Briefly
Every Economic Development Organizations (EDO) is unique, but they do have something in common — they need to connect employers with job seekers. And for this, they need a job board tailored to the needs of their stakeholders.
EDOs have three stakeholders:
- The EDO itself,
- The region's companies, and
- The region's work force.
Each of these stakeholders have certain criteria that need to be considered when implementing a new job board.
From these criteria, knowledge of the job market, and experience working directly with EDOs, TrueJob has gathered a list of eight critical features a job board must have to fulfill these requirements.
The eight requirements for a job board
- Excellent user experience
- Curation of job postings
- Powerful analytics
- Accurate filtering and matching
- Content automation
- Built-in Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
- Supporting assets
- Easy Branding
1. Excellent user experience
Imagine an employer trying to post a job for a web developer on a job website that looks terrible - they're going to laugh! It’s also going to blow your credibility, both with the employer and the job seeker.
People want a high quality experience when they use your job portal. You need a job portal that meets today’s modern standards, and makes it as easy as possible for job seekers to search for jobs, and employers to sign up and post jobs.
2. Job board curation
Economic Development Organizations can use their mission to help them determine which companies can post jobs on their job boards, and which jobs may be appropriate for the job board.
To have a great job board, you as an EDO need a permission-based job approval system that allows administrators to approve:
- The companies that can post to your job portal
- The job postings that those companies post
Without this, your job board won’t feel customized to the unique needs of your community.
3. Powerful analytics
Both Economic Development Organizations and employers would like analytics to help better understand the value of their job board.
A job board needs to keep track of not only how many times a job posting has been viewed, and for how long, but also how many times an “apply” button was clicked, how many applications are submitted, and how the quantity of job postings has changed over time.
This is a critical “killer” feature:
- EDOs can use these analytics and more to see how they are
helping to improve community job growth and building the amount of jobs posted and applied to on their portal. They can then report these analytics to their funders to demonstrate the value they are providing. - For employers, these analytics can help them improve the quality of candidates that end up applying to a job posting, increasing the quality of hires.
4. Accurate filtering and matching
A job board that is hard to search for jobs on is frustrating for a job seeker, and leads to less job applications for the employer.
The ideal job portal should offer as much power as possible to allow both sides to filter and improve the match between the job seeker and the employer, in a simple and user friendly experience.
Ideally the job board can even suggest jobs to the job seeker based on their individual requirements. It should also help employers better understand what job seekers like and dislike about the job postings available, so job seekers are more likely to filter and match for their posting.
5. Content automation
One of the biggest challenges for any website is content. Job boards are no different—an empty job board isn't useful to anyone! Relevant and local job listings are already out there and published, they just need to find a way to your new job board.
There’s a right and wrong way to do this – “backfilling” (as it is sometimes referred to by other job boards) can pull low quality job postings from bulk job websites like Indeed or Monster, leading to a bad first experience for job seekers.
You need a job board that can pull information right from local employers’ websites, or let them import jobs directly. This makes sure not only your job board is filled with job postings, but high quality job postings.
6. Built-in Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Economic Development Organizations don’t exist only to support large companies - they also help to build smaller companies as well.
Smaller employers want the ability to track applicants, interview applicants, and review applicants, but do not have the funding for or knowledge of HR applications.
It is essential for the EDO to provide basic level Applicant Tracking System (ATS) capabilities to these smaller companies that lack resources. This will provide them a better chance to hire great candidates and grow their small business into a larger one.
7. Supporting assets
Supporting assets are any manuals, documentation, guides, videos, or technical support that are part of a product.
As an Economic Development Organization, you want to spend as much time as you can supporting your community, not troubleshooting simple problems.
You need a job portal that comes with documentation and videos to help users solve their problems without having to resort to contacting the EDO for technical support.
8. Easy branding
Every organization has invested heavily in their brand - it’s their identity! As an Economic Development Organization, it is essential to keep all properties directly associated with the organization under the same brand umbrella. This means color, fonts, and design style.
For a job board to be successful, it needs to take these branding concerns into account. Not only should the job board be theme-able with your colors, fonts, and more, but it should also be embeddable so the job board looks like your website because it is in your website!
Benefits
A job board that has the 8 critical features we’ve listed will benefit the EDO as well as the employers and job seekers in your region. These benefits include:
EDO
- More participation and interaction from your local employers
- Better control over your website content and brand image
- Additional sponsorships and funding by using the job board to demonstrate your value to the community
Employers
- A larger pool of applicants that are a better match
- Applicant tracking tools to save smaller employers time and money
- Analytics to learn how to improve the hiring process and attract the best candidates
Job Seekers
- Access to a high quality, curated selection of local job opportunities.
- Filtering and matching tools to stay up to date on the latest opportunities and
recommendations
TrueJob has all of these specific and critical criteria
Economic Development Organizations are unique institutions that must satisfy not only their own needs, but the needs of the employers and job seekers in their region.
Existing job sites and basic job portals can’t help these organizations. Specific and critical functionality is required in order for these organizations to demonstrate their value and help their constituents be successful.
