Niche job boards may specialize in a particular industry, a particular profession, a particular demographic, or a particular geographic area. Often, niche job boards have listings that aren’t available on huge general job boards and job search engines. Adding a job aggregator or general job board to your website can aid in your audience development efforts, but adding a niche job board to your site can do more.
It may seem counterintuitive that a more specialized product could be more effective for revenue development, but studies of job boards show that niche job boards have several advantages over general aggregators. Here are four reasons you should consider adding a niche job board to your site.
1. Baby Boomers Love Them, and Many Boomers Are Remaining in the Workforce
Just because a growing number of Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age doesn’t mean they’re actually retiring. Whether they’re staying in the game because they love their profession or because of financial constraints, the Boomer demographic is still a big job pool. Job boards are top resources for all generations, and are particularly popular with Baby Boomers, with 87% of Boomers turning to job boards right from the beginning of their job search. The corresponding figures are 82% for Generation X job seekers and 77% for Generation Y. These figures come from a comprehensive study on generational job search titled The MultiGenerational Job Search, published by Millennial Branding in September 2012.
2. Niche Job Boards Are Favorite Haunts of Passive Job Seekers
For employers, niche job boards are tools that not only help them fill positions today, but tomorrow as well. Niche job boards can help employers build a strong talent pipeline for future openings because passive job seekers – those who are currently employed but who might be open to the right opportunity – often browse openings in their industry or profession to take the pulse of their particular skills market. Once they go from passive to active job seekers, they tend to start out working through job boards they regularly browse for opportunities.
3. Targeted Applicant Pools Benefit Both Employers and Applicants
Applicants love niche job boards because they automatically filter out jobs in fields they’re not interested in, saving them time and effort. Employers love niche job boards because they lower their risk of receiving piles of applications or resumes from unqualified, underqualified, and marginally qualified applicants. Niche job boards distill it down to jobs certain applicants want, and when they’re included on appropriate websites like regional digital news publishers and trade publication websites, employers benefit from the targeted audience they reach.
4. Niche Job Boards Can Improve Website Audience Engagement
If your local news website hosts a job board targeted to your immediate geographic region, or if you run a trade publication website for a particular industry or profession, a niche job board is a great way to increase audience engagement. Not only do many regular visitors check out job listings (even if they’re passive job seekers), niche job boards are great for traffic development, because they bring in new website traffic as well, particularly when you mention your niche job board in your blog and social media postings.
The ”niche” job board can mean different things to different web publishers, but these types of job boards are much better at pulling their weight in terms of revenue development than enormous general job aggregators. Recruitment advertising solutions specifically geared toward digital publishers and trade publication websites are proving to be valuable to website owners, employers, and those who are looking for jobs.
Photo Credits: graur razvan ionut/freedigitalphotos.net, David Castillo Dominici/freedigitalphotos.net
