There is quite some controversy about the usefulness of job board sites from both the candidate and the employer side. For candidates, on the one hand, it´s an easy way to apply to many jobs but, on the other hand, it´s almost too easy and since with you many others apply as well, often it is not very effective. For employers, on the one hand, it gives access to many profiles, but on the other hand, it is often difficult to really find the good profiles required for their vacancy since every job posting gets bombarded with reactions. And although job boards were very popular some years ago, here is why we think that major job board sites aren´t as useful anymore as they seem:
- Candidates applying to everything
The fact that there are loads and loads of candidates in a job board´s database could be considered a good thing but also makes job board sites not always the most useful recruitment tool. Not only are there a lot of outdated resumes in there from candidates that uploaded their candidacy but after finding a job didn´t remove it again, but there are also a lot of halfheartedly attempted profiles on all job boards. Resumes full of errors, typos and incomplete candidate profiles are a bit too common. Furthermore, many candidates just apply for tons of jobs without really being qualified for them, making the screening process for the recruiter or hiring manager very cumbersome.
- No passive candidates
One of the biggest disadvantages of job board sites for employers is that there is no access to passive candidates. And sometimes, these are the best candidates for the job. On job board sites, you will only find candidates who uploaded their profile because they were somewhat actively looking for a job. Passive candidates will most likely never be on a job board simply because they won´t take the proactive act of making a profile. This makes job board sites much less useful than, for example, working with a staffing agency because they do have a large database of active and passive candidates making your search process much more targeted and effective.
- Social media has taken over
Whereas before job board sites where the place to go for both candidates and employers, nowadays, social media have largely taken over. The biggest change came obviously with LinkedIn, being a professional social network that was specifically designed for the purpose of finding employees with specific skills and experience. And of course, for both employers and candidates, it has major networking potential. Although LinkedIn seems the most apparent platform that has taken over from job board sites, also other social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Snapchat, are used more and more for networking purposes and for digitalizing part of the recruitment process.
- No room for employee referrals
Good people know good people and employee referrals are highly efficient when it comes to recruiting great candidates. With the traditional job boards, there is no such thing as employee referrals since you will just receive hundreds and hundreds of applications and even if somebody in that pile would have been recommended by an employee, they probably won´t apply via the job board but will come to your attention via that specific employee. With, for example, LinkedIn there is a possibility to see if candidates are connected to people in your company, but with candidates that come in via job board sites, you won´t have this knowledge directly.
To be fair, job boards are not all bad, there are very few tools out there that give you instant access to thousands of resumes. However, this large database, that is not always up to date, is also very time consuming and therefore might not be as useful for a recruiter or hiring manager as they seem.
What is your experience with job board sites? Do you find them useful? We would love to read about your experience in the comments section.
