How to Get Association Members Their Dream Jobs

Offering an online career center is an ideal way to start providing the career-related benefits your members seek.

But your job board can be so much more than just a place to post jobs. You can transform it into a true career center, where your members and other job seekers in your industry or profession can: 

• Plan and research their entire careers – from student to retiree 
• Find their next great jobs  
• Discover resources to help them land the jobs they’re seeking 
• Connect with employers, mentors, and learning opportunities to advance their careers 

An online career center helps employers in your industry, too. Your job board gives them access to highly qualified candidates (your members and other job seekers in your industry) to fill jobs that require specific skills and knowledge. 

By providing the value your association members want and the capabilities that companies in your industry seek, your association benefits as well. For example, you can: 

• Generate non-dues revenue by charging employers a fee to get their job openings in front of your members. 
• Acquire new members by limiting access for non-members. You can then capture non-member information and use it in marketing efforts to drive new members.  
• Acquire new learners by promoting your association’s professional learning programs and courses on your job board, and by suggesting relevant courses related to a user’s career path and job searches.  
• Engage and retain members by providing a high-value benefit and serving as the go-to recruitment and career advancement resource in your industry or profession. 

An online job board is the foundation for a robust online career center. As an association for your industry or profession, you have a unique opportunity to make your job board stand out from the crowd. 

Here’s how: Common job boards, such as Indeed, LinkedIn, and Monster are general job sites that cast a wide net – for job seekers and employers. But as an organization for your industry or profession, you can provide job seekers with a focused list of job opportunities. You can also provide employers with a stream of highly qualified candidates they can’t find anywhere else. 

Discover how you can help employers win the war for talent, in a way that drives non-dues revenue – while also growing your role as a valuable career destination to your members.

Watch the webinar

Connect job seekers with hiring managers 

To give job seekers and employers a great online experience, look for job board software that’s built for associations and supports the following capabilities: 

• Job search – Allow job seekers to easily search and apply for jobs from their mobile devices.  
• Email job matching – Automatically send jobs to relevant job seekers via email when they’re posted – even reaching passive job seekers who may not be actively looking, but may be interested in just the right career opportunity. 
• Personalized search and recommendations – Increase engagement and job views by recommending opportunities to job seekers based on their prior searches. 
• Job postings – Allow employers to pay a fee and easily post job opportunities online. 
• Candidate screening and management – Provide employers with functionality to attract, screen, and manage applicants. 
• High ROI employer products – Offer hiring managers options that maximize exposure of their job postings and improve their return on investment while driving revenue for your organization. For example: 
• Job alert email – Introduce a job email to your members. Employers are often willing to pay extra for this distribution of their jobs to potential candidates. 

• Jobs feed or widget – Add one of these to your member and prospective member e-newsletters with recently posted jobs that employers pay extra to promote. 
• Banner advertising – Allow employers to maximize their recruitment efforts by placing banner ads on your job board that direct job seekers to the employers’ job posting(s).  
• SEO and job distribution – Optimize every job posting for search engines, and reach candidates through social media, email, mobile channels, and sophisticated programmatic advertising. 
• Advanced data, reporting, and analytics – Empower your staff with deep knowledge of job board sales, performance, and user behavior to grow membership and revenue. 

Help students and new graduates kickstart their careers. Community Brands research shows that 35 percent of association members join a professional organization as a student or new graduate. 

For example, integrate YM Careers’ InternBoard with your job board, or use it to create a stand-alone intern board. Either way, internship seekers can easily:  

• Create their own accounts and profiles, plus add résumés and cover letters 
• Search internship postings and apply directly within the board or externally by following employers’ instructions 
• Set up alerts to be notified when a new well-matched position is posted 

Take the next step 

Your organization’s focus gives your career center a competitive advantage over most job sites. With some proven approaches and modern software, your association can draw on that advantage to become the ultimate destination for connecting job seekers with hiring managers in your industry or profession.