You probably don’t want to hear about what’s wrong with the job board that you’ve developed. However, you need to hear it.

Your Awesome Job Board

Perhaps you’ve defied the odds. Your family tried to talk you out of it. Your friends laughed at you.

But you knew you could do it, and so you moved forward with developing your own job board. You hired some great developers. You marketed it. You sold it.

And now, you have traffic.

Both recruiters and candidates are visiting your job board. You’re seeing people make connections. You’re seeing candidates land jobs. Recruiters are getting commissions from placing candidates that they’ve met on your site and they’re coming back.

There is also some buzz being generated about your job board. You’re getting “Likes” on Facebook. You’ve got more Twitter followers than your competitors.

So what could possibly be wrong?

SEE ALSO: Job Board Managers: Leverage Social for Your Advertisers

Actually, A Lot Could Be Wrong

Success doesn’t mean perfection. Further just because you’re successful now doesn’t mean that you couldn’t be more successful.

The fact of the matter is that no website is perfect. There are probably some issues that you aren’t aware of because you’re not using the site as a typical (or even atypical) recruiter or candidate.

That’s why you should welcome, not discourage, negative feedback. Perhaps you’ve received an email from someone complaining that your filter doesn’t include a certain criterion. You blew that off because your traffic spiked that day and you concluded that people must be happy.

However, that one user who gave you the negative feedback about the filter could represent 20 or 30 more users who believe the same thing but didn’t take the time to share it with you in an email.

You also might be receiving complaints that your job board isn’t easily navigable on all devices. Again, this is feedback that you should welcome because it will give you a chance to improve your website so that it has broader exposure. In this case, contact your web developer and request the necessary changes to ensure that your site is user-friendly on all platforms: desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Negative feedback presents an opportunity for you to improve your job board in such a way that you can better meet the needs of your target market. In that respect, it’s an opportunity for further success.

Not everyone is going to have nice things to say about your board. And yes, some people do live to criticize. However, not all criticism is invalid. Welcome the criticism that you receive as a means to improvement.

If you do that, you’ll have a loyal user base.