No mat­ter how much infor­ma­tion you have, it seems like it’s nev­er enough. Case in point: remem­ber 2021 and the first half of 2022? Cer­tain indus­tries, such as Big Tech and online retail­ers, went on hir­ing sprees. Folks in the job board indus­try were cer­tain­ly hap­py enough – after the dip in hir­ing due to 2020’s COVID emer­gence, we were ready for some good news. Hir­ing for ware­house, health care, and tech went through the roof.

The rea­sons for the hir­ing explo­sion were out there, if not always obvi­ous. With much of the pop­u­la­tion locked down (even after the ini­tial reac­tion to COVID), peo­ple turned to their com­put­ers as an alter­na­tive to buy­ing things in per­son. Ware­hous­es and sup­pli­ers raced to keep up. In oth­er words, demand for deliv­ered goods went up. At the same time, work­ers need­ed to fill those pur­chas­es were scarce – after all, many were locked down or unwill­ing to go to a poten­tial­ly haz­ardous work­place. And what of the health work­ers on the front line? They were over­worked, burn­ing out, and also becom­ing sick. Against this back­drop, tech giants like Face­book and Ama­zon were snap­ping up work­ers as quick­ly as they could, react­ing to what they hoped was a per­ma­nent increase in demand.

Even as this was hap­pen­ing, the infor­ma­tion for what might come next was out there. If there was a short­age of work­ers, their labor became more valu­able, right? Employ­ers had to pay more. They even had to com­pete for work­ers (and it quick­ly became appar­ent that many employ­ers had for­got­ten how to com­pete for work­ers!). At the same time, the dan­ger COVID posed to work­ers made some jobs unde­sir­able at any wage – wit­ness the ongo­ing exit of health care work­ers from their indus­try. And – hav­ing been forced to work from home – oth­er work­ers came to sev­er­al real­iza­tions: a) their job did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly require going into an office; and b) they did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly like going into an office. When thou­sands of work­ers have the same expe­ri­ences and real­iza­tions – well, you have some changes in the work­force. Employ­ers can either ignore the changes (i.e., retrench and hope for a return to the ‘good old days’) or they can ’embrace the change’.

In the midst of this sit the job boards and recruit­ment mar­ket­ing plat­forms. They are try­ing to meet both the present need for work­ers that may be mov­ing from one indus­try to anoth­er – and the future need for work­ers that will con­tin­ue to fuel exist­ing growth. So what does the avail­able infor­ma­tion tell us that job boards should do?

• If you’re in a mar­ket that favors remote work: Job boards focused on tech, online retail, bank­ing, and oth­er ver­ti­cals that are lean­ing into remote work should be mod­i­fy­ing their can­di­date acqui­si­tion plans to reach can­di­dates that are tran­si­tion­ing into remote work from oth­er indus­tries.
• If you’re in a mar­ket hit hard by a shrink­ing work­force: Job boards focused on health care, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and oth­er ver­ti­cals that are los­ing work­ers should dou­ble down on part­ner­ships with schools and train­ing pro­grams that are bring­ing new can­di­dates into the mar­ket.
• If you’re in a mar­ket that seems sta­ble: Job boards focused on so-called sta­ble ver­ti­cals, such as sales, mar­ket­ing, legal, and so on, should not assume that things will remain sta­ble. Take a sec­ond look at both the long term growth in employ­ers, and the num­ber of can­di­dates enter­ing your ver­ti­cal. Sta­bil­i­ty can be deceiv­ing!

Remem­ber – big changes often hap­pen slow­ly at first, and then all at once. To be pre­pared for sud­den change, pay atten­tion to slow and incre­men­tal change! And remem­ber – the infor­ma­tion (and truth) is out there.

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