What is the key to every good relationship? That’s right: trust! As a job board, the trust of your job-seekers is your single most valuable resource and one you should both cherish and cultivate. In a sense, candidates trust you with their professional future… and that responsibility is not to be taken lightly.
In a recent survey, 42% of respondents answered that they didn’t know which brands to trust. It’s on brands to do better and to show that both business and candidates benefit from the relationship. It’s also in their best interest, because trust and consumer behaviour go hand in hand: people like to buy from people they know, and it’s no different for job boards. Making your brand more human is a great way to create this type of relationship. Job-seekers have a lot to choose when it comes to employers these days, so to stand out and capture their attention, the trust component is crucial. When you create trust, job-seekers will remember you job board and come back for future jobs since they’ve had a positive experience. This in turns help ramp up your revenue.
Now, how do you inspire trust? There are many ways to go about it, but in recruitment these 4 tips stand out:
1. Put the candidate first
One of the most important things to never lose sight of is that your candidate should come first. Think about how they’re using your platform, and think of their convenience before thinking of anything else.
A good example is how s1 jobs from Scotland handles incoming users: on this job board, users aren’t obligated to sign in. This means that the job board doesn’t get their data, which can be seen as unfortunate, but it does improve job seekers’ experience using the platform. They feel more at ease browsing when they’re not being harassed for their personal information. As a result of this frictionless experience, they come back. This is one of the key tactics s1 jobs initiated: putting the job-seekers first. The revenue came once they shifted the narrative.
A choice which may at first seem counterintuitive for a job board (don’t ask users for any information) has the valuable effect of growing their trust so they come back. It’s always worth experimenting, so why not try running a test on what these types of adjustments do to the flow of your website? This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t conduct candidate feedback. We will get to this point later in the article.
2. Be transparent
You want to give candidates all the information they need to make an informed decision. No matter how badly you want that listing filled, if candidates feel like they’re not getting the full picture you’ll lose their trust in a heartbeat. And it works the other way around too: give a candidate a full 360 degree picture of what a job and company are all about, and they’ll appreciate your openness and honesty, building trust. Don’t tiptoe around the salary for too long either, even if it feels like you’ll lose the candidate: they’ll find out eventually!
In short: there’s really no reason to hide or embellish the information you have, or not to be frank with candidates. Simply trust them to make the right decision, even if it means not filling that job posting immediately.
3. Actively seek out your candidate’s feedback
If you only act interested or contact someone when you have a job posting to fill, candidates will feel like they are just a tool to you. Maintain the relationship by reaching out to candidates that registered on your board from time to time. This makes them feel valued, keeps your candidate pool fresh and get them to check back every now and then.
Does your job board have an efficient and welcoming feedback loop set up already? Talking to your candidates is super important, not just because you want them to apply, but also to know what they love about your board, and perhaps also what they hate. This will help you identify the human factor: the things you’ll find will go from something as simple as a button that’s too small, to something big and psychologically important as a search bar that nobody can find.
So how do you find out what your audience actually wants to see? Organizing focus groups, doing research or sending out questionnaires can help you answer this question. Many job boards don’t even have a contact button, so you’re already ahead from the moment you start. It will help you optimize your product and website… and build trust.
Another benefit of knowing your pool of candidates intimately is that it allows you to send more personalized messages, resulting in higher open and click through rates. No wonder then that personalization is a big trend in recruitment.
4. Don’t oversell a job
In response to pressure to fill a listing, job boards will sometimes adopt a pay-for-performance model. This means that clients will pay job boards for their vacancies to be shown first to candidates. This PFP model will of course work fine for a while. But when job seekers have been on your board for a while, they just want to see the job they’re looking for, not the next ad. Imagine being shown the wrong job time after time! At that point, the jobs that pop up should match their query completely… creating trust.
What this means is that it’s fine for job boards to use PFP sparingly, but in essence this is a move that does not benefit job seekers. If they are shown the same vacancies over and over, they’ll lose trust, and you’ll have lost one candidate, possibly forever.
5. Provide an excellent candidate experience
As we’ve already touched upon, candidates want a frictionless experience. As in all other areas of life, people’s tolerance for waiting or complicated processes is eroding.
This starts on the website: make sure all the important buttons are visible in an instance. Consider eliminating lengthy sign-up processes. Provide a contact option so your users can give feedback and ask questions. the things you would do if you were helping a friend! Think about how your messages are received and in what mindset your candidate may be. Make sure all of your communications are relevant and sent at the right time to avoid annoying – already stressed – candidates.
What you can do to help is send them useful information for the different phases of the job hunting process. This can be blogs, videos, or you can go a step further and offer some form of coaching or a cv clinic. These kinds of valuable interactions help you stand out and be remembered.
Need some help to make your brand stand out?
Then why not try Wonderkind’s Talent Attraction Technology: we’ve built a smart system that automates your job ads across social media channels. Best-in-class visuals are paired with algorithmic targeting that finds job seekers where they are, and shows them what they want to see. The results are then fed back to you in a handy dashboard that gives you a ton of options for filtering and retargeting. The days of one-size-fits-all job ads are definitely over, and to make your job board shine online, some extra effort is needed. Contact us now for a free demo!
