Whether you’re looking for a job or hoping to fill an opening the web can be both an integral tool and a daunting source of frustration – how do you wade through all the noise to find the best matches?

The formula at AllRetailJobs.com has been to concentrate solely on the retail industry and attracting both quality jobs and qualified candidates.

President Don Firth and his colleagues at the site know a thing or two about helping employers and job hunters connect. For 12 years the site has been the most successful niche job board for the retail industry and is the winner of the coveted Weddle’s User’s Choice Award for best job board and in less than one year they were able to send one client more than 750,000 applications.

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Here he offers insight on tactics AllRetailJobs.com employs to get noticed.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m the former SVP of Pathmark Supermarkets, former partner of Deloitte. President of several leading niche boards, including AllRetailJobs.com, JobsInLogistics.com, JobsInTrucks.com, NetTemps.com, FleetJobs.com and JobsInManufacturing.com.

What sets AllRetailJobs.com apart from other job boards?

As the specialty job board for the retail industry, we attract candidates who have strong retail backgrounds, hence less training and lower turnover for our clients. We cover a range of jobs from hourly associates, store managers, district managers, merchandisers, buyers and retail executives. We have a reputation for providing our clients with one of the lowest cost per hires of any job boards.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced running your board?

A major challenge is consistently attracting new candidates with retail experience. To achieve this objective, we market our clients’ jobs on search engines, such as Google and Bing and cross post jobs to several thousand other boards at our expense. We have a strong SEO presence. Example, using keywords such as “retail jobs” we come up No. 1 out of 525 million results on Google.

Another key issue is the rise in the use of mobile phones by candidates, hence the need for mobile-friendly sites. We are currently updating our sites to achieve this objective.

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What do both job recruiters and job hunters like about your site?

We provide a large range of retail jobs for the candidates and have a reputation for filling jobs for our clients. The board is easy to use and we have amazing customer service staff.

With the rise of social media and increased online networking, what do you think is the future of job boards like yours? What sorts of innovations do you predict for the next five-10 years?

We create a large network of candidates by cross posting our jobs to selected aggregators such as TopUSAJobs.com and Indeed. We consider that social media sites such as Facebook are more directed to personal relationships than job hunting. LinkedIn is a network of professionals and goes back to the old recruiting tactics of who do you know. Job posting is very expensive relative to many job boards. In the coming years, mobile phones and pads will be the key source of traffic for job hunting.

What advice can you give job boards in other industries for helping recruiters link up with the best recruits?

Job boards need to define their specialty, market their services to both HR personnel and job seekers and spend the money to maintain an increasing flow of targeted candidates.

What advice can you give job recruiters when it comes to posting on your site … what are some best practices for job listings?

Make the job listing attractive to seekers. Market your company to show why they would want to work for you. Add your banner in the listing. Keep the job details succinct. Avoid extensive Q&As in the applicant tracking system.

What do you do to promote and market your site?

After 13 years, we have gained a strong reputation in the retail industry and have very loyal following of candidates. We send out newsletters, providing job-hunting advice. We display our booth in key association seminars. We cross post the jobs to major CPC aggregators, such as TopUSAJobs.com and search engines.