As you may have noticed, the Job­Board­Geek pod­cast end­ed a few weeks back – but nev­er fear, the archive lives on! And in a relat­ed devel­op­ment, my co-host Steven Roth­berg ran off and found a new part­ner-in-crime, Peter Zoll­man – and they start­ed their own pod­cast, called Inside Job Boards and Recruit­ment Mar­ket­places. I encour­age you to give it a lis­ten – not only is it about my favorite sub­ject in the whole world, but I think they made a very wise choice in the selec­tion of their first guest!

But what did we man­age to cov­er over the course of the 40 Job­Board­Geek episodes? Well, strange­ly enough – quite a lot! Here’s what you can learn via a selec­tive dive into the archive:

• Com­mon mis­takes that job boards make: For instance: job boards often get into the mind­set that they ‘sell job post­ings’. That’s a pret­ty lim­it­ing mind­set – and guess what? It costs you mon­ey, too. Check out the full list here.
• Is video bet­ter than text?: For as long as I’ve been con­sult­ing, folks have been try­ing to use videos on job boards. Well, we actu­al­ly talk to some­one who is mak­ing it work – Bri­an For­rester of Lumina.co. He walks you through how it works – and how it com­pares to the stan­dard ‘vanil­la text job ad’. I think you’ll be sur­prised. Check it out here.
• So what is this ‘back­fill’ of which you speak?: Whether you’re new to the indus­try, or a sea­soned pro, you will encounter the term ‘back­fill’ – I guar­an­tee. Steven and I decid­ed to dig into what back­fill is, why you might (or might not) want to use it, and what your options are. Whether you want to learn what the heck this thing is, or you just want to see if we actu­al­ly got it right, this pod­cast is the one to check out.
• Crowd­sourc­ing jobs for fun and prof­it: Most job boards rely on job ads from their pay­ing employ­ers and back­fill (see above). How­ev­er, when we talked with Joe Mey­er of Exec­u­tive Thread, he explained that he relies on sourc­ing jobs from his site’s mem­bers and from recruiters – thus expos­ing posi­tions that aren’t show­ing up on the ‘reg­u­lar’ job boards. An inter­est­ing mod­el, and an inter­est­ing sto­ry. Lis­ten here.
• Some­times touchy is bet­ter: In gen­er­al, most job boards are ‘low touch’ – employ­ers don’t have a lot of direct hand­hold­ing or con­tact, unlike with recruiters. How­ev­er, Noel Andrews of JobRack.eu – who start­ed out with a stan­dard mod­el – found that piv­ot­ing to a high­er-touch approach made his clients hap­pi­er, made him more rev­enue, and still allowed him to scale the busi­ness. Lis­ten­ing to what he did will prob­a­bly give you a few ideas, too! Check it out here.
• Is SEO impor­tant? YES IT’S IMPORTANT!!!: Every­one knows (or should know) that SEO is crit­i­cal for the suc­cess of a job board. But know­ing is dif­fer­ent from know­ing what to do, specif­i­cal­ly. Luck­i­ly, we had the plea­sure of chat­ting with Peter Askew and Nick Leroy of SEO­Jobs about how SEO can change the for­tunes of the aver­age job board. Nick also gives you two spe­cif­ic ways to improve your site’s SEO – and when you do that, you will get free, qual­i­fied traf­fic. Who can argue with that? Lis­ten here.
• Sub­scrip­tions are a growth mul­ti­pli­er: If you’ve ever worked with me, you know that I am a big believ­er in the pow­er of sub­scrip­tions. They sta­bi­lize and increase rev­enue, and can move your busi­ness from small to large over time. Andy Hibel of High­erEd­Jobs knows this from first-hand expe­ri­ence – and he tells us how they’ve built a site that leads their niche and is thriv­ing after 20 years. You’ll learn some­thing from this one, I promise. Check it out here.

The above episodes are just a sam­pling of the kinds of insight you can get in the Job­Board­Geek pod­cast archive. Take a walk around, lis­ten a lit­tle, and get some ideas that can help your busi­ness grow. You’ll be glad you did. (And don’t for­get to check out Steven’s new pod­cast!).

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