So you’ve finally decided to upgrade that job board of yours. Excellent decision! But, do you know what an “upgrade” actually means when it comes to job boards and job board software? Are you aware of the activities that upgrading your job board entails? You might be wondering, “Upgrade means fixing bugs, right?” Yes, upgrades should inherently involve squashing any bugs that may be negatively impacting the job aggregation process or the user experience. But upgrading is more than just fixing bugs. Now you might say, “Does improving the user interface count?” Yes, an upgrade can also mean giving your job board site a visual face-lift to make it more appealing to visitors — after all, nobody would want to visit a job board in the first place if, design-wise, it looked drab and hard to navigate. But more important than these is upgrading the underlying technology that drives your job board, like the job parser.

 

If you’re like most job boards, you probably use a job parser that extracts job data from different sources online so that you can present it on your platform. And you might think that upgrading your job parser may be a good way of upgrading your job board. Well, you’re not wrong. But the problem is, just like you, countless other job boards are improving their job parsing technology. To stand out from among all your competitors, you’ll need to think beyond a job parser.

 

There’s only so much your job parser can do

A job parser is a software tool that reads job data from an online source and compiles the information in a database. While there is little doubt regarding the importance of a job parser to job board performance, job parsing is only one of the much broader set of activities that must be performed for the effective operation of a job board. A job parser is used for scanning web pages containing job postings and extracting necessary information which is saved in a structured database, often in a simple format such as XML. The data from these databases is then posted on job boards using different tools and methods.

 

While your job parser may be great at reproducing the information from job sites and employers’ Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in your database, there are a few more things that must be done before these jobs can be posted on your job board. Of prime importance among these things is ensuring the quality and validity of the job data. And doing so usually requires an intelligent pair of eyes that can identify any inconsistencies in the information from job sources and filter out jobs that don’t meet specific standards. Doing so is vital as providing incomplete job information or posting invalid jobs may lead to a less-than-ideal experience for job-seekers. And if your job board contains a considerable number of job postings that are either invalid or incomplete, your job board loses its credibility. And low credibility translates to low traffic, which leads to fewer recruiters preferring your job board for posting their jobs. This triggers a downward spiral of results that may ultimately doom your job board business.

 

Thus, maintaining the quality of job data posted on job boards is just as important as having a large number of job postings. And this mandates the need for using smarter ways of aggregating jobs.

 

Job parsers need more “intelligence”

While traditional job parsing tools scan a page, identify jobs and the different pieces of information associated with them, and save them verbatim into an internal database, they don’t actually check the validity or completeness of the information provided. Essentially, these tools “blindly” extract information and paste it wherever required. A “smarter” tool, on the other hand, doesn’t just scan to copy data but validates the data first by verifying its source. These tools can be customized to look for specific information to ensure relevance and high quality of job information. This helps in not only gathering highly relevant jobs but also in gathering critical job-related details such as the pay range, experience, location, kind of employment (co-op, internship, contract-based, full-time, part-time, etc.) that job-seekers may want to know for comparing different opportunities.

 

Offering an extensive pool of job options along with highly reliable job-related information to job-seekers raises the value of your job board in comparison to other ones, most of which are filled with repetitive postings, incomplete job information, invalid or expired jobs, and links that lead anywhere but the employers’ career sites. Smarter job parsers and aggregation tools ensure that your job board becomes a consistent and reliable source of high-quality job information, thus giving you the edge over your competitors. But gaining a significant lead in the job board market would not only require an intelligent job parsing and aggregation tool but a whole range of smart tools to automate the other aspects of your job board.

 

For instance, you may need a job crawler to scour through different websites for updated job data and aggregate these jobs into a searchable database, or you may need an automated job posting tool to post your jobs in a consistent format throughout your job board site. While using different tools to automate parts of your job board operation will be a significant upgrade to your job board, nothing beats the implementation of end-to-end job automation software.

 

The answer lies in using end-to-end job automation software

End-to-end job automation software, while including intelligent job parsing modules, also incorporate a host of other technologies that collectively automate job board operation. This means that every step involved in running a job board, from the acquisition of job data to its posting on the job board site in the desired format, is handled by the software. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and inspection that would otherwise be required for ensuring consistency and data quality. Thus, the use of job automation software guarantees zero errors while posting job data.

 

In addition to automating the process of gathering data and ensuring data quality, job automation software also automatically post the job data to job boards in the desired format. This minimizes the time between when a new job is posted by recruiters and when that job posting appears on your job board. This gives a massive advantage to your job board. And this advantage is further compounded by the fact that each of your job postings is always complete with information, links directly to the employer, and is up-to-date.

 

Using end-to-end job automation software like the job wrapping solution by Propellum makes operating a job board incredibly easy and effortless. While other job board owners desperately scramble to gather jobs and post them onto their job boards, you can use Propellum’s Easy Post service and, quite literally, sit back and watch as even the most hard-to-find jobs are discovered, verified, and posted within minutes. The solution can be integrated with a wide range of ATS and other recruitment technologies that are used by employers across the world. It can also be integrated seamlessly with your IT infrastructure so you can easily get started and experience a quick time to value. To know more about how Propellum’s Easy Post can upgrade your job board, you can request a free demo now.

 

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