Even in this brave new age of Twitter and LinkedIn, job boards are a fact of life for most recruiters. But how many times have you thought, “This job board sucks! Why don’t they just <insert your brilliant idea>?” Every day?
Well, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a list you can send to your favorite career site or job board vendor (and if these requests seem foreign to you, then please tell me who you’re using! I’ll switch!)
Don’t make it hard for me to buy: If I want to purchase your services, make it easy. Don’t make me wait to talk to a salesperson if I don’t want to — let me buy online. If I don’t want to pay by credit card, then send me an invoice. And if I do want to talk to someone, please make them honest, intelligent, and understandable!
Don’t make your site hard to use: Listen, my life doesn’t revolve around your job board — really. So make it as easy and obvious to post a job as it would be, say, to buy a book on Amazon. Assume I won’t read your detailed FAQ. If I want to search your resumes, then again, make it easy and powerful. Please.
Don’t make me do all the work: I have a pile of positions to fill. So make your job site send me reminders, or resumes, or pretty much anything — and don’t expect me to remember when my package expires.
Don’t refuse to play others: Even though I may love your job board, it’s probably not the only tool in my recruitment belt. So let me feed my jobs via XML into your board if I want to, ok? And if I use one of those super-cool all-in-one resume and applicant search tools, please try to integrate with it — even if the vendor isn’t helpful. After all, I’m your customer.
Don’t make job posting painful: Sure, everyone has their own personal idea of pain, but forcing all of us to post in exactly the same way is just silly. Give me an option to load in multiple position descriptions. Tie into other tools (see #4, please).
Don’t sell me something every single moment I’m online: Monster and CareerBuilder, I’m talking to you! Interstitials in job boards should be outlawed. And more silly videos that I have to watch? Nope. No thanks.
Don’t sacrifice speed for ‘gee whiz’: Ok, perhaps I’m shallow enough to be wowed by your latest and greatest ‘feature’ — once. But if that same feature slows down everything else I do on your site, I might just leave and not come back. You don’t want that, do you?
Do listen to me: I realize that recruiters are sometimes not the easiest folks to reach, but occasionally I do have a useful comment. When I do, please listen to me (or at least pretend to)! Who knows — I might have the idea for your next great feature!
Do regularly improve and update your site: Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Apparently not — I’ve worked on job sites that have gone two or three years between revisions. That’s 60 or 70 years in Internet time.
Do give me reporting: How can I justify spending on your site if you can’t give me the numbers I need? Tell me how many times my postings show up, how often they’re accessed, how many applies I receive, how I compare to your other customers … the list goes on and on. If you’re listening to me (see #8), you know what I want.