Old tech encom­pass­es a wide range of things – from type­writ­ers to tran­sis­tor radios to email. Some old tech is still being used, almost unchanged – think of dress shoes or blue jeans. Oth­er old tech has dis­ap­peared (fax­es, any­one?), or become a hob­by instead of a neces­si­ty (vinyl records, for exam­ple).

So what does this have to do with job boards? Well…

Let me intro­duce you to the job alert. This pop­u­lar can­di­date fea­ture has been present in the job board indus­try almost since the begin­ning. It is def­i­nite­ly old tech. So why does it sur­vive? The job alert solves a num­ber of impor­tant prob­lems for the aver­age job board, such as:

• Reen­gage­ment: The largest sin­gle expense for most job boards is can­di­date acqui­si­tion. SEO, SEM, social media – every mar­ket­ing chan­nel used to bring in can­di­dates costs either time or mon­ey (or both). What do you get for your efforts? A sin­gle vis­it from a can­di­date to your site or app or plat­form. That’s it. There is no guar­an­tee that the can­di­date will ever return. Unless…you con­vince the can­di­date to cre­ate a job alert! Just think – once a day or week or what­ev­er, the can­di­date will see jobs from your site. Jobs that are based on the cri­te­ria that the can­di­date request­ed. Will they come back? More than like­ly!
• High­er qual­i­ty traf­fic: As men­tioned above, when a can­di­date responds to a job alert – click­ing to view spe­cif­ic jobs – they are prob­a­bly see­ing the exact type of job they want to see. Why? Again, because they set the cri­te­ria – loca­tion, job title, sec­tor, etc. So what hap­pens when they reach your site? They will spend more time look­ing at the jobs. They will be more like­ly to apply to the jobs. And they will be more like­ly to view oth­er con­tent on your site.  The result? Bet­ter out­comes for your employ­ers – and your can­di­dates.
• Low­er can­di­date acqui­si­tion costs: Each job alert cre­at­ed will low­er your can­di­date acqui­si­tion costs. Why? Because you won’t be pay­ing to acquire that same can­di­date again – they are very like­ly to return to your site when they received their job alert. Most suc­cess­ful job boards rely on job alert traf­fic to keep their acqui­si­tion costs down and their job response rates up. Job alert traf­fic can account for as much as 40% of a site’s total traf­fic – and of course, that’s traf­fic that they are not pay­ing to acquire.

So why do some job boards fail to offer job alerts? Maybe they don’t care about reen­gag­ing with the can­di­date. Or maybe high qual­i­ty job appli­ca­tions aren’t impor­tant for their busi­ness. Or maybe they don’t care about spend­ing the same mon­ey over and over to acquire the same can­di­dates, over and over.

But if those things do mat­ter to you – well, make sure you have job alerts. Make sure they’re super-easy to set up – one good mod­el is to “turn a job search into a job alert“. Keep the fric­tion down – the only things you want from the can­di­date are their email address and the job cri­te­ria. Noth­ing else.

Trust me – if you offer a job alert, and keep it sim­ple, and make it obvi­ous, the job alert will treat you well. This is one case of old tech being the best tech!

[Want to get Job Board Doc­tor posts via email? Sub­scribe here.].
[Check out the Job­Board­Geek pod­cast archive!]

Related