Advertise a Job: How Choosing the Wrong Job Site Could Cost You Thousands!

<div class="grey-callout"><h2>Key Takeaways</h2><ul>
<li>Deep dive: If you take time to research, then you'll know where your applicants should find your advert. View the job boards on both desktops and mobile devices.</li>
<li>Choose the right job boards: Select those that have a price structure that will allow you to control your budget.</li>
<li>Monitor and adjust: Track the performance of your advert and make necessary adjustments.</li>
</ul></div>

Of all the Applicant Attraction Channels, I recommend that if you have the internal capacity and capability, you should use online job sites for most vacancies. You can achieve great results with a bit of time, effort, and relatively minimal cost. This is why I have provided a detailed step-by-step guide on how to choose enough online job sites.

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Note: If you decide to use a recruitment advertising agency or a recruitment agency, feel free to skip this article. However, you may find it helpful to be a more informed purchaser and ask suppliers questions such as, “Why aren’t you advertising on this job site?”

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Choose Enough Online Job Sites

There are four common mistakes I see employers make when advertising on job sites:

They only advertise on one job site and inevitably get a poor response. With time slipping away, they feel it is necessary to compromise and unintentionally mis-hire a Poor Performer.
They can’t afford to advertise on more than one job site, which raises the question of whether they can afford a new member of staff!
They initially advertise on one job site and wait to see the response. Disappointed with the results, they later advertise on another job site, and so it continues. This behaviour delays the recruitment process.
If they advertise on multiple job sites, their buying process is ill-informed, often relying on outdated habits and company dogma.

Unfortunately, jobseekers can be anywhere, and you can’t predict where. Therefore, a SECRET is that you need to advertise almost everywhere to avoid missing relevant applicants.

The job market in the UK is highly fragmented with over 2,000 job sites, yet the largest holds just a 7% market share. Moreover, with jobseekers typically visiting only an average of 3.4 job sites, the probability of them encountering your specific job advert is notably restricted. For these reasons, you shouldn’t be at the mercy of one job site and its possible lack of ability to deliver you relevant applicants.

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Avoid “Company Dogma”

So which job sites should you use? Let’s start with how not to approach it:

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“We always advertise on this job site / This is where we got our last staff member from.”

Experience is not a good indicator of future performance for these reasons:

Search engine results change: Most job sites receive applicants via Google, which constantly changes its search algorithm and rankings. Therefore, it is unwise to assume that you’ll get the same results repeatedly.
Job sites purchase jobseeker traffic: There is a wholesale market of affiliates called aggregators. This allows job sites to turn on (or off) the flow of jobseekers as budgets allow, even when you’re locked into a long-term contract!
Offline marketing campaign change: Job sites may attract applicants from offline campaigns such as TV and radio adverts, which may cause a temporary spike in responses.
Job sites change and add new features: Some features (such as CV writing) frustrate jobseekers, causing them to switch job sites. Other features create usability issues, such as lots of distracting banner advertising. (I’m often surprised by how difficult it is for jobseekers to apply for jobs when ease ought to be the prime goal of any job site.)

In summary, if you always advertise on a particular job site, do jobseekers always visit it?

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“The job site was cheap / I got a good deal / I got a free trial.”

Everyone likes a good deal, but it is only worth it if it helps you recruit the right candidate. For example, a well-known national job site once offered free trials and reported that more than two-thirds of customers never returned because they didn’t have a successful trial.

Another renowned international job site only charges when an advert is viewed, giving customers false confidence that they’re paying for results. But often, the “views” are from automated bots that trawl the internet, or from international applicants with little hope of securing a visa or relocating. There’s little incentive for job sites to screen out bots and ineligible international applicants when all views generate income, whether valuable to an employer or not.

When considering price, also remember that every day a vacancy remains unfilled is a day when a new employee isn’t adding value to your organisation. So, a “good” price is not always good value.

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“I’ve heard of this job site / I’ve never heard of that job site.”

Familiarity with a brand makes us feel comfortable and secure. However, that’s irrelevant if your ideal candidate isn’t using the site.

It’s also worth considering that you may only have heard of the job site because of a temporary advertising campaign. When the job site stops advertising, its jobseeker traffic may slow. This is another reason why signing up for long-term contracts is not always advisable.

You can’t blame jobseekers for visiting a site you’ve never heard of. Do your research to ensure good market awareness.

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“The job site is a specialist in our sector.”

Time and again, the idea that professionals gravitate to specialist job sites is shown to be a myth. Teacher recruitment used to be dominated by a specialist publication. But new teachers aren’t as aware of the old-school (pun intended) publications, so I often find it easier and cheaper to find teachers through generic national job sites.

You can’t blame jobseekers for not visiting a specialist site.

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“The job site is part of an industry leading publication.”

Many industry publications have seen their audience disappear, along with their advertising revenues. To remedy this, many have bolted on job sites to their websites. While they may know how to write great editorials, do they know how to attract quality jobseekers and convert them to applicants?

Some industry publications suggest that visitors reading their editorial content may coincidentally notice a job advert. However, analysing online publications using tools like Similarweb reveals their job site typically receives little referral traffic from their editorial content.

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Need advice or a helping hand with your recruitment? I'm available for a chat. Please get your free consultation.My best-selling recruitment book can also provide valuable guidance, and for only £199, I can post a job on the top UK job boards.

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Use “Applicant Logic” Instead

Now you’re aware of the common mistakes, try to see the world through applicants’ eyes, where relevance is key. This can be difficult, as you may not have looked for a job for a while. Fortunately, I have tried and tested the following four steps:

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Step 1: Search for Job Sites

Around 93% of jobseekers start looking for jobs online using a search engine like Google. Jobseekers search queries have become more sophisticated, where they once used simple “head” phrases (eg. “sales jobs”), they increasingly use “long-tail” phrases (eg. “B2B media sales jobs”).

Importantly, jobseekers are 100 times more likely to include the term “jobs” than “careers” and rarely use “roles” or “opportunities”. You can see this by using Google Trends.

Despite the rise of remote work, approximately 70% of searches include a geographical location (eg. “B2B media sales jobs in Birmingham”). If a jobseeker doesn’t provide a location, most search engines use their geolocation or IP address to deliver tailored search results.

When search results are displayed, around 99% of users will only visit the first page (Dean, 2023).

Try it for yourself. Search using keywords and phrases that you believe a jobseeker might use to search and notice how the results fall into three categories:

National job sites which cover every sector.
National job sites focused on specialist sectors.
Local job sites covering every sector.

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Important: Search engines like Google don’t endorse job sites shown in the search results; they only suggest that they may be appropriate based on keyword relevance and density, links, expertise, and topical authority.Additionally, search engines will refine their search results based on your geographical location. If you’re searching from where the job is based, that’s fine. But if you’re searching from a different geographical area, especially a different country, you must use a virtual private network to spoof that you’re searching from where the job is.

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Prepare to research each job site from the first page of search results.

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Step 2: Research Job Sites for Common Issues

Review each job site to see if it advertises jobs like the one you want to advertise. Remember to use keywords jobseekers use.

Was it easy to find relevant jobs? If not, consider ruling out the job site.

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Warning: Some job sites appear to have many jobs, but they backfill jobs from other sites in exchange for money. These ad exchanges (aka aggregators) can frustrate jobseekers because they’re redirected around different sites. A quick way to avoid this is to click the “Apply” button on several jobs to ensure you’re not redirected to another job site.

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Next, proceed through the job site. Identify any “friction points”, such as a complex application and registration processes, or constantly being hounded to give your email address. These often cause jobseekers to leave the site.

Additionally, look for distractions that could compete for attention. Some job sites may try to sell staff training courses, CV reviews or even unrelated products and services like mobile phone contracts. These all serve to distract jobseekers from finding and applying to jobs.

Because most jobseekers will search and apply for jobs using their mobile device, visit the website on your tablet and phone. Do you get a good experience, or are there problems such as intrusive banners, overlays, and other layout problems? Importantly, as many jobseekers won’t have their CV saved to their phone, can they apply by uploading it from cloud-based file-sharing services such as Dropbox or Google Drive?

If your experience of the site isn’t easy, quick, and relevant, jobseekers will find the same and may go elsewhere.

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Note: Apps for mobile devices may sound impressive, but jobseekers who use them are reportedly more “promiscuous”, applying to jobs without much thought because it’s so easy. A few well-known job sites have removed their apps to focus on higher quality applicants. This underlines the importance of using a well-designed, mobile-responsive job site.

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Step 3: Review the Type of Job Adverts Sold

There are three common types of job adverts that you may purchase:

Duration based: These are the most common and recommended. They often advertise a job for 28 days but don’t allow many changes.
Slot based: You commit to several job “slots” per month and can change the adverts as often as you want. However, you usually buy too many slots, making it more expensive than first thought.
Cost-per-action: These charge when a jobseeker views, clicks, or applies to your advert. An initial low cost can quickly escalate to be far more expensive than other types of advertising, so you must carefully manage your bidding and budget. For this reason, these are only recommended for buyers with the time needed to manage them.

Let’s look at these three common advert types in more detail.

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Duration based adverts

Most of the time, you’ll only be able to purchase this type of advert, which is great because they’re often the best value, and so they’re the ones I recommend to most employers.

As the name implies, duration based adverts last for a specific duration, typically 28 days.

Adverts generally get the best response in the first four days. After this, response rates decline because newer, competing job adverts rank higher in search results.

Advertisements are automatically “refreshed” each week to appear new, generating slightly more applications. (This should happen as standard, so don’t be fooled by a salesperson who suggests it’s being done as a favour!)

A downside of duration based adverts is that job sites don’t typically allow changes to an advert. This is to prevent companies from trying to fill multiple job vacancies using the same advert. If this is a requirement and you consistently advertise, consider slot based adverts.

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Slot based adverts

Slot based adverts are best for employers with a persistent hiring requirement. You purchase one or more “slots” (advert spaces) over a year, and you can change the adverts, so when you fill one vacancy you can advertise another. As you might have guessed, slots usually cost more than duration based adverts.

Though slots sound more flexible, many organisations find that they have too many jobs and not enough slots, or too many slots and not enough jobs. Therefore, demand for slot based adverts from employers is low.

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Cost-per-action adverts

Sometimes called performance based advertising, which I think is a misnomer because the “performance” isn’t always valuable.

Here, you pay when the job site encourages a jobseeker to take some action. This can seem attractive because it’s easier to justify doing business based on action. But there are many potentially confusing ways of calculating it:

Cost-per-view: You pay every time your advert is viewed in the search results. You’ll probably get very little value from a view.
Cost-per-click: You pay every time your advert is clicked on in the search results. Once again, you may get very little value from a click, and the cost-per-click increased by 54% in 2022 (Appcast, 2022).
Cost-per-application: You pay every time you receive an application – good or bad.
Cost-per-quality-application (CPQA): You pay every time you receive a “quality” application. You specify an application is poor quality by rejecting it within a short period of time. Very few job sites offer this, which is a pity as it is a more convincing measurement despite the quality of applicants being subjective.

Be aware that an advert may receive an uneven distribution of views, clicks, and applications. For example, our research in 2020 found 6% of adverts get more than half the applications, and 32% of job adverts get loads of clicks and views but don’t generate any applications.

Cost-per-action adverts are also becoming very expensive. For example, Appcast (2022) found that the cost of generating an application has skyrocketed by 43%.

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Warning: A few job sites providing a CPQA model give you 72-hours to decline an applicant before you’re charged. This means you must be proactive, looking at the CVs and contacting applicants almost hourly to avoid huge bills. This is challenging when you have a weekend or bank holiday, and incredibly frustrating when applicants won’t reply to your communication (aka ghosting).Constantly checking applications and trying to contact candidates can sometimes make you feel like you are working for the job board! Indeed, I’ve seen some hiring managers become anxious. As one explained to me, “I’m constantly worried. It’s always on my mind [checking applications]. I can’t deal with it anymore. I’m relieved to [quit CPQA and] work on my own terms”.When I raised the 72-hour deadline with some job sites, their response was quite unrealistic and unhelpful. Their response was paraphrased as, “If you can’t review and respond to applicants within 72-hours, then you shouldn’t be advertising”.Additionally, you need to consider whether it is cost-effective. In the Autumn of 2023, a customer explained they were paying £58 per application for a heating engineer. If they get 10 applications, that’s £580. That may seem obvious, but a few employers don’t have the foresight to recognise that it quickly adds up to an incredible amount of money. It may be better value to use duration based adverts or a recruitment advertising agency.

Whilst cost-per-action gives you the illusion of control, there are four fundamental issues:

No control over “how” the job site is viewed: Most jobseekers use mobile devices that generate many views and clicks. However, our research found mobile devices attract 70% - 90% fewer applications, making mobile applications cost almost 242% more!
Irrelevant bot traffic: It’s a dirty secret that approximately 50% of traffic on job sites doesn’t come from human jobseekers but automated bot software scanning the website for various reasons (Statistica, 2023). So employers pay for useless traffic, and the job sites don’t seem inclined to tackle the problem.
Irrelevant jobseekers: Some human traffic isn’t jobseekers but recruitment agencies, salespeople, and others who benefit from the data. Employers still need to pay for this traffic.
International audiences: It’s not called the World Wide Web for nothing! Even though many overseas jobseekers have no hope of relocating or getting a work visa, they can still view, click, and apply for jobs at an employer’s expense. Again, it doesn’t seem a priority for many job sites to stop this traffic, although it would be relatively easy to use a simple IP lookup that knows where visitors are based.

In summary, some of the actions you’re paying for aren’t from viable jobseekers.

Because of all this complexity, I don’t recommend cost-per-action adverts unless hiring managers have experience and can commit more time to managing the recruitment process. But there is one more factor to consider with cost-per-action job adverts:

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Advertising budgets can get expensive and complex

You usually have little control over the cost of a view/click/application as it depends on competition. Unsurprisingly, they always seem to spend your budget!

Even with a daily/weekly spending cap, the cost can quickly spiral out of control. For example, you’ll see a “recommended budget”, but what you’ll get for a particular amount isn't always clear. If you increased the budget from £6 to £8 per day, how much would the volume of applications go up? How will your budget be affected by market conditions? A recommended daily budget of £10 sounds trivial but adds up to £300 a month. Additionally, the daily budget will keep on running, and I’ve seen some employers who forgot to turn it off – but they never forgot the huge bill!

However, there’s a solution to the budgeting problem for sophisticated buyers with persistent hiring requirements: “programmatic buying”.

Programmatic advert buying software helps to manage budgeting complexity, and to buy more effectively. In essence, it’s an algorithm that makes five types of data-driven decisions:

Site performance: The software uses large data sets to predict which job sites are best for specific sectors, seniority levels and locations. It assigns a greater share of budget to the best- performing job sites.
Job performance: Every type of job is different. For example, a retail job requires different bidding than a nurse or driver.
Over deliverers: When an advert leads to a very large number of applications, the budget is reallocated to other adverts.
Performers: When an advert performs well and generates many applications, the advertising budget is reduced to save money.
Non-converters: When an advert is receiving lots of views/clicks but no applications, the budget is reallocated to other jobs.
Challengers: When an advert isn’t getting enough views, almost nothing can be done except change the advert and increase the advertising budget.

It’s relatively expensive to purchase this technology; for many employers, it’s an overly complex solution to an already complex challenge. But if you’re willing to invest, here are some tips:

Review and improve non-convertor and challenger adverts: Often, changing the job title or location is enough.
Provide an hourly “feed” of jobs: Ensuring you aren’t paying for jobseeker traffic to out-of-date adverts.
Don’t allow tracking pixels: Be aware (or beware) if you include a tracking pixel on your employer career pages to help job sites calculate conversions. You may be sharing sensitive data that could be used against you when negotiating a new contract.

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Tip: Many job sites selling duration based adverts purchase applicant traffic using programmatic buying. So the real question is: do you want to manage it yourself or let someone else take care of it?

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Step 4: Purchase Job Adverts, but Prepare for a Sales Pitch

If you have small or infrequent advertising requirements, it’s relatively easy to purchase job adverts. Job sites have a dedicated recruiters’ section that explains packages and prices, many of which can be purchased online. But bear in mind that some discounts offered are for new customers only, or for shorter duration adverts (eg. 14 days instead of 28 days) – so the price reduction reflects a reduction in service.

For larger, ongoing hiring requirements, you may need to call a job site to negotiate a contract. (This comes as a surprise to hiring managers, who often assume that prices are fixed.) Even when you purchase online, expect to receive a follow-up sales call offering a “great deal” because they’ll want to upsell. In this article, I will give some tips to help you prepare for this conversation. Ultimately, the price you pay will be determined by your negotiating skills.

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Warning: Getting hold of some job sites can be a nightmare! They often intentionally do this to stop jobseekers from contacting them.Some well-known job sites won’t take your call – you have to leave an answering machine message. If you are lucky enough to speak to someone at their office, they may not be able to help because they deal with a different sector or location!Emailing them is much easier; a salesperson will be allocated to your account and call you back.

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During a sales pitch you may be quoted figures designed to establish credibility, but they could be meaningless:

Number of hits: Every image on a web page counts as a “hit”, so a single view of a page containing 100 images equals 100 hits. If a visitor views 10 pages with those same 100 images on each one, that’s 1,000 hits! It may sound impressive, but it’s a ridiculous statistic that a minority of salespeople use on gullible buyers.
Number of unique users: Visitors to job sites aren’t only jobseekers. They may be employers, salespeople, and bots. A better metric would be the number of unique jobseekers, but this is hard to determine.
Number of CVs: Job sites may try to sell you a CV database search facility (which I’ll discuss in a moment). Often, databases contain millions of CVs, which when you think about it, is almost the entire working population! It can only be this large if it contains old applicants who may no longer be looking for a new job. Therefore, knowing how many “active” applicants are in a CV database is crucial. There’s no clear definition of “active applicants”. I generally consider “active” to be those who have searched or applied to a job advert in the last 60 days.

The statistics I’m most interested in are:

Number of applications: Be careful as this could be another meaningless figure unless you’re getting these figures filtered on a specific sector. For example, a generic national job site may have 500,000 applications, but how many are for jobs in your sector and location?
Number of jobs: Search for jobs in your location and sector. But beware of job sites that advertise other job sites’ jobs (aka ad exchanges and aggregators) because the number of jobs is artificially inflated.

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Choose the right package for you, not the salesperson

The right package allows you to test a job site’s suitability and, if it goes well, to make a short-term commitment.

Be careful of committing to long-term contracts as the job site could detrimentally change its marketing strategy while you’re tied into a contract. Additionally, you might feel under pressure to agree a long-term contract by a salesperson who only earns a commission on the initial sale. Exercise caution and make it clear that you’ll only discuss a long-term contract once they’ve demonstrated that they can fill your current job vacancy.

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Tip: A salesperson is likely to ask if you’re willing or able to purchase more now. “Of course!” you should reply, “I’ll consider that once you’ve shown you can fill my vacancy”. You’ll find the conversation moves along, and you might even get a discount.

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Everyone negotiates a deal

You should negotiate a discount if you can – you have nothing to lose by trying! Deals are there to be done, particularly in December, towards the end of school half-terms and at the end of the month, because salespeople want to hit their targets. Think of the “price list” as the top price, then pitch a lower opening bid.

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Tip: More than 90% of job sites in the UK are powered by the same off-the-shelf software (it’s written in the footer “Powered by...”). Ask the salesperson how they differ from other job sites when using the same software. You might negotiate a better deal if they can’t provide a convincing answer.

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You may be offered “enhancements”

Expect a salesperson to offer enhancements, which may be included free to close a deal, or have an extra charge. Common ones are:

Email job alerts: These are an email newsletter of potential jobs sent to subscribed jobseekers. They’re vital because they drive a lot of jobseeker traffic. They’re almost always included in the price of a job advert, so don’t be misled into thinking they’re an extra.
Enhanced/featured/premium adverts: These adverts have a more prominent style, size or colour and are often “sticky” in job search results. However, they may not lead to more applicants. Claimed high figures are usually based on well-known brands that naturally get a better response. Proceed with caution and try to negotiate this for free.
Screening questions: These allow you to ask applicants questions that require a short written response, or a yes/no answer. (However, I don’t recommend them as many desperate applicants guess the answer you’re looking for.) This feature is often included in the price of a job advert. If you use cost-per-action adverts, you’ll still need to pay for applicants who don’t meet your criteria.
CV database access: These are a back catalogue of applicants who have applied through a job site and whose CVs you can pay to review. I cover this in an article about CV databases.‍
Video job adverts: You can make short videos to showcase the job and your business. Only some job sites offer them because employers find the video production costs very high compared to written text. In addition, jobseekers can find them a hassle to watch as it is difficult to skim through a video to understand what the business wants, and they generally dislike clichéd footage of smiling employees gleefully shaking hands! Unless you’re a video production company, avoid video job adverts.

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Additional Resources

Recruitment Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employees.
Downloadable PDF guide; Navigating Job Sites Like a Pro: Strategies to Fill Your Vacancies Fast.
Downloadable PDF guide; Efficient Strategies for Using CV Databases to Find Applicants.
Article; Choosing the Right Job Site to Advertise a Job: A Simple Guide for Employers.
Article; CV Databases Exposed: Are They Really Worth Your Time and Money?
Article; Using a CV Database: Best Practices for Sifting Through CVs.
Article; CV Database Techniques: Using Boolean Logic for Applicant Searches.
Article; How AI is disrupting Job Boards, Recruitment & HR.
Article; Advantages & Disadvantages of Using Job Sites for Advertising Jobs.
Article; How to Advertise a Job - Best Way to Advertise Job Openings.
Article; What is a Job Site and When Should an Employer Use Them?

Article Tags:

Job Sites

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Written by:

Geoff Newman

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Geoff Newman has dedicated his entire career to recruitment. He has consulted for many well-known international brands, and worked with over 20,000 growing businesses. He has helped fill over 100,000 jobs.

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