Having read the title, you’re probably wondering, “What does my job board have to do with e-commerce sites?” But when you come to think of it, your job board isn’t much different from, say, Amazon or Alibaba. How? Because — believe it or not — e-commerce sites and job boards function on similar operating models. E-commerce businesses list products that customers browse through, sort, search, compare, and purchase from. Similarly, your job board lists job postings that job seekers browse through, sort, search, compare and apply for. While e-commerce sites get paid by the sellers, job boards get paid by employers. And the job wrap system used by job boards is comparable to the product listing software that e-commerce sites use.
Look, we can keep drawing analogies between e-commerce and job posting sites like this all day. What we’re trying to say is that given the similarities between the two, job boards can definitely learn a thing or five from successful e-commerce sites. They can follow the approach taken by these businesses and emulate their success, establishing themselves as leaders in the recruitment industry. So, here are five lessons that job boards can learn from successful e-commerce businesses:
Everybody is a customer
For a job board, the primary customer is obviously the job seeker. This is similar to successful e-commerce companies, who rely on the millions of buyers they have. We know that as job board owners, you probably put a lot of effort into improving the job seeker experience. You most likely use a job wrap system that can haul in a large volume of job postings. You may also focus on providing job seekers with an easy-to-navigate user interface. But you know what you must also be doing? You must also focus on your other, equally important customer — the employer.
It is the employers who contribute to a job board’s revenue, just like vendors do for e-commerce sites. The most successful e-commerce sites ensure that vendors on their platform have an easy time listing their products on the platform. Similarly, it is important for job boards to ensure a convenient job board experience for employers. Obviously, the first thing that employers would look for in a job board is the number of job seekers that visit it. However, job boards can provide more value to employers using their site. An example of this is using a job wrap system that has a versatile job feed API.
Using a premium job wrap system that has a flexible job feed API can facilitate the process of sourcing jobs from employers. Job feed API can be used to integrate your job board with your employer partners’ career sites and recruitment systems. With the help of job feed API, your job board can display jobs as soon as they are posted by the employers on their career sites. Thus, employers won’t have to share new job postings to your job board manually, making the entire process convenient for them.
Everyone likes to have and compare options
The most widely used e-commerce businesses are those that provide their customers with the widest range of products and services. That’s because people want to have multiple options for every product they buy, so they can sort, compare, and decide what’s best for them. This applies to even the smallest of products like shoes and shampoos. So, don’t you think they will be more fastidious about long-term decisions like their careers? Wouldn’t they want to look at multiple options before choosing one? They would, won’t they?
Just like e-commerce sites provide ample options to shoppers, job board owners must offer options to job seekers. Your job board must enable job seekers to find all the jobs that they qualify for. By doing so, you can become a standalone source of jobs and eliminate the need for your competitors.
In addition to providing a comprehensive collection of job postings to every job seeker, you must also facilitate searching and sorting of job data. Job seekers usually want to compare various options before deciding which jobs to apply to. To provide them the ability to sort and compare jobs, it is necessary to perform job feed categorization. Using job feed categorization, you can tag your jobs with great detail. As a result, every job posting will become easily searchable and comparable with others. Job seekers visiting your site will be able to filter in jobs that they want and make better choices. Most advanced tools that do job wrapping for job boards come with job feed categorization
Authenticity is non-negotiable
Be it for products on e-commerce sites or job postings on your job boards, the lack of authenticity can be a huge deal-breaker. Customers only want to invest their money in buying authentic products. And the most successful e-commerce businesses have strict policies and mechanisms in place to ensure authenticity and high quality. Similarly, you need to create policies and use tools for ensuring the authenticity of job data.
The best way to ensure job data is to use a job wrap system that enables job data optimization and validation. By using such solutions, you can rest assured that all the jobs posted on your job board are rigorously checked for quality. That’s because these solutions can find and remove job postings that are duplicate, expired, or inauthentic. In addition to weeding out invalid job postings, a premium job wrap system also fixes job postings with incomplete data. As a result, you’ll have a job board that presents job information in a consistent and convenient format.
Using a job feed API to source jobs from employers’ career sites directly is the most effective way of ensuring authenticity. Since the entire process is automated with the use of the API, there is no need for you or your staff to spend precious man-hours on quality checks.
Your job wrap system drives everything
What has enabled the most successful e-commerce businesses to thrive is their smart use of technology. The best e-commerce sites have built their success using cutting edge solutions for automating their operations. You can do the same by building your job board around a state-of-the-art job wrap system. When it comes to improving performance, nothing works better than upgrading the process of job wrapping for job boards.
Using advanced job wrap systems like Mega Wrap by Propellum can improve your overall job board performance like nothing else. Tools like Mega Wrap can not only ensure that you have a never-ending supply of jobs from everywhere across the internet. Additionally, it will ensure that all the jobs posted on your job board are top-notch — without any involvement from you or your team! And to top it all off, Mega Wrap can be integrated with all modern recruitment tools used by employers, enabling quick and easy API integration.
While there may be countless e-commerce sites around the world, we only hear about the big ones — the Amazons and Alibabas. They are not only preferred by shoppers but also sought after by vendors. Your job board can have similar levels of popularity and influence across the recruitment industry by emulating these giants. Or you can struggle and wither away like a majority of the businesses in the industry by refusing to learn and grow. The choice is yours.