board. 4 simple steps to get started:

1. Platform setup: Ensure your job board platform supports a talent pool. Niceboard sets this up automatically for you. All you need to do is decide on whether you want to make the access free or gated, and create respective pricing plans.
2. Candidate acquisition: Encourage job seekers to create profiles and upload their resumes. Highlight the benefits for job seekers, like enhanced visibility to desirable companies. A great way to advertise your database to job seekers is with a banner directly on your board, on social media, and in your job newsletters.
3. Employer access: Develop a pricing model for employers to access the database. You can offer a one-time or recurring fee for access to your complete database. Alternatively, you could set up a credit-based system where employers purchase a set number of credits to unlock job seeker profiles.
4. Quality maintenance: This is key to making a resume database work. You should allocate some time to regularly update the database to maintain high-quality profiles.

Of course, building a solid resume database will take time and some initial investment without immediate return. But once you get it going, you will easily generate recurring revenue and make your job board that much more attractive to employers by providing a proactive recruitment tool.

LinkedIn and Indeed are doing it, so it might be worth considering for you, too!