When your association is looking for new job board software to drive an online career center, it can be a tough decision. There are so many providers in the marketplace today. How do you know which one is right for your organization?
Here are three essential questions to ask any job board software vendor you are considering:
1. Why should our association invest in a career center?
An online career center has big potential for driving value for your association, your members, and your industry. It allows you to help members find and land their next great job. And, by providing members with the job and career development opportunities they seek, your association can deliver a high-value member benefit that attracts new members and keeps members around long-term.
An online career center also allows you to connect industry employers with your highly qualified job-seeking members. And, by offering employers the ability to pay to post their job openings on your online job board and get their job openings in front of candidates in other ways, your online career center can be a great source of revenue for your association.
Be sure that the job board software vendor you choose understands the full potential of an online career center for your association and provides solutions to help you make that vision a reality.
2. What should a career center do?
A career center should be a source of engagement and help for your members. It should allow you to support members at various career stages. It should also be the go-to destination for all career development opportunities for members and other job-seekers in your industry.
Make sure the job board software vendor you’re considering offers a full range of functionality for each audience, including:
- For members
- The ability to easily search and apply for relevant job opportunities and receive job recommendations based on their prior searches and profiles
- Access to professional resources, including articles, career advice and coaching, and résumé critiques
- The ability to see who they know at organizations that are advertising jobs to give them a leg up when they apply
- For employers
- Ability to easily post job openings to a targeted group of qualified candidates for their industry
- Ability to find, screen, and manage job applicants
- Additional options, such as job alert emails, that maximize exposure of their job postings and improve the return on their investment
- For your organization
- A custom-designed job board and member experience that promotes your association’s unique value
- Advanced data, reporting, and analytics to empower your staff with deep knowledge of job board sales, trends, performance, and other data to help grow membership and revenue
- Tools and services to help drive non-dues revenue
3. How can we generate revenue from an online career center?
At a minimum, an online career center should drive new memberships and generate revenue from industry employers who pay to post jobs to access your highly qualified members. But there are more opportunities to bring in revenue from your career center. In fact, you can establish a true revenue engine behind your career center.
Look for a job board provider with a dedicated marketing team that can:
- Focus on driving engagement, traffic, brand awareness, and revenue through marketing and lead generation efforts.
- Ensure your job board success through marketing strategies to drive job seekers and employers’ paid jobs to your job board.
- Have a strategy in place to prospect and acquire brand new employers with marketing campaigns that provide broader coverage, create leads for the sales team, and drive e-commerce sales.
Also, look for a job board provider that has a recruitment advertising sales team that can help you:
- Save money if your association cannot financially support having a dedicated sales staff solely for the job board.
- Save time by building necessary custom packages based on employers’ needs.
- Reach employers proactively by identifying and contacting employers that need your members to fill roles.
- Leverage agencies by building relationships with large recruitment agencies.
