It is funny how everyday looks exactly the same but when you look back everything has undergone massive changes. Hyper disruptive hiring patterns continue to change the future of job boards in the aftermath of the pandemic. Remote working and/or hybrid working conditions have completely dissolved borders as barriers to entry. As a recruiter and a potential employee, the world is your oyster!
Come to think of it, even two years ago, almost 78% of employers used job boards for their online hiring needs. As 2020 hit, companies shifted talent acquisition and onboarding the best from the world to a completely digital format. And recruitment managers turned to the tools and features available on your job board for finding niche talent. This truly is the future of job boards, right here.
As a job board owner, you are so busy concentrating on the day to day micro details that you tend to miss out on the big picture. And now, when the future of job boards is looking at hitting a home run, it will be very short-sighted to not consider these massive changes you need to account for.
Future of Job Boards
Diversity, equity and inclusion are finally becoming the mandate
With Machine Learning adapting to your requirements and need cover time, it can be taught to maintain a very healthy gender ratio as well as make your job board the flag bearer of equal opportunity. There is plenty of research which talks about the benefits of having employees representing different communities. Unconscious human biases get eliminated and the algorithm learns to put together a diverse bunch of qualified people. Inclusion has to be addressed at the job board level. About time!
Soft skills precedence and full disclosure
There are core responsibilities cut our for every employee, but that doesn’t cut it anymore. A plethora of soft skills is where it is at. The future of job boards lie looking past job titles to find essential skill sets. On the other end of the spectrum, the latest mandate (or at least should be) for job boards in 2021 is to include salary information in the job description. This is absolutely essential to eliminate income inequality. Women cannot be paid less than men. We are in 2021.
Employer branding is just as important as employee branding
There is a serious talent crunch. The younger generation wants to exercise its choice to reject and to not settle. They weed out employers as much as employers weed them out. Job seekers now go through the company’s social media pages and websites and make a very informed decision. Employer branding strategies has to be incorporated in order to attract young blood.
Generation Z: the rise
Millennials and Generation Z are taking over the 40+ generation and for good reason. They are in fact touted to be the majority of the workforce in America. And that will slowly spread to the global population at large. Especially since most of the baby boomer generation went into early retirement in 2020, voluntarily and involuntarily.
As a job board, you have to keep up with the shift in consumer base. There is a vast difference in the kind of content the two generation consumes: difference in political, technological, and economic point of views. Therefore, the value propositions that the job boards will be offering are going to be different. The UX has to be a lot cleaner. Minimalism comes at the fore. Filters like ‘Life at company x’ are also extremely important to the younger lot. As should be.
The job search experience should be almost entirely automated and simplified to the tee. All jobs on job boards should be perfectly indexed. Job descriptions should be exhaustive. These can be clubbed with job tags to feed search engine algorithms. Job search tags are extremely helpful when job search alerts are set on daily. They also aid resume-matching criteria.
Social Networking in the future of job boards
The biggest threat to niche job boards are the social media and professional networking sites. Anything like LinkedIn, for example. To go head on with these platforms, job boards need to figure out what makes them super popular for job searches. We can emulate what works for them and plug in any gaps that they have missed.
Gen Z uses professional networking tools to look for job searches. They have no inhibitions in writing to CEO’s directly. Who have also become very accessible on these platforms. Establishing connections which makes you stand out from the crowd, really really helps.
Job boards should not be reduced to windows where millennials only ‘window shop’ and hit the recruitment manager outside the platform.
How do we stop them from leaving the platform?
Think like a professional networking site!
- Apply proper filtering techniques to figure whether or not the applicant matches the job description.
- Based on the candidate’s application history and digital footprint, generate a ranking score for ease of application. These can tell the employer and/or the employee about their professional compatibility.
- And the most important, we have to allow them some sort of instant access to the hiring manager.
Your job board can also build a portal of sorts where candidates can share their accolades and be celebrated at large.
Data and numbers win again
Generation Z believe that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. They are very comfortable with numbers and backend analytics. Real time updates excite them. The future of job boards is to provide their candidates with analytics for each of their interactions.
A few metrics that will keep jobseekers glued to your job board:
- Number of profile views
- Latest job alert that matches their interest
- Most in-demand skills of the day
This will personalise the experience of employees on your job board. These will act as hook points.
Future of Job Boards – The Role of Premium Data Scraping Service
As a job board owner, you have to adapt to the current generations and their way of approaching jobs. You have to keep tabs on what excites them and places where they are active: right from the kind of content they are consuming to the amount of time they spend online. The future of job boards is a lot more holistic.
How do you equip your job board with this and make it relevant in real time?
Job data scraping! With JobsPikr’s premium scraping services, your time is now freed up to focus on what really matters.
