Promoting Your Association’s Job Board

Learning how to promote a job board benefits you through increased engagement and benefits your members through ongoing job opportunities. A Community Brands study shows that job opportunities are tied for the top reason that people join a membership organization. Therefore, offering a comprehensive job board can set your association apart from the competition.

Additionally, employers will benefit from your association’s job board. A niche job board helps employers find the most qualified individuals for the job from the start. This element saves employers time, resources and effort, giving them more reasons to post their open listings on your job board.

How can your association enjoy all of the advantages of hosting a job board? Continue reading to learn how to promote and market your niche job board so that every party can get the most out of it.

The Main Benefits of Niche Job Boards

A niche job board allows professionals in your industry to quickly find job postings without having to sift through mostly irrelevant ads on other websites. As an employer or association, you can capitalize on niche job boards to increase website traffic and engagement and find the best talent for specific roles.

There are four benefits of niche job boards you should keep in mind as you look to attract candidates:

• Increased focus: A niche job board is more focused than general job boards. This benefit allows you to get particular and technical from the get-go, allowing you to make your posting easy to find on the internet. The technicalities will attract more qualified, relevant candidates, saving employers time and energy.
• Brand: This is a great opportunity to make your company’s brand stand out. This is likely a potential employee’s first exposure to your company, and you can make it abundantly clear to them what your company stands for without having to waste words explaining your industry.
• Value-add services: Often, niche job boards have specialized services that tailor to employer needs. These specialized services can help you track your marketing strategies and tailor them to better suit your audience based on what you find.
• Network-building: As an association, hosting a job board for your industry will keep current members satisfied with your services, encouraging them to keep renewing their memberships. It’ll also attract new members, as job seekers will visit your website and potentially become interested in what you have to offer.

By keeping the above points in mind, you can ensure everything about your job board and your job listings can benefit you, your members and potential candidates.

Promoting Your Job Board to Employers, Members and Candidates

An association job board can help job candidates find industry-specific positions that may otherwise be buried under hundreds of other less-relevant opportunities. These platforms are also the perfect opportunity for employers to advertise particularly niche job listings that they may have trouble filling otherwise. How do you get employers to post their jobs on your job board and members and candidates to apply for said jobs?

Here are steps you can take to help your job board reach your intended audiences:

1. Offer intuitive navigation: Ensure your job board is located in your website’s main navigation menu so that visitors always have access to it. If you bury your job board behind numerous pages and click-throughs, employers and applicants will likely miss it entirely.
2. Communicate with members: The best way to attract employers to your job board is to tell your members about the space so that they can inform their employers. Let them know on a consistent basis through newsletters, emails, in-person meetings, postings in the office and any other method of communication you use. Using word-of-mouth marketing to your advantage never hurts.
3. Invite employers with new listings: Whenever you post a new job listing, make sure to include a link or course of action for employers viewing the post who also want to advertise a job through your job board. Even if employers have already posted their jobs to another website, you can convince them to advertise across multiple job boards.
4. Conduct research: Since your job board is industry-specific, you need to keep up with your industry’s trends. Look through relevant social media hashtags to kickstart your research, using them in your own content to reach more individuals.
5. Search LinkedIn users: Finding LinkedIn users in your industry could lead to some positive connections with employers that will bring new listings to your website.
6. Attend industry events: Getting involved in industry events such as trade shows and conferences can be an effective way to build network connections that could lead to job board listings.

As you explore the above steps, be sure to note what does and doesn’t work for your particular job board. Every industry is different, so you may find that certain strategies get you more results than others. Over time, you’ll be able to find an ideal strategy for your industry.

How to Advertise a Job Board

Because your website isn’t solely a job board, you’ll need to build a solid job board marketing strategy to let people know why your job board is one of the best places for employers to post jobs.

Here are advertising tricks you can use to promote your association’s job board, communicating that you’re one of the best places for employers to post niche jobs and applicants to apply for niche jobs:

• Blog posts: If your website has a blog, your job board deserves a post on it. Making that announcement in the form of a blog post is a smart way to let members know about it. Plus, it can serve as a way for users to find your job board when they’re using more general terms in search engines — they may not be searching for a specific position just yet.
• PPC ads: Investing in pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google is an effective way to grow your job board and monitor its growth as you build your marketing strategy.
• Press releases: Depending on how your association functions and your industry, putting out a press release may be a productive way to launch your job board.
• Social media posts and ads: There’s no question as to whether you should be utilizing social media to promote your job board. This strategy is the best way to inform your followers of your job board’s creation, giving them immediate updates about new listings and any changes along the way. Of course, social media is also an effective place for ads — Facebook and Twitter ads can be particularly impactful.
• Incentives: Providing incentives to employers and job seekers often leads to shares and renewed interest in your association and job board. An example would be offering a discounted membership to join your association.
• Business cards: Give influential members of your association a supply of business cards to hand out to friends, colleagues and anyone else they think will be interested in your job board.

The ultimate goal of your job board marketing strategy is to have a brand and leads that pave the way for increased traffic and engagement, which ultimately create more revenue. However, your job board marketing strategy doesn’t have to be too in-depth to be effective. As you explore different advertising options, you’ll slowly craft the perfect marketing process for your association and industry.

How to Make a Job Description More Appealing

The job descriptions on your job board must be appealing. If a job doesn’t sound interesting in the job description, job seekers will likely scroll past — or look for jobs on an entirely different website instead. As an employer, you must ensure every listing you post is informative and engaging.

Explore the following tips to keep in mind when writing catchy job advertisements:

1. Create a good job title: Make sure the job title is catchy and accurately encompasses what the job entails. Avoid wasting time trying to be too creative, as you want to use a common phrase that applicants will be searching online.
2. Add a short overview: Begin your job description with a short paragraph that outlines the job. Ensure it’s engaging and gets candidates excited to keep reading and apply.
3. Review growth and development: When listing responsibilities, focus on how the position contributes to the business as a whole and how it can lead to advancement within the company and the applicant’s overall career.
4. Get input: Find current employees to give their input when you’re writing a job description for their role or a role similar to theirs. This approach will give you a unique perspective, cluing you into important concepts you should include in the job description.
5. Create urgency: Even if you’re not under pressure to fill a position, you want candidates to feel compelled to apply quickly. Adding deadlines, position start dates and other similar information can encourage applicants to apply now rather than leave the page and forget to come back to it later.
6. Discuss compensation: Of course, compensation is a major part of the job search process. Make your compensation rate visible on your job listing so potential employees don’t have to go searching for it.
7. Convey culture: Consider your company’s culture. Do you work hard to create a diverse workforce? What unique opportunities and perks do you create for your employees? Highlight those concepts in your job listings to help applicants understand why they’d be a good fit for the role.
8. Use unbiased language: Take special care to check that your language isn’t biased toward one gender over the other. Being inclusive in your job listings will help you reach a wider, more experienced audience and encourage more applications.
9. Get rid of modifiers and superlatives: Avoid using language that sets overly high standards for your company. Paying attention to the details will help you be realistic and honest about what it’s like to work at your organization.
10. Be creative: Add some uniqueness to your job description so that your listings will stand out among hundreds of others. This creativity may be in the way you format the post, what documents you want applicants to submit or the tone you use throughout the listing. While you should remain professional, a bit of spunk can help your company garner appeal.

How to Make a Job Advertisement More Attractive

Beyond the job description, a compelling job ad will feature a few general components that make it stand out from others.

Here are a few points to keep in mind:

1. Make it personal: Imagine the ideal employee you’re looking to hire and write to them. Picture what they hope to gain from the job so you can demonstrate how they can receive that when working for your company.
2. Keep readability in mind: Typically, job seekers are looking at dozens of job postings and don’t have time to decipher yours if it’s unclear at first glance. Keep everything straightforward and easy to read.
3. Think outside of the box: Infographics can be a powerful way to catch a job seeker’s eye and stand out from the rest of the listings on a job board. While you shouldn’t overload your job ads with imagery, one or two can generate interest.
4. Add links: Linking to videos or relevant posts on your website is an effective way to market your job listing. By providing links to your company’s content, you get applicants to check out your website and learn more about your company, which is always helpful.
5. Preach your values: Don’t let a visitor finish reading your job advertisement and be unsure of your values. Let them know exactly what your company stands for in terms of its values and mission.

There’s a fine line between being overly creative and being too stuffy, so try to experiment with different language, visuals and formatting until you find a good fit for your particular company and industry.

Contact YM Careers for Your Association’s Job Board

At YM Careers, we’re equipped with the expertise to help you increase your association’s membership numbers by enhancing the way you reach them. Offering a niche job board is a remarkable opportunity for your members to see job opportunities within their industry, keeping them happy with your services and attracting new members.

If you’re interested in our job board software for associations, request a demo here to see how you can advance your members’ careers. If you have other questions or are looking to partner with us, please contact us to learn more.