Driving revenue for your dental industry association can be a challenge. When you need to increase revenue, you can’t always turn to increasing the cost of membership dues. Doing so could turn away prospective and current members, which in turn could decrease member recruitment and retention.
The trick is to boost non-dues revenue while still delivering great member value. An effective approach is to build an online career center for your dental industry association.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for dental services is expected to grow three percent from 2019 to 2029. The demand is expected to increase as the population ages and as research continues to link oral health to overall health.
Job prospects for dentists are expected to be relatively good. However, the number of graduates from dental programs has increased in recent years, which means there might be competition for jobs.
At YM Careers, we’re seeing these trends reflected in our dental industry association customers. Between 2020 and mid-2021, these associations saw a 64 percent increase in job postings to their online job boards as well as a 58 percent increase in job board revenue.
In this environment, building a robust online career center for your association can result in big benefits. Consider these points:
- A career center focused on your industry is extremely targeted, giving your career center a competitive advantage over general job board sites. Employers will pay to post job opportunities to a niche career center for access to your desirable dental industry members.
- Bringing in money from your career center can help you retain and diversify revenue so you can continue to provide valuable member benefits without needing to increase membership dues fees.
- Through your career center, your association can become the go-to destination for career development for your members throughout their careers.
What to look for in job board software for your association
Look for job board software that can help in three key areas:
1. Offer strong job posting and distribution tools.
Employers in your industry need to fill jobs that require specific skills and knowledge. By offering a job board, your dental industry association can provide employers with access to highly qualified candidates – your members and prospective members.
As a baseline, your career center should offer employers these capabilities:
- Job postings – Employers can pay a fee to easily post job opportunities.
- Candidate screening and management – Provide employers with functionality to screen and manage applicants.
Take your career center to the next level by offering options to maximize exposure of employers’ job postings, improve the return on their investment, and drive more 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 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 – Give employers the opportunity to place banner ads on your job board, directing job seekers from your career center to the employers’ job posting(s).
2. Provide unmatched career resources.
As dental workers look for jobs, your association can provide the ability for job seekers in your industry to easily search and apply for relevant job opportunities. But the ability to find job opportunities is just the first step. To take it even further, also provide job seekers with career planning resources to help them land the job and grow their careers.
For example, using Career Planning Portal from YM Careers, you can provide your members with:
- Career pathing – Give your members a clear roadmap to reach their professional goals with an online tool to visualize the steps from the job they have today to their next great job.
- Career advice – Provide career advice, with professional resources and coaching, including articles, tips, best practices, résumé reviews, and access to career coaches.
- Career insights – Give members detailed data, including salary, education and skills requirements, activities performed, outlooks for job growth, related jobs and more, to help members make informed career decisions.
3. Promote your career center.
For your career center to become the ultimate career destination for the dental industry, employers and job seekers must know about it. But, marketing your job board and driving sales can be difficult if you don’t have dedicated staff to identify and connect with employers or work with recruitment ad agencies. An ideal approach is to work with a third-party team that has experience in the dental industry.
For example, YM Careers offers services to market jobs to the professionals in your industry, driving them to your career center as the go-to source for their career growth in the dental field. YM Careers also offers job posting sales services that can help you showcase your job board to employers who need it. Services include:
- Outreach – The team reaches out to employers who have relevant job openings that are not yet on your career center.
- Messaging – The team explains why employers should use your job board to access the high quality talent in your member base.
- Sales – Dedicated career center sales representatives, an ad agency team, a lead generation team, and a sales leadership team work together with employers to choose the right recruitment product and channels to attract high quality candidates and optimize each employer’s budget.
Learn more
YM Careers is the industry leader for niche job boards. But we provide more than just software. We also help you drive more traffic to and revenue from your career center. Learn how to turn your career center into a revenue machine with the top 5 proven member benefits sure to boost your dental association’s non-dues revenue: Download the whitepaper.
