Are job boards really the best strategy for sourcing candidates?

Job boards have been the bread and butter of recruiters for decades. By far the biggest advantage of using them is the size of the candidate pool. But there are plenty of downsides, too.

Last week I ran a poll that showed too many irrelevant applicants as the biggest pain point for recruiters when using job boards. There is also such a huge number of job boards available now that simply choosing the right one can be a challenge.

Some boards are industry-specific, and that helps recruiters narrow down the pool of applicants to only the most relevant and qualified candidates. But that often comes with additional cost. According to Shortlist , some job boards have increased their fees by over 300%.?

These running sores have opened up gaps in the market for some pretty reputable challengers to job boards’ hiring hegemony. LinkedIn Recruiter, of course, is a hybrid, combining all the benefits of a job board with a professional networking platform.

And then there’s the range of AI-driven automation tools that can, among other things, amplify a recruiter’s sourcing efforts whilst reducing the labour burden and saving money.?

So my question is, in light of the fact that job boards are still by far and away the favoured method of recruiters, what does the data say about which is the most effective? I’ll discuss:

• Job boards: the good and the bad
• Talent databases – with a focus on automation
• Which is the most viable hiring strategy for 2023

Job boards: Are they really the most reliable?

Those of you who read my last article will know that I like claims to be properly quantifiable, i.e., backed up by sound data.?

Anecdotally, we’d be forgiven for thinking that job boards are the most effective way to sourcing and place candidates. The majority of recruiters we speak with rely on them for the majority of their hires.

But does the data support this?

Well, empirically, the picture is quite different. Yes, job boards do provide a truly global reach. Adzuna, for example, boasts 10 million visitors per month, and it's not even among the big hitters in that respect. Then at the premium end, you’ve got Monster and CareerBuilder, with the latter containing over 125 million candidate profiles in its database.

In theory, job boards enable recruiters to customise and target job listings so that they attract only the most relevant and suitable candidates. The niche job boards have in effect inverted this process, making themselves the go-to for certain industries, roles, and levels of seniority. Behance and AngelList are two good examples of these.

There’s also a pretty hefty time-saving element to why recruiters choose job boards. The customisation and targeting, either manually adjusted or through niche job boards, means recruiters can narrow the talent pool from the get-go and save time.

Plus, job boards target only active job seekers. So not only do the candidates effectively come to the recruiter by applying, they are more likely to be proactive and engaged through each stage of the process. This reduces the amount of time lost to drop out – not to mention the effort that could’ve been better spent elsewhere.

These benefits coalesce to form the general consensus among recruiters that job boards are the most effective and reliable strategy for sourcing candidates. And there is a nugget of truth in that. But times are changing; the hiring landscape is shifting – and quickly.

Are job boards flexible and robust enough to keep up?

Well, the short answer is no.

And that’s backed up by real-world examples from the past couple of years.

During the pandemic and ever since, the power has been shifting away from recruiters. The Great Resignation, which negatively impacted the numbers of candidates looking for jobs, has made way to ‘quiet quitting’, which still reduces the number of active job seekers, only in a different way.

Throughout most of the first half of this year, there were slightly more unemployed people than vacancies. However, recruiters still couldn’t fill roles. This is due in part to the huge increase in economically inactive people, which stood at 10 million working-age people in March this year.

So unsurprisingly, as in 2022, Bullhorn’s Global Insights and Data Survey 2023 showed that tight talent pools (66% of respondents) are the biggest challenge facing recruiters.

Effectively, the days of posting ads on job boards and being flooded with applicants are over.?

How have recruiters responded? They’ve upped their job board spend. Has it worked? The data says an unequivocal no.

According to PageUp , recruiters in August 2021 were advertising 75% more roles than they were in January 2020. However, the number of applicants they were receiving across the same timeframe had effectively dropped.

So as recruiters were spending more than ever on job boards – compounded by that 300% fee increase – their performance in terms of yielding inbound applications had decreased. And this makes a pretty compelling case for recruiters to reexamine their sourcing strategies.

The future, as is always the case, will belong to those who can respond to changes, pivot and innovate to overcome challenges and turn them into opportunities.?

Whilst job boards will always form a part of a solid sourcing strategy, they are no longer enough. In present times, it’s not sufficient to assume candidates will seek them out. And job boards are limited in another way, too: users are effectively all sourcing from the same pool of candidates.

This is where candidate databases come in.

Talent pools and automation tools

Every recruiter has a talent pool or candidate database, but many aren’t being used to their full potential.

This is mainly because candidate information changes fast, and it’s incredibly time-consuming and labour-intensive to manually update profiles to reflect these changes. What results is databases that contain high volumes of outdated or incorrect candidate data that renders them basically unusable.

This is, of course, one of the salient reasons why recruiters opt for job boards for sourcing talent.

But now there are scores of solutions that are targeted at optimising talent pools, thus fixing the problem.

Long before ChatGPT, AI and machine learning have been changing the game in recruitment. Automation has a long history – the first ATS was introduced in the late 90s. And since then, tech innovations have automated CV screening, job matching, sourcing, interviewing, and plenty more besides.

Products haven’t always been perfect, and due to our natural reticence around new technology, and a recruitment industry with deep-rooted traditions and ways of working, uptake has been a gradual process.

Early adopters may have been tempted to over-automate their talent pipelines. And that can quickly reverse any benefits these tools provide.?

For example, it can lead to recruiters inadvertently screening out the best candidates, it can wind up increasing the administrative burden, and over-automated processes, like job boards, can be inflexible and difficult to adapt to changing recruitment needs.

But now we’ve arrived at a time when automation tools are a pretty ubiquitous part of most recruiters’ overall strategies. That is in part because they offer value for money in a world where labour costs represent a sizeable chunk of company expenditure.

By utilising an AI-driven tool that automates database updates, for example, agencies can make some pretty substantial savings because they don’t have to hire additional recruiters or admin staff.?

That’s not to say that automated tools replace recruiters entirely. When used properly, they make recruiters better, enabling them to do more with less. Agencies get the most from these tools when they divide up the duties based on who is better at what.

Tasks such as general communications, reminders, data entry and any repetitive tasks are best assigned to the AI. That leaves the humans to build relationships with their talent, provide guidance, onboard when they have placed their candidates, and in general create that gold-standard candidate experience.

Not just a priority when times are hard

As we’re staring down the barrel of a prolonged period of economic instability, doing more with less becomes a primary focus for recruiters. The labour market is slowing, with June posting the second-fewest new non-farm jobs in the US in the period from January 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fewer vacancies mean more competition among recruiters. And much like when any commodity is both scarce and sought after, the value of vacancies is going up as a result. So any staffing firm that can operate in a more agile or efficient way is going to have a significant advantage.

That said, doing more with less isn’t only important during tough times; it’s always imperative. As staffing automation guru Billy Davis clearly explains in this post , “Automation ensures profit in all market conditions.”

Job boards vs. talent databases: What does the performance data say?

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, then, that talent databases can save recruiters money whilst making them more efficient, especially when processes are automated. But what does the data say?

Well, according to PageUp’s customer data , job boards are one of the least effective sourcing channels.

For every job posted on a job board it takes an average of 46 applicants to find the right candidate. That’s more than careers sites (26), referrals and internal mobility (both 5). Talent databases are shown to be the most effective, requiring just two candidates on average to make a hire.

While 60% of inbound applications come through job boards, they only contribute 20% of the overall successful hires. Conversely, talent databases represent only 3% of applications but they result in a whopping 21% of overall hires. That’s a significantly better return.

Moving away from the ratio of sourced to placed candidates, the quality of hires is also reportedly improved by talent databases over and above job boards.?

According to LinkedIn’s Top 100 Hiring Statistics 2022 , 62% of talent teams find more high-quality candidates through sourcing than inbound applications.?

Headline benefits of automated talent databases

There aren’t just immediate benefits to prioritising digitised talent databases over job boards. The gains are also reflected in the macro data.

According to Bullhorn’s GRID Survey 2023 , 30% of the highest-performing agencies – those with revenue gains above 10% – cited highly digitised data as the most influential factor in their revenue growth. Twenty percent attributed it to heavily leveraged automation.

In addition, of those high-performing agencies, 60% plan to increase their technology budget this year. That’s compared to just 32% of agencies with flat growth.?

Overall, the survey shows that the highest-performing agencies are leveraging technology to achieve tremendous growth, and the top performers are doubling down on their digital transformation in 2023.

And there’s more… In response to the enduring problem of tight talent pools, the majority of agencies are employing engagement strategies to build talent communities.?

Conclusion

So are job boards really the best place to source candidates? At one time, they might have been. But times have changed. The hiring landscape has shifted. And the data supports the hypothesis that automated talent databases represent a far more efficient sourcing strategy.

Naturally, the data is way ahead of popular opinion on this. Many recruiters still back job boards.?

However, recent statistics seem to suggest that the top-performing agencies are recognising that automated talent databases yield better results and are capitalising on the fact.

It’s a shift that all agencies will be required to make if they want to remain competitive in the future.