New sales strategies for job boards and other recruitment marketplaces

This month’s gathering of dozens of leaders of job boards globally — our 9th since August 2024 — discussed how job boards and other recruitment marketplaces sell to our two customer groups: employers and candidates.

Employers tend to pay our bills, but many (most?) job boards also think of candidates as customers. We do so not because they buy a lot (and usually nothing) but because we want to treat them well.

When you’re trying to increase sales to employers, traffic from candidates, or some other metric, do you try to do more of what you’ve already been doing? Completely overhaul your product, pricing, or other aspects of your business? Something else?

A big thank you to Job Boards Connect for sponsoring!

Here is a written summary of the conversation:

Main Themes:

• Evolving Sales Strategies in a Changing Market: The discussion centers around the need for new and adaptive selling strategies for job boards in light of global upheaval and market stress. The participants explore various approaches to attract both employers (advertisers) and candidates, and discuss the effectiveness of different models.
• Brand Building and Visibility as a Foundation for Sales: Amy emphasizes that before sales can occur, a strong brand with market visibility is crucial. This involves tailored marketing efforts across different customer groups (overall brand, B2C candidates, B2B employers).
• Re-evaluating Product Offerings and Focusing on Core Strengths: Matt shares his experiences with unsuccessful peripheral product ventures (courses, retention services, enhanced employer branding) and concludes that the “golden rule” is to “double down on what you do” as a job board, focusing on “increase quality applications.”
• Exploring Performance-Based Pricing Models: Matt and Steven discuss the growing interest in performance-based models (e.g., cost per application) as a potential future for job boards, offering clients choice and aligning pricing with results. However, they acknowledge the complexities and the fact that “hiring is not” fully within the job board’s control.
• The Potential and Challenges of Social Media for Recruitment: Social media is identified as an interesting area, particularly for reaching passive and hyper-local audiences through campaign-led approaches, but the platforms’ historical limitations for job advertising are noted.
• The Debate Around Job Boards Entering the Recruitment Agency Space: The discussion touches upon the risks and benefits of job boards offering recruitment services (placements). While the potential for higher rewards exists, it can “step on the toes of your clients.” Examples like Reed keeping their job board and recruitment agency separate, and Young Capital’s model, are discussed. The core issue identified by Jim is that “you can’t run a job board and be a head hunter” effectively as they are different businesses.
• The Impact of AI Career Coaches and the Importance of Platform Engagement: Jim raises the challenge posed by AI career coach platforms and emphasizes that client effectiveness is tied to the time recruiters spend actively engaged on a job board platform. He argues that simply driving traffic isn’t enough; fostering an environment where recruiters actively search and interact is key.
• The Limitations and Nuances of “Cost Per Hire”: The participants discuss the complexity of the cost-per-hire metric, noting the lack of standardized formulas and the frequent exclusion of internal staff time in employer calculations. While Steven engages in cost-per-hire conversations with clients to demonstrate value, the charging model remains separate, focusing on the cost to advertise divided by candidates placed.
• The Resilience and Benefits of Subscription-Based Models: Steven advocates for subscription models, highlighting their stability during economic downturns and the benefit of continuous revenue streams compared to transactional models where a loss of contact can immediately impact sales. Ethan initially disagrees but later details his successful implementation of “rolling contracts” (a form of subscription). Christian further elaborates on the advantages of annual commitments and prepaid annual subscriptions for predictable revenue and SaaS metrics.
• A Shift Towards Authentic, Customer-Centric Sales and Marketing: Ethan delivers a passionate critique of outdated sales tactics (mass marketing, generic messaging, overuse of outreach automation, local presence dialing). He emphasizes the need for “authentic” messaging focused on the customer’s needs and insights (“stop talking about you start talking about them”). He recommends using data marketplaces like clay.com to gather customer intelligence and tailoring outreach accordingly.
• The Power of Authentic Personal Branding and Video on LinkedIn: Ethan stresses the importance of authentic personal branding on LinkedIn, sharing meaningful insights and data rather than just company promotions. He believes video will become increasingly important on the platform and encourages participants to embrace it, being themselves rather than manufactured personas.
• Connecting with the “Why” and Emotional Drivers of Customers: Steven introduces Simon Sinek’s “The Power of Why,” suggesting that understanding and appealing to the emotional reasons behind customer decisions (both employers and candidates) is crucial for success. He shares College Recruiter’s mantra (“every student and recent graduate deserves a great career”) as an example of tapping into this emotional core.
• Focusing on Niche Strengths Rather Than Directly Competing with Market Leaders: Steven advises smaller job boards to focus on their niche strengths and the “scraps left by big organizations” rather than trying to outcompete them directly on their terms (price, volume). He argues that understanding and serving a specific customer deeply offers protection against larger, generalist players.
• Indeed’s Push for ATS Data Integration and Potential Shift Towards a Cost-Per-Hire Model: Ben raises a significant development: Indeed’s intention to mandate that ATS systems pass back comprehensive data (beyond applications, to interview and hire stages). He suggests this could pave the way for Indeed to potentially shift towards a cost-per-hire model in the future, posing a competitive challenge given their resources.

Most Important Ideas and Facts:

• The market demands adaptable and customer-centric sales strategies.Ethan: “what we have been doing no longer works.”
• Ethan: “your message needs to be authentic and not about you but about the customer.”
• Building a strong brand and achieving market visibility are prerequisites for effective sales.Amy: “before we get to that point of being able to sell we need to have a brand that’s built and has a reputation and so that people are aware of us.”
• Focusing on core job board functionalities and delivering quality applications is a sound strategy.Matt: “double down on what you do and um you know we’re a jobs board so how can we do being a jobs board better … increase quality applications.”
• Performance-based pricing models are gaining traction and offer potential for aligning value and cost.Matt: “I do see that as a future for job boards not all but some where they are billing clients based on what they have actually done.”
• Authenticity and providing value are key to effective social media engagement.Ethan: “if your posts from your company or your individual account are about why your company is great … i don’t read it and neither does anybody else. if you share a really meaningful and keyword of the day this is the free consulting authentic be yourself…”
• Subscription models offer stability and predictable revenue, especially in volatile markets.Steven: “one thing that helped us tremendously was the subscription model… where you keep charging them until they tell you to stop.”
• Christian: “with annual commitment and and I got to tell you both companies were terrified of it both sales teams initially terrified of asking for that much commitment when indeed is come and go as you please. if you add value commitment and service level to the annual commitment it is really really meaningful and an expectation I would set…”
• Directly competing with dominant players like Indeed on their terms is often a losing strategy for niche boards.Steven: “if you’re competing with Indeed it’s really unlikely that you’re going to be able to offer an employer what Indeed does but better cheaper faster right i think that’s a losing battle.”
• Understanding and appealing to the emotional “why” behind customer decisions can significantly improve engagement and sales.Steven (referencing Simon Sinek): “people don’t go into recruiting because they want to minimize the cost per hire for some big corporation they go into recruiting because they want to help people… if we can tap into the emotion of our customers the candidates the advertisers … we’re going to have a lot more success.”
• Indeed’s move to mandate ATS data sharing could lead to a broader adoption of cost-per-hire models in the future.Ben: “Indeed are going to try and force the ATS’s to pass back data to them in terms of uh not just applications but also uh to interview and to hire… I can see a path six months down the line where they know how well they’re converting through to higher when indeed sits on a very large cash pile suddenly decides that’s the model that they want to roll roll out as their standard model.”

Quotes:

• Steven Rothberg: “…we should talk about selling strategies and I think that’s become even more important just with all the the you know global upheaval the the stress in the marketplace…”
• Amy: “…selling sort of almost at the end of that line so let’s bring it back to what do we need to do to ensure that we’ve got visibility within the market to then the sales will then follow.”
• Matt: “I’ve really learned that I guess the golden rule for any business wherever you are which is to double down on what you do and um you know we’re a jobs board so how can we do being a jobs board better um and I’ve boiled that down to basically three words increase quality applications…”
• Ethan Bloomfield: “keep doing what you’re doing more do not do that right now… what we have been doing no longer works… stop talking about you start talking about them… be authentic and be you.”
• Jim: “…if my recruiters are using your job site I’m getting better hires so if you’re going to sell to the client you got to figure out a way to get them to stay on your platform that’s the hard part…”
• Christian: “prepaid annual is the most important thing that ever existed because when you’re selling subscription you start to sound like SAS…”
• Steven Rothberg (referencing mantra): “we believe that every student and recent graduate deserves a great career.”
• Ben: “…if you don’t want to play by that rule then they’re not going to do the you know quick apply into your ATS integration i think that’s the it’s like they the carrot and a stick indeed would choose the stick and that’s how they’re going to enforce this.”