The best candidates could be right next door

Ever had to hire a customer service representative for a bustling office in Austin, Texas that already has customer service reps working overtime to complete the work? How were the results when you posted this opening to the national general-purpose job boards? I would bet that they were not what you had hoped for – resumes from other states, unqualified applicants, and resumes out of your price range. No recruiter has time for results like this.

From mergers and acquisitions, to new technology and innovation, online job boards are in the midst of uncertain times, and recruiters are feeling the effects. Job boards must be able to excel as the unemployment rate steadily decreases and as competition increases rapidly. The competition is appearing in various forms – the new .jobs domain, networking communities, and vertical search engines. How do existing job boards defend their territory against these newcomers while continuing to provide unwavering results to recruiters and jobseekers? More importantly, where do recruiters go in the midst of all the competition? The answers lie in local and niche career boards.

The “industry giants” tend to target all jobseekers on a national level, providing an extraordinary number of applicants to employers. More than 15 million users visit their sites on a monthly basis, so a great many eyes are viewing employers’ job postings. Jobseekers can post resumes, network and search career advice. So, shouldn’t everyone be satisfied? Not necessarily. These sites generate so much traffic that employers are drowning in a sea of unqualified resumes from all over the world. And, jobseekers’ resumes are easily lost among the 15+ million resumes in their databases. “This has created a huge bottleneck for recruiters, who are doing their best to efficiently manage their processes,” as Karen Osofsky of Tiburon Group recognizes. In the wake of this situation, companies are searching for new alternatives to provide them with qualified candidates.

The Strength of Local Job Boards
Newspapers have wised up in recent years. Once reluctant to promote online listings for fear of cannibalizing their print classifieds, the majority of local newspapers now have an online component or affiliate site. Though many are not as robust as national boards, local job boards are emerging with swinging fists and have rapidly become tough competition for national job boards. Local job boards have the ability to reach jobseekers that have an established relationship with the local newspaper, thus providing a very targeted group of candidates for companies. Although national boards can likely provide access to many candidates in any region, a local site maintains its advantage through partnerships on the local level and attracts jobseekers on a more personal and familiar level.

Recruiters benefit from a more manageable candidate database that allows them to easily narrow down searches. According to QuintCareers.com, a recent survey showed that 48 percent of jobseekers were not willing to look at job listings that required relocation, which reinforces the quality of the candidate pools on local boards. Recruiters have a window of opportunity to put additional dollars into localized job boards to better reach these targeted candidates.

The growth associated with local search is a reflection of the growth and usage of search engines. To further investigate the strength of local search, let’s take a look at what the Internet mega-giants have been launching most recently. Google, Yahoo!, and AOL have all launched a local search engine to better target the results they provide to users. The Kelsey Group, a leading provider of strategic research and analysis, forecasts that the local search industry brought in $162 million, and by 2009, they predict that local search will outpace Internet Yellow Pages with growth to $3.4 billion. Competition is fierce among all industries to tap into the wealth of local search, and the recruitment industry is moving in that direction, as well. It is said that history repeats itself, and as local newspapers were once the classified giants before the Internet outpaced them, it looks as though local online boards will join the race, sprinting. All of this said, there are large national companies who do not need the additional task of posting jobs on dozens of local job boards, so there is a very practical alternative. Enter the rapidly growing world of niche job boards.

Get Targeted. Go Niche.
The Herman Trend Alert, written by Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia, noted that after examining shopping trends and the popularity of boutique clothing stores, it is easy to understand why these “boutique” job boards are becoming more popular, and will continue to do so. As an alternative to local job boards or an additional component to recruitment advertising, niche job boards are becoming the wave of the future. Peter Weddle, CEO of WEDDLE’s, the leading publisher of guides to the Internet’s job boards, notes that more money is going to niche boards and they are expanding rapidly. It seems that all major job boards want a piece of the niche arena, but the true niche sites have already capitalized on their value. Industry leaders like CareerBuilder and Monster that focus primarily on exempt jobseekers may have the budget to target niche jobseekers, but how effective are they in providing the best results?

Most general-purpose sites tend to attract more traffic than niche sites overall, but isn’t it more important to have the specific type of traffic you need for a specific opening? Niche boards allow employers to selectively target specific job opportunities to identified types of candidates. According to The Herman Trend Alert, niche sites that specialize by career field, industry, or by geographic focus are favored by 78 percent of recruiters. Only 17 percent of the respondents preferred general job boards like Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com, and only three percent selected their organization's own website. In addition, 84 percent of recruiters find the highest quality candidates on niche sites, so there is a clear opportunity for general-purpose sites to enter the niche arena. However, it appears that many recruiters do not seem to feel confident that the large sites have value there yet.

When it comes to jobseekers, research indicates that more candidates get jobs through niche sites than through general-purpose job boards. Candidates prefer to use niche sites that cater to their geographic location or career industry to avoid wasting time searching jobs that do not meet their needs.

Finding Your Niche
There are a number of existing niche job boards and more are emerging daily due to the low barriers to entry. However, since niche boards cater to such a targeted audience looking for specific types of jobs or geographic locations, it is quite easy to reach them through online search.

According to a recent survey by Nicheboards.com, niche sites are easier to find on Google and smaller portals than other job boards. For example, EmploymentGuide.com targets hourly and skilled jobseekers, and the site is ranked second for “drivers jobs” out of 10.9 million results. EmploymentGuide.com achieved this ranking naturally, which is in contrast to the sponsored websites who pay to appear in the search regardless of their relevancy to the keywords entered. Let me explain the difference - Natural results are based on sites’ relevancy to the keywords searched and are located in the center of search results while sponsored listings are paid for and are displayed in the space above and/or to the right of the natural results. Natural search ranking is key to finding a successful job board because the higher the site appears in the results, the more relevant it is to what is being searched. For employers, it means a larger candidate pool of qualified talent.

The Best Combination
Peter Weddle has said that reporting on true demographics has become a problem for the recruitment industry. He adds that recruiters are not as concerned with the 15+ million jobseekers that visit large job boards. What recruiters really want to know is how many engineers are visiting your site, if they are recruiting engineers. And even better, they want to know the number of engineers from the particular location from which they are recruiting. In order to meet recruiters’ needs, job boards must learn to cater to recruiters and jobseekers on the local level and concentrate on a target niche, simultaneously. Job boards that provide specific jobs for a select audience will have the ability to produce better results for employers and maintain customers. There are a few existing job boards that have been able to leverage localized and niche arenas through print and online. This recruitment advertising option provides an even greater reach in a bundled investment.

Whatever the strategy, recruiters should become expert consumers in the industry and be familiar with the offerings of various job boards in relation to the type of candidate desired. Recruiting is like shopping for any product – you want the best investment for your budget. Just remember that the best candidates are at times hidden among thousands of unqualified candidates in distant cities, and they just may be your neighbors.