Unemployment is a term that every working individual will fear as it creates a void in the resume that becomes hard to fill. And in a country like the UK that has already been hit by the Great Recession and ongoing Brexit uncertainty, the unemployment ratio is growing. Recession is not the only reason; there are many other reasons causing unemployment in the UK. For instance, structural factors like the fast-changing nature of the economy, indicated by its rapid shift from manufacturing to service sector-based economy can be one of the reasons for unemployment. Another reason can be frictional unemployment caused due to some frictional factors like the time required for an unemployed to find a new job.
Unemployment in the UK is growing at a worrying rate, but it can be a brilliant opportunity for the job board industry in the UK. Job boards can help both candidates and employers in this situation to get an edge over others in the increasingly competitive job board industry.
How the unemployment scenario can be good news for job boards
Several causes of unemployment like recession results in loss of jobs for employees. These causes increase the number of job seekers looking for jobs. An increase in the number of job seekers opens up many opportunities for job boards. For instance, more applicants mean more incoming applications and resumes to job boards. They can collect these resumes and create a database for future reference. For example, many job boards provide a resume database to their employers so that they can proactively find the right candidate for a particular job and reach them. Creating a resume database can save a lot of time for employers. Also, since more candidates will be looking for jobs, job boards will have an opportunity to provide them with all the available jobs in the market and gain their trust so that when the unemployment rate decreases, they will remain the first choice for both employees and employers.
Unemployment means less available open jobs in the job market. And, if job boards can gather all the available jobs from the market, then they can attract a huge volume of traffic to their site. Further, if job boards manage to attract more candidates, then it would mean they’ll have a larger pool of talented candidates. Hence, they will be able to source the best candidates for their employers for every job. Thus, scraping all the available jobs will eventually help job boards to partner with employers and other employment agencies. And partnering with them will give job boards access to exclusive jobs. It will further help job boards to stand out from their competitors.
How the job board industry in the UK can respond to unemployment scenarios
Job boards should show their dedication towards the job seekers and employers during the unemployment scenario. By doing this, job boards can ensure that in the coming future, when the unemployment ratio decreases and competition increases among them, they will be the first choice of employers and candidates.
Scraping all the available jobs
As mentioned earlier, the availability of jobs is low during unemployment. Hence, job boards need to get and post all the available jobs on their sites. But gathering all the available posts can be both challenging and time-consuming. For instance, fetching reliable job data is challenging as all the sources of job data are not reliable. And visiting reliable sources every day to gather jobs is a tedious and time-consuming task. So the question arises: how to scrape all the available jobs easily? And, the answer to it will be: by using automation tools. Using automation tools like Propellum’s Job Crawling services helps job boards to seamlessly fetch the latest and accurate job openings directly from employers’ websites. This job crawler automates the daily process of scraping all the jobs from all the employers’ sites.
There are many tasks that an automated job scraper can do for job boards. For instance, it not only scrape all the available jobs but also gathers them with accuracy. Some job posts might not have a complete description of the job, which might result in wrong candidates applying for it. But, using automated job scrapers eliminates all such erroneous possibilities.
Eliminating repetitive jobs
There are various impacts of unemployment on individuals. For instance, stress, depression, and anxiety are some of them. As a result of these negative impacts on unemployed people, they can easily get frustrated. And, in such a scenario, you as a job board will not want to land them on repetitive jobs and increase their frustration. Although people might not get frustrated if this happens to them once or twice, but if this becomes a common scenario where either they are frequently landing on repetitive jobs or a link from job post is leading them to some invalid sources, then they will get frustrated. Therefore, you need to keep unique job posts with relevant keywords on your job board so that candidates can rely on you. Propellum’s premium services like EasyPost gather jobs as per your strategy and also provide relevant keywords, ensuring that the right keyword goes with the right job and repetitive jobs are eliminated.
Managing incoming applications for employers
Every job post has a job description that mentions some required skills for that job. But during unemployment, in a rush to find a job, people don’t look at the required skills and apply for every post they come across. This causes a tremendous amount of incoming applications, which becomes difficult for employers to manage. Job boards can help employers and other recruitment agencies to manage and review these incoming applications. For instance, job boards can review job applications of candidates and match the desired qualifications and skills for a job so that employers don’t have to go through every application. Job boards can also take sample tests set by employers before allowing applicants to apply for a job. Taking tests will help them to supply the most eligible and relevant candidates to employers.
Hiring contractors
Fewer jobs are not the only reason for unemployment; some people voluntarily do not want to dedicate themselves to a permanent job as they want flexibility in their jobs. You might have come across the term “gig economy,” which is also sometimes referred to as “freelance economy.” The gig economy refers to a workforce environment where people are hired on a short-term contract basis. It means that people work for a company as long as their contract allows and then start looking for another company. Also, people working as full-time employers try to find some small gigs for additional income. Thus, hiring for a gig becomes a constant task, which can be time-consuming for employers. Hence, employers and recruitment agencies always take help from job boards to hire candidates for gigs to save time and resources.
What job boards need to stand out in the job board industry
Job boards need to grab the unemployment scenario opportunity with both hands by providing the most talented candidates to employers. But sourcing the best candidates is challenging for job boards without the use of a premium, sophisticated job data automation tool. Premium tools provide many benefits to job boards that help them to get an edge over others in the ever-increasing competition. Say, for example, Propellum’s Megawrap is an automated job aggregator tool that can post large volumes of jobs to your job board. You can customize the Megawrap aggregator according to your job board’s need so that it collects only relevant jobs from multiple employers’ websites while ensuring your visitors don’t run out of jobs to choose from!
