An association’s career center is a powerful way to deliver greater member value, drive member engagement, and increase revenue.
To get the most out of your association’s career center, it’s important to think about it as more than just a place to post job openings. Your career center should provide members (and non-members) with a wealth of career development resources to help them in every stage of their careers. These resources can include everything from helpful articles and tips to resume reviews and access to career coaches.
Also, it’s critically important to continually drive people to your career center. Doing this:
- Alerts members to a valuable member benefit
- Shows non-members the added value of being a member of your organization
- Drives traffic to your career center, thereby increasing the return on investment (ROI) of the employers who post jobs on your job board
So, let’s take a look at a real-life example of an association that used these approaches to level up their career center.
Running a world-class career center: a real-world story
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), is the foremost expert, convener, and thought leader on issues impacting today’s evolving workplaces. And, with more than 300,000 human resources and business executive members in 165 countries, SHRM impacts the lives of more than 115 million workers and families globally.
In 2019, SHRM wanted to take their career center to the next level. Partnering with YM Careers by Community Brands, here are some of the ways SHRM levelled up their career center:
Launching new SHRM-branded career center
YM Careers helped SHRM create a custom-designed career center that includes a job board and career development resources. The launch included developing a new logo for the career center (SHRM HR Jobs) that incorporated the organization’s brand. Furthermore, the YM Careers team helped SHRM format and move files (such as job seeker and employer records and passwords) from the organization’s previous job board to the new site.
Promoting the career center
Working with YM Careers, SHRM raised awareness of the career center by promoting it in multiple ways, including:
- Placing the career center prominently in the SHRM web site home page navigation as a place for people to search for jobs and a place for employers to post jobs
- Incorporating navigational banners in strategic area of the web site to direct people to the career center
- Including the career center in the organization’s member eNewsletter
- Selling job opportunity ad placements to employers
SHRM Career Center Launch Promotion
Putting job opportunities in the hands of members
SHRM also followed best practices suggested by YM Careers to move job opportunities beyond the job board and present them to members. This included:
- Adding an SHRM HR Jobs section in the member eNewsletter that includes recent featured job opportunities
- Promoting featured jobs (and useful career development articles) through SHRM’s LinkedIn and Twitter accounts
- Sending SHRM-branded Job Flash emails, which YM Careers creates and sends to members and other job seekers
By actively putting job opportunities in front of members and job seekers, SHRM is able to:
- Remind members of the benefits of being an SHRM member
- Increase traffic to the SHRM job board
- Put job opportunities in front of both active and passive job seekers, which increases views of job opportunities, in turn giving employers who are paying to post jobs with SHRM more value and driving more revenue for the organization
