The UK job market, despite the growing number of unemployed people over the past few months, seems to be in a good place. That’s because the current unemployment rate, which stands at around 4%, is the lowest it has been in decades. While the situation may not be something to celebrate about, it presents an unprecedented opportunity to job boards and other intermediaries in the recruitment industry.
The current state of the UK job market is characterized by an increasing number of job-seekers and also growth, albeit slow, in the number of jobs requiring specialized skills that are becoming available. This means that both the job-seekers and employers are in a place of need. And mediums like job boards, that serve the purpose of bridging the gap between job-seekers and employers, can fulfill their needs and prove to be highly valuable in this period.
But, while the opportunities for job boards is undeniable, it is also important to note that there are hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of job boards and agencies across the UK. And, as is the norm in every industry, only a few at the top will benefit the most from this impending period of flourish. And thus, job boards must understand the opportunity presented by the job board industry and prepare their business to become the best choice for both employers and job-seekers. To do so, it is important to understand what the job-seekers and employers expect from job boards.
Why the current state of the UK job market is ideal for job boards
The greater the number of job-seekers, larger is the potential market size for job boards. Thus, the fact that over a million skilled people are unemployed in the UK job market means that job boards have the opportunity to attract every one of them to their site. And the larger the number of job-seekers they attract to their website, the greater is the likelihood of them forming partnerships with leading recruiters to post exclusive jobs.
This will again, in turn, attract more job-seekers and then, more recruiters, and… the cycle goes on and on. And every time the cycle repeats itself, it will gain momentum and help your job board grow like a snowball rolling down a hill. When your job board reaches such a stage, it will be hard to stop it from joining the league of the best job boards in the country. And, at that point, further growth and profits will become inevitable. But, in order to get there, job boards will have to ensure that they have what it takes to attract the majority of the job-seekers and employers. And to do so, they must understand what both these parties need.
What the UK job market wants
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that ultimately, job-seekers want to find the right job for themselves and employers want employees who would be a perfect fit for their organizations. And it is clear that the easier a job board makes the process of fulfilling their needs, the more likely they are to become the most preferred option for everyone. To make the process of job-hunting easier for job-seekers and that of recruitment for employers, job boards must provide the following to job-seekers and employers:
Job-seekers want the right job
While you may be right to think that job-seekers just want a job, it is not entirely true. They want the job that doesn’t just got their credentials, but also their needs and preferences. These preferences may include the type of employment, such as full-time, part-time, contractual, internship, or co-op. Or they might want jobs in specific locations based on their needs or interests. They may even seek for jobs that are available for different experience levels.
Since different people have different combinations of parameters in mind when they look for jobs, a job board needs to have as many jobs as possible and as large a variety of those as is available. Not only that, these jobs must be accompanied by enough information regarding those jobs such as the experience level, employment type, location, the salary range, and other pertinent information. This means having a smart job aggregation tool, like a job crawler, that can gather not only automatically find a massive number of jobs but also all the relevant information that accompanies that. These tools crawl through different websites — such as career pages where employers post their vacant position — and replicate the information from those sites on job boards in the desired format.
Having a large volume of job information posted in a consistent format on your job board will ensure that job-seekers have a good job-seeking experience. They will not only have a satisfactory number of jobs to choose from but also have an easy time finding the information they require pertaining to jobs. Providing such experience with reliable job information will enable job boards to consistently grow their traffic. And when your job board becomes highly preferred by job-seekers, employers will follow.
Employers need the right talent
Employers want to find the perfect fit for every vacant position they have. They know that to find the best people for their vacancies, they’ll have to reach a large number of job-seekers. Thus, they want to post their jobs on a platform that attracts the largest number of job-seekers. They will prefer to form partnerships with the most popular job boards so that they can get their vacancies advertised as soon as necessary to get talent before their competition does.
Employers prefer to partner with job boards that use tools that can directly integrate with their Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) or any other recruitment tools that they might be using. This way, they’ll have to spend less time coordinating with recruitment agencies and other job boards to get the word about their job vacancies out. This leads to easy job management and minimizes closing times for new recruits.
Thus, job boards must be underpinned by web wrapping tools that work well with different recruitment technologies so that they can establish partnerships with a large number of employers. This will allow them to gather more and more exclusive job postings, making them more attractive to job-seekers.
How job boards can make the most of the UK job market’s situation
