Are UK job boards letting down the SME employer?

Research conducted by whatjobsite.com has found that many job boards are failing to meet the needs of small and medium-sized employers who wish to advertise their vacancies online.

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Whatjobsite, the UK online recruitment website dedicated to helping direct employers with online recruitment, combined research from whatjobsite.com user surveys with a study of 30 popular job boards in the United Kingdom. The job board sample covered both generalist and specialist and ranged across most popular job roles and industry sectors. The main finding of the research was that many job boards failed to provide even the most basic advertising information to employers. These failings were concentrated in three main areas:

What audience
Over 50 per cent of the job boards surveyed provided little or no online information about their candidate audience. That is, there was little or no information on who used the site or the types of jobs the site covered.

Of the job boards that did provide candidate audience information, many limited themselves to quoting unique user and registered user statistics. While inclusion of these statistics is welcome, and while they may be common currency in the digital media space, they can be opaque to many employers.

Only a small number of the job boards surveyed detailed good introductory candidate audience information by including such things as popular job titles, industry sectors or locations and application rates etc.

Intriguingly, the research showed that specialist and niche job boards tended to provide the least information about their audiences:

ìNiche job boards might believe that their specialism is obvious to employer advertisers. But it may not be,î says Karl Schweppe, MD of whatjobsite.com. ìFor example, there are dozens of job boards specializing in finance jobs. But finance jobs can range from accounting to mortgage advisors to mergers and acquisitions to IFAs. They are all very different roles and can have different sites to cater for them. Job board operators shouldn't assume that direct employers will automatically pick up on the subtleties of their job inventory.î

What price
One of the most surprising findings was that approximately 50 per cent of the job boards surveyed gave little or no online information about the costs of their advertising products. Of those job boards that did share pricing information, most limited themselves to the cost of a credit card posting. To find out the price of other products like CV databases or email sponsorships, employers were required to ring up or email the site in question.

ìThere are many reasons why job boards might not want to share their full pricing details,î says Karl Schweppe. ìBut the fact that so many provide so little information on pricing only goes to add another laborious step that the employer has to take in order to evaluate a job board as a recruitment option.î

What job site
With so many job boards in the UK, and many more being launched every month, bona fides are becoming increasingly important. Every online business is required by law to provide basic information on their site such as company name, company registration number, registered address etc. In one of the most disturbing findings, whatjobsite found that just over 25% of the job boards surveyed failed to provide such required information on their sites.

ìEmployers need to be able to feel confident about choosing a job board,î says Karl Schweppe. ìFor this, they must be able to answer the most basic questions about a site like 'Is it a legitimate business?' 'Where is it located?' 'What is its company registration number?' etc.î

Room for improvement
The findings of the research would seem to lead to the conclusion that job boards are indeed failing to provide employer advertisers with the information they need to make confident advertising decisions. However, and on a positive note, the findings also suggest that these failings can be easily rectified by job boards by simply providing adequate information to employers.

ìAt the moment, the online recruitment market place is buzzing with talk of social media, widgets, Twitter and so on,î says Karl Schweppe. ìThat's all well and good; but before job boards focus on their Web 2.0 strategies, they should not forget about the basics. They should take a look at their sites and make sure that they have Web 1.0 covered.î