The growing online recruitment market today consists of a multitude of job boards and job aggregators. It has been booming with opportunities for all the stakeholders involved, such as the recruiters, candidates, as well as job boards. In 2018 alone, the industry generated revenue worth eight billion US dollars. But a growing online market also means that the competition among job boards is getting more aggressive.

Several new players are also joining the race to become one of the best job board software candidates. For example, Stack Overflow is an online forum where a community of developers and coders discuss different technical topics. Leveraging their vast online community, the owners of Stack Overflow have created a niche job board focusing only on technical jobs. Likewise, several online platforms that have gathered large audiences are capitalizing on their strong online presence by developing job boards. Therefore, the market for job boards is getting increasingly competitive. It’s against such a backdrop that job boards have a key decision to make – to keep competing or to differentiate and stand out from competitors.

Finding a suitable niche

Running a generic job board poses stiff competition, as multiple players are already competing in that market. Trying to market a job board that offers no USP is, put simply, a waste of time and money. Therefore, creating a niche job board is the need of the hour.

A niche job board will cater to a target demographic of candidates and recruiters. To find the right niche, job boards need to research job trends and analyze the recruitment market. For instance, job board owners can search for terms related to their niche on Google Trends. The tool will create a graph that displays search trends for the terms. Moreover, job boards can check the data on job trends posted on the websites of job aggregators. Job board owners can also check other job boards to explore different demographics, like work-from-home employees and passive candidates.

After deciding a suitable niche, job boards need to identify any existing competitors or job boards offering a similar niche. Exploring the existing competition and best job board software candidates before creating a niche job board is an important step. If there are several competing job boards already, job board owners may want to select another, more unique niche. On the other hand, if there are no competitors at all, then the demand for jobs in that niche may just be too low. Besides, job boards can always zero in on sub-niches that appeal to an even more specific audience.

Utilizing job board competitor analysis

Job board competitor analysis is crucial for understanding competitors. Job board competitor analysis will help job board owners to discover why their potential audience might be visiting other job boards. For effective job board competitor analysis, job boards can conduct customer surveys. They can ask their customers (i.e., candidates and recruiters) important questions such as:

• Which other job board websites do they prefer using?
• What are some of the unique services and features offered by those job boards?
• Any feedback and/or suggestions for their job board?

These questions will help job boards gather more information on competitor strengths and weaknesses. Job board owners can obtain crucial data about their competitors using online resources such as the Smart Job Board list and Good and Co Career Insights. Such resources offer insightful information like ‘job posting price’ and ‘number of active jobs’ on different platforms for a selected niche. Other important steps that fall under job board competitor analysis include:

Reviewing competitors’ website rankings

The next step in job board competitor analysis is to find out competitor website rankings and other such insightful statistics on competitor performance. For this purpose, job board owners can utilize several free and premium tools, such as Alexa and SimilarWeb. Using these tools, they can clearly analyze their competitor’s website traffic. Furthermore, job boards should analyze the frequency of job postings on competing job boards to find out how active that particular job board is. For this purpose, job board owners need to observe metrics like the number of job postings, applicants, and resume listings on competitor websites.

Understanding competitors’ marketing approach

The best job board software candidates implement effective marketing strategies. To understand the most effective marketing practices, job boards should analyze their competitor’s marketing strategies. Several job board websites market audio-video content, such as blogs, tutorials, and infographics. Such content helps improve the ranking of a job board on search engine result pages (SERPs). Furthermore, job boards can use premium online tools like SEMRush and AHRefs to gain insights into their competitor’s paid and organic search campaigns.

Analyzing competitors’ social media engagement

Another crucial step in job board competitor analysis is to analyze a competitor’s social media activity. For this purpose, job board owners can carefully observe how their competitors engage with their audience ‘socially’. To better understand the impact of social media presence, job boards can check out social media mentions of their competitors. Job board owners can use several free and premium tools for this purpose.

Developing a marketing strategy

Similar to any successful business, an effective marketing strategy is essential for job boards. Job boards can include various techniques in their marketing approach, as follows:

• Blog posts that offer informative guides, latest news, and opinions
• Infographics that present useful data in a visually appealing manner
• Email lists that update customers on the latest website content and job opportunities
• Videos and podcasts to inform the audience about the latest industry trends
• Posting content on all social media platforms to improve online presence

By regularly posting informative content, job boards can build authority and trust among their audience. Another technique that job boards can use is creating online forums. Online forums help build a community for job board users to engage with each other and discuss various topics. Online forums are among the most successful methods for building a loyal audience.

Building an all-rounder job board

Job board owners need to figure out what their job board is good at and which aspects can be better. For this purpose, job boards can review customer feedback and study their website’s performance. Job boards must understand what their competitors are lacking and plan to exploit those limitations. For example, several job boards don’t offer the option for candidates who may be confused about their career path or the option to upload multiple resumes. Another great point for job boards to consider is becoming more accessible by developing a mobile app.

Before applying numerous well-thought strategies, the core task of any job board is to search and post jobs. Therefore, taking care of these tasks should be the top priority. For this purpose, job boards must deploy an end-to-end job wrapping solution with the help of premium job wrapping tools like Propellum. Propellum offers a wide range of services such as job scraping, job wrapping, job feed categorization, automation, and analytics. Other noteworthy features of Propellum’s solutions include:

• Recruiter-specific customization
• Job board updates with the help of automated job scheduler
• Compatibility with all major recruitment technologies and ATSs
• Monthly reports and analytics to gain insights into job board performance
• 24×7 customer support for assistance and technical glitches
• Seamless updates to keep up with changing industry trends
• Zero implementation costs
• Multilingual wrapping to enable global job import

In a competitive market, job boards can succeed by creating unique value propositions that competitors don’t offer. For this, job boards must actively undertake job board competitor analysis. With such an approach, job boards can fill the gap that their competitors cannot and carve out their niche.