With globalization setting in, it is essential for companies to expand their business activities across the world to stay ahead in the competition. Employing candidates from different parts of the world also contributes to keeping up with this race by bringing diverse skill sets on the table. Organizations, to run smoothly, must employ a diverse and talented workforce to drive the company towards its goals with creativity and competence. In such a bustling job market, servicing tools like job feed, job aggregator, or job boards are on the rise for their extensive outreach and promising results. However, we see the emergence of new businesses every day. New businesses open new job opportunities and refer to job boards to help them find the right candidates at the right time. As a result, it becomes cumbersome for job boards to maintain a dynamic and massive candidate database on their websites. Keeping track of the data becomes difficult, especially with all the minute details involved in a job posting. But, XML job feeds are helping job boards overcome this obstacle with the ease and simplicity in their structure and functioning. XML job feeds enable job syndication on any job-servicing platform, allowing a job board to accumulate more job data from different companies in an organized manner, and shape itself into a better job tool.

Job boards and job aggregators

Job boards are the most sought-after tools today in the recruitment industry. By collating a list of vacant job posts across different organizations, job boards act as a bridge between the organization and candidate, during the initial stages of the recruitment. Companies register themselves with job boards to have their job listings posted on these boards. Thus, job boards acquire the job data, make it all ready and formatted to be published online, and play an important role in matching an employee to his future employer.

Job aggregators, on the other hand, are called the Google for ‘job search.’ Aggregators scour the Internet for all the latest and new job openings in the market. Next, they collate a comprehensive list of job postings picked from several different job portals, giving a candidate a single-window job hunt solution. No wonder, job aggregators are considered the best solution for finding the latest vacancies in the market.

Optimizing job boards

We have reliable job boards today that assist companies and candidates in finding each other. These job websites have multiple job listings and databases, sourced from across the world. However, the processing carried out by a job board for matching a candidate and a company is not sufficient for today’s demanding job market.

A lot of job boards miss out on harnessing the most critical job market insights. The policy of ‘if you build it, they will come’ doesn’t work with job boards. You need to have all possible job postings on your platform to be able to make a mark in amongst your competitors. But unlike job aggregators, looking for jobs on other job boards doesn’t go well with a job board’s intrinsic work profile. It is here that tools like XML job feeds come into the picture to make a job board function as a job aggregator, making the board more scalable and reliable.

Using XML job feeds for job postings

XML job feeds are XML files that structure content in terms of specific tags or markups. Companies are using XML job feeds to document the data for a job posting in a sequential manner, ensuring that no vital information is left out. Structured documenting, extensible markups, self-defining tags, and easy coding rules make formatting and processing detail-oriented content, like that in a job listing, convenient with XML files.

Recognizing these advantages of XML job feeds over regular job listings, job boards have started providing either free or paid services to companies to integrate their XML job feeds with the job board.

Introducing XML job feeds in job boards

As mentioned earlier, XML job feeds are making the lives of job boards better by enhancing the index of job boards on search engines results, and by simplifying the work involved in handling multiple job entries simultaneously. Another important assistance that XML job feeds offer job boards is job syndication. XML job feeds make job boards work as a job aggregator, without losing its intrinsic characteristic of being a unique job listing platform:

• As mentioned earlier, XML job feeds allow job syndication. Job boards have multiple job listings on their website. These job postings are changed as per the instructions of the company announcing the posting. A job board has to follow the lead and update the listing accordingly, to offer only the latest content on its portal. However, analyzing and updating each job listing individually is a tedious task. XML files help job boards in simultaneous updating of every job listing on their portal.

• A company generates an XML job feed at their end for every job listing they wish to upload on the job board. A job board, also, has some specifications related to the style and the format of the feeds they can process. After matching the company’s feed with their specifications, the job board republishes the feed on its portal. Then, at regular intervals of time, the job board runs a scan for any changes made in the XML job feed from the company. Any changes made are reflected in the job posting on the job board. Thus, for every job listing on a job board, a regular scan automates the update in the job details and helps the job board remain streamlined at all times without any hassle.

• XML job feeds also help job boards to keep the data structured and consistent. An XML file is same as an HTML file in its layout. It works on tags and markup symbols to organize the code in a sequence. Any missing tags in the code will generate an error while implementing it. Thus, when job boards decide on an XML file format for job feeds on their website, they mandate specific tags that are essential in a job description. Tags like the location of the job, reference number, job indexes or job URLs, and job categories are some of the compulsory tags that must be filled while filling a typical XML job feed. The tag structure of the file ensures that no vital data is lost while curating the job details to be posted anywhere online.

A job board, thus, with the help of an XML job feed, can elevate itself to be a job aggregator in the job industry. All it needs to do is offer an XML file supported architecture in its website that can process and republish XML files obtained from companies for their job listings. This will not only add to the traffic on a job board but also help it in reaching out to more companies that particularly use XML for job advertising. Thus, job boards can function as a job aggregator by scouring jobs across the web with sophisticated job servicing tools like Propellum that perform web crawling and support XML job feeds.