Choosing the Right Job Site To Advertise a Job: A Simple Guide for Employers

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
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<li>Job sites are a cost-effective and efficient means of attracting applicants.</li>
<li>Avoid common mistakes when choosing job sites by being flexible about where you advertise, not confusing a low price with good value, not assuming that specialist job sites are the best and avoiding job aggregators.</li>
<li>By following my four steps, put yourself in the shoes of jobseekers and get a better recruitment outcome.</li>
<li>First, find the sites where your jobseekers are looking for jobs.</li>
<li>Second, assess the usability of these sites.</li>
<li>Third, review the types of adverts available.</li>
<li>Fourth, purchase adverts that suit your requirements and remember to negotiate the best deal possible.</li>
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Over 90% of jobseekers first go to job sites to look for openings so this should be the foundation of your recruitment strategy. To help you get the best out of job sites, this guide includes steps to make the process as smooth and painless as possible. 

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Mistakes to Avoid When Using Job Sites

Before we get to these, there are a few pitfalls in the use of these sites that often trip up hiring managers. To avoid them, understand the following principles before you do anything:

Don’t be dogmatic about which site you advertise on: There’s no guarantee that because you got a good result with a site in the past you’ll get the same result again – there’s simply too much fluidity in the market. Similarly, even if you’ve heard of a site – perhaps through a recent advertising campaign – this doesn’t mean that it best serves your needs now and in the future. Sites’ features change frequently and jobseekers hop around.

Don’t confuse a low price with a good deal: A bargain is only worth it if it gets you the result you want. Be careful if a job site only charges when an advert is clicked or viewed: many are generated by bots or by overseas applicants who are unlikely to be able to relocate to take up a job. I’ll talk more about the problems with these “cost-per-action” adverts in a moment.

Don’t assume that specialist job sites are better: Despite what hiring managers might assume, professionals don’t necessarily look for jobs on sector-specific job sites. It’s often cheapest and easiest to find applicants through general sites. The same goes for the job sites that some industry publications have added to their editorial sites. Creating good editorial content isn’t the same as attracting jobseekers and again you might be better off going to general job sites. 

Avoid job aggregators: These are sites that advertise jobs from other job sites! They often look very similar to job sites, but when you click on an advert, you’re taken back to the original job site.

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The Four Steps to Using Jobs Sites Effectively

To select the best job sites, you need to embrace “applicant logic”: seeing things through the eyes of jobseekers and understanding what they want. Here are the four steps you need to follow to make sure you’re doing that:

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Step 1: Search for job sites

• Start by searching for your job using the keywords and phrases that you think they’ll use (and avoid company buzzwords and jargon!). 
• Over time, jobseekers have begun to employ more specific “long-tail” phrases such as “B2B media sales jobs”.
• Despite remote working, most searches still include locations, for example, “B2B media sales jobs in Birmingham”.
• Notice that the results tend to fall into a few categories: national general job sites, national specialist job sites and local general job sites. (Remember that the job sites appearing in the results aren’t in any way endorsed by the search engine; they’re simply results that an algorithm has generated.)

99% of search engine users only look at the first page of results. Review page one of your results. 

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Step 2: Assess the usability of potential job sites

Click on each search result and ensure the site you’re taken to is advertising jobs similar to yours.

Jobseekers will look for job sites that are easy to use so you need to test potential sites to see if this is the case. Looking at each one, go through the following checklist:

• Was it easy to find relevant jobs?
• Are there “friction points” on the site such as complex application and registration procedures that might cause jobseekers to get frustrated and leave?
• Does the site distract jobseekers from finding and applying for jobs, such as adverts for training courses or CV reviews?
• Most jobseekers look for jobs on their phones and tablets, so visit the site on your mobile device. Are there problems such as intrusive banners or overlays that make it hard to navigate? Is there an easy way to upload their CVs such as through Dropbox?

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Step 3: Review the type of job adverts sold

Job sites tend to offer three main kinds of advert, each with their own advantages and disadvantages:

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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, often 28 days.
• Duration based adverts are usually “refreshed” every week to make them look new.
• You’re not usually able to make changes to adverts once published. This is to stop firms using the same advert to fill several roles. If that might apply to you, then slot based adverts could be a good alternative. 

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Slot based adverts

• These are great if you frequently hire. You buy a number of slots (advert spaces) that you can change.
• As they give you more flexibility, slot based adverts tend to be more expensive than duration based adverts.
• The downside of slot based adverts is that employers sometimes end up with not enough slots to cover all the jobs they’re recruiting for, or the opposite problem of too few jobs to fill the slots they’ve paid for.

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Cost-per-action adverts

• 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.
• They 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: Paying when your advert is viewed in search results. In most cases, however, a view won’t necessarily lead to an application.‍
  • Cost-per-click: Paying when your advert is clicked. Again, not all clicks will lead to an application.‍
  • Cost-per-quality-application: Paying when you receive a “quality” application, often defined as those that the employer doesn’t dismiss as unsuitable within a specified time. Few sites offer this as it’s hard to measure quality and if you don’t review and dismiss irrelevant applications promptly you may run up huge bills.
• Cost-per-action adverts also have general problems:
  • Jobseekers use mobile devices, which creates more clicks and views but fewer actual applications.
  • More than 40% of job sites’ visitors may be bots rather than real people.
  • Overseas jobseekers can easily click and view advertisements and apply for jobs even if they’re unlikely to be able to take them up.
  • The cost can get expensive over time and it can be hard to work out what a particular budget will get you.

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<span class="purple-callout"><p>I'm here if you need any advice or hands-on support! Get your free consultation.</p><p>Remember to check out my best-selling talent acquisition book for additional tips.</p><p>And for just £199, my flat-fee recruiter solution can advertise jobs on the leading job sites across the UK.</p></span>

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

You can purchase basic advertising packages from job sites online, though you may need to speak to someone if you have large and regular hiring needs. You’ll probably get a call from a salesperson who’ll talk you through what you’re going to get and come up with a price. They may well cite various metrics to demonstrate the value of their offer, but some of these mean very little. Some common ones are:

• Number of hits: Every image counts as a hit, so if a single visitor views a page with ten images on it, that’s ten hits. This is a silly measure, so don’t be taken in by the sales patter that makes big claims on this basis.
• Number of unique visitors: Not all visitors are jobseekers (they may be employers, salespeople, and bots) and it’s hard to measure exactly how many visitors are really seeking employment.
• Number of CVs: Job sites sometimes allow you to sign up for access to a CV database. A database may contain a lot of CVs, but how many of these are “active” jobseekers rather than old ones who are no longer searching? 
• Number of applications: Total applications per month made through a general job site might sound like a big number but tell you little about how many were in your sector and location.
• Number of jobs: Again, this might be a big number, but how many of these were in your sector?

Salespeople might also offer you added extras, such as:

• Job alerts: These are an email newsletter of potential jobs sent to subscribed jobseekers. These can really help drive up applicant numbers. Job alerts are normally part of basic advertising packages.
• Enhanced or premium adverts:  These advertisements are given more prominence. They’re not necessarily that effective at attracting more applicants and it’s best to try to get this included in your basic deal.
• Screening questions: A way of removing applicants who don’t give the desired answer to some simple questions. This often comes as standard, but most applicants will not answer the questions and some may even given dishonest answers so they can get through the screening.
• CV database access: Warning, these are complicated and time-consuming for many SMEs. I’ve got a separate guide dedicated to this topic; Efficient Strategies for Using CV Databases to Find Applicants.

Once you’ve talked to the salesperson, select the package that best fits your needs and avoid committing to a long-term contract, at least initially. First see whether you’re able to fill your vacancy through the site. Only then consider a more permanent arrangement.

Finally, remember to negotiate! Salespeople want to hit their targets so you might be able to get a discount, especially in December and at the end of the month.

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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; Advertise a Job: How Choosing the Wrong Job Site Could Cost Your Thousands!
• 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?