You’re a digital publisher and have decided to add a custom job board to your website as part of your monetization strategy. Or, you’re a stand-alone job board/ career site. Now what? Assuming you’ve populated your job board (or are using a job board partner that brings you a board already populated with job ads), you’ll need to do some outreach by announcing the addition of your new job board on social media, and perhaps writing a blog post about it (which you’ll also promote on social media).

Beyond that, there are ways to work with the job board itself and the employers who list on it to make it more attractive to job seekers. Here are some ways to make your job board irresistible to potential job candidates.

Start With a Great Job Board Partner

A white label job board provider should have access to a broad network of employers and a revenue sharing plan that makes your site’s income go up as more job seekers and employers use your job board. Ideally you should have analytics you can use to convince advertisers that your job board is a great destination for its premium job listings. You should be able to track statistics about your job board user base, including numbers of registered job seekers and employers, and have access to ad performance analysis pertaining to clicks to applications, numbers of job post views, and numbers of applicants per job. A great job board partner sets the stage for better revenue development for your site.

Listings Should Tell Stories

This part is challenging, but when you learn how to do it you’ll reap benefits. Job listings, of course, should include the facts about qualifications, salary, and location, but if your job listing tells a story, it will grab readers’ attention. In your job listing, you want the critical facts at the top. The facts pique readers’ interest, but sharing a brief, compelling story causes them to act. That story may be about an employee who advanced rapidly through the ranks, or about how addition of an on-site day care center increased worker satisfaction and productivity. Facts are necessary, but flat and sometimes dull. When job advertisers tell a story, they incite readers to action.

Make It Easy for Mobile Users

If your job board doesn’t work on mobile devices you are seriously hindering your success. Passive job seekers look through job listings on lunch hours and while commuting, and when your job board looks great on mobile devices and makes applying simple for mobile users, you’ll get a much better response from job seekers. Entry and junior level job listings that are popular among younger job candidates succeed especially well when they look great on mobile devices. Some 75 percent of job seekers participating in a 2011 survey said the “look and feel” of a job listing influenced their decision to apply.

Link to Video

When a job listing links to an informative video about the employer, the listing will be far more memorable than a plain listing that only includes the basic facts of the job advertised. Active and passive job seekers want to know, “What would it be like to work at this company?” and a video can give a concise, informative answer. Video links may be used as part of premium job listings that earn your website more money. With job board analytics showing the benefits of using video, you’ll convince more employers to go with a premium listing.

Make It Interactive

Job seekers want interactivity, and so should employers. One of the biggest complaints job seekers have about job search engines and classified sites like Craigslist is the feeling of dropping their resume into a “black hole” when they apply. Your job board should give employers the ability to get in touch with a particularly promising candidate immediately through instant message, chat, or email. A-list job candidates aren’t going to bother sending off their resume to “black hole” listings, but they’ll apply when they know employers have numerous options for interacting with them starting as soon as they apply.

Attracting job seekers is tough. RealMatch offers recruitment advertising solutions for media companies and digital publishers that drive traffic and get results due to mobile friendliness, interactivity, and a large network of employers with jobs to list. Increasing numbers of digital publishers and trade publication websites are discovering what a valuable addition a custom job board can be to their website and their overall monetization strategy.

Photo Credits: Ambro / freedigitalphotos.net, Ambro / freedigitalphotos.net