Job boards are expensive and not altogether useful unless you have a lot of experience and know how to effectively use them to “beat the system.” You can get great candidates from job boards, but you may have to pay extra for higher visibility and/or use your tools a little bit differently than they were intended. Here are 4 things you probably don’t know about Career Builder and Monster:
#1: The vast majority of people who will apply to a posting on CareerBuilder or Monster are what’s called “active” job seekers. This means that they are either unemployed or actively searching for something new. Many of them will post to EVERY job they see. We have had retail cashiers apply to a CFO job. Wading through “bad” applicants to find the one or two good resumes is a major time commitment. Before you invest in a posting, have a game plan about how you’re going to review resumes and determine whether to engage with a candidate. Figure out who you want to pursue and then research them on LinkedIn or Google to determine whether it’s worth proceeding.
#2: To post an ad on CareerBuilder costs $419. If you post 5 jobs per month, you can get it down to $350/job. At Monster, a single job ad is $395. If you post 5 jobs per month, you can get that down to $320/job. With costs like these–that often deliver mediocre results–you may want to consider another approach to finding candidates. For example, sponsoring a paid posting on an industry site OR upgrading your LinkedIn account for more access to candidates who aren’t actively looking for work.
#3: Smart job board users will skip the postings and go straight for the resume search. Using this tool, you can search for people who meet your specific needs by searching through anyone whose resume was posted anytime in the past several years. Even though these people may have taken other jobs since the recession, you can identify candidates with the skills you need and, if you’re lucky, find a good phone number from their resume so that you can connect and sell them on your job. The price can vary from $575/month for Monster’s service that targets people within 100 miles to CareerBuilder’s service for one year at $4,800.
#4: The good news is that the jobs you post on Monster or CareerBuilder will be picked up by what’s called “job search aggregators” such as Indeed. These services crawl the web for any job postings and put them in one place for job seekers to find what they’re looking for. This sounds great until you realize that Indeed makes money from Sponsored Job Ads. This means you’ll often find your job at the bottom of the heap because other firms pay big money to have a featured posting. If you’re going with online postings, consider investing in a paid ad on Indeed. Job-seekers are flocking there in droves!
Bottom line? Career Builder and Monster have literally millions of candidates and it is tempting to believe that buying a posting will connect you with elusive people that you could not find otherwise. We think there are better uses of your money, but if you use the job boards, you’ll need to budget enough to give you visibility and definitely will need to use the tools differently than intended.
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Lesson Two: How to Balance Budgets vs. Candidate Expectations in Setting Salaries
