Job boards are often the first port of call when new to a job search.
It’s a natural inclination that they are where vacancies are to be found, quickly followed by disappointment, anxiety and frustration when you get close to 0% hit rate.
And not even a single reply!
But, let’s take a step back, look at the overall picture, and make a plan.
In this article we’ll look at:
A background on job boards
Job board priorities and what these mean for you
Better use of job boards
How to optimise for CV databases
Yes this is long, but it is jam-packed with insight on the recruitment industry, why we are the way we are, and how you can take the right steps forward.
1/ A background on job boards
There are many job boards in the UK who sell their systems to employers and recruitment agencies.
You may be familiar with
Indeed
Reed
CV Library
Jobsite / Totaljobs (the same company, owned by Stepstone)
Monster (used to be decent many years ago)
LinkedIn (yes it is a job board, disguised by being a social media platform)
Aside from generic job boards, there are also many sites specialist to your niche.
Job boards broadly sell two things to their clients - advertising and access to their CV database.
LinkedIn differs in how it is wrapped up with content and networking, but it too has a form of CV database in how we can use the Recruiter Licence to search profiles (you can even make do without).
There are also aggregator websites, which scrape (automatically copy) content from one job board to their own or a 3rd party. You can often tell because when you click apply it takes you to another job board (rather than properly start an application).
Indeed and LinkedIn also act as aggregators and can lead to no end of confusion on whether adverts are still live, or if they were filled in 2022, when adverts are scraped across multiple boards.
True story - CV Library once set up an affiliate arrangement with a recruitment agency that scraped their ads. If you googled Bircham Wyatt Recruitment (that’s me) you’d see that agency list my ads - it looked like I worked for them.
CV Library was good enough to put a stop to this when I unleashed my outrage on LinkedIn (made a post about it and got some influencers involved).
The job board market in the UK is a hot mess.
2/ Job board priorities and what that means for you
Job boards want to sell their services and make money, which is of course entirely sensible.
To support their argument they use all sorts of metrics, such as the number of CVs on their database and the number of applications made (by job or month).
It’s to their advantage that adverts receive as many applications as possible, so their advice on improving advert performance is geared around this. Rather than around suitable candidates.
Indeed, the most effective job adverts have fewer applications and a higher number of suitable candidates - that’s what I aim for in mine.
To maximise the number of applications they do things like scraping, aggregation and affiliate arrangements.
They also offer services like automatic relisting, whereby an advert is (for example) reposted as New once a week throughout the term of the listing (could be up to 6 weeks by default, or longer by choice).
These are sold as benefits to employers, which might help when there are limited candidates, but likely hinders when there are too many candidates for jobs.
They also make it as Easy(Apply) as possible for you to apply to these jobs, so that you can be an additional metric.
As Goodhart says “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.
The consequence for you as an applicant is twofold.
You are encouraged to be one of the numbers of applicants to purposefully generic adverts you are not the most suitable for.
When you are the most suitable, you are in competition both with people from the line above, and people who are wholly unsuitable (some of whom follow the guru’s advice to ‘shoot your shot’).
We’ll come back to this notion above in the next section.
I should point out I don’t think job boards do this cynically, I think they do this because they think high numbers are best.
It’s also a problem for recruiters who may find it impossible to deal with this volume, unless through automation or by finding ways to manually eliminate applications at scale.
Job boards, employers, agencies and candidates are all wrapped up in this cycle of speed and volume. Most everyone but the job seeker thinks it’s the best way to recruit - it is not.
Though it might be the best way to make money.
And yes jobseekers are accountable too, but only because of how they have been trained to apply.
What do I mean by reducing applications at scale?
Well, as I said to one person today, I’ve heard recruiters rejecting everyone after the 40th applicant, no matter how good they might be, because they have enough for an interview shortlist.
That’s rare, but it’s one of many examples of how shortcuts might be taken to contend with an impossible task. I’m not excusing it - these are companies who signal loudly about candidate experience and the importance of diversity.
Don’t blame recruiters.
Don’t blame employers.
Blame the system we are all part of.
And if you ever find yourself a hiring authority - be the change you hope for now.
3/ Better use of job boards
Let’s go back to that point about applications.
In the current market, it’s not uncommon to see 100 to 4000 applications per vacancy. That’s wild!
Not all job boards show this metric, although LinkedIn does (in a broken sort of way - often they’ll register clicks falsely as applications. This can be when an ATS is involved and is referred to as attrition if full applications are not completed.)
However, rarely are those applications actually candidates (people who can do and should want to do the job).
For a typical job-description templated advert you can expect 90 to 99% of applicants to be wholly unsuitable. I don’t have specific evidence of this, only anecdotes in talking to many recruiters.
Even in my adverts, which I take great care to write, at best I’d expect 40% of applicants to be candidates.
What do I mean by wholly unsuitable?
People who require work permits when a role doesn’t sponsor them.
People who don’t meet the minimum requirements set out in an advert.
People who are clearly unsuitable for this role.
So when you see a number, don’t be disheartened by the number alone.
As a jobseeker, your minimum requirement to apply for a job should be that you can logically prove to yourself, based on the evidence provided (which might be generic twaddle) that you are suitable.
If you can’t, you shouldn’t apply.
You’ll go from an approximately 0% hit rate to… well about the same, but with less time and bother.
This also means avoiding step-down jobs unless you can show how and why being overqualified is a good thing, as well as how and why you are interested beyond wanting a job.
It’s not pleasant having to write this, but the simple truth is, through a transactional application, you will seldom be considered if there are ‘core-fit’ applicants available.
The same goes for transferrable skills.
Unless you can show how your skills apply, how can skilled recruiters see your candidacy?
If not them; how about the less effective recruiters?
If you see adverts you aren’t sure about, by all means apply.
But treat them as transactionally as they are written. Fire, schedule one followup, then forget.
Save your time, energy and focus for non-transactional adverts - the ones that show you how great you are for them, the ones that sing.
These are rare, but we’ve written them carefully with you in mind.
The care taken to write them means we want you to apply because you are an ideal candidate who helps us see your suitability.
Your hit rate will be far higher.
Sadly it will still be close to zero if you are in a specialism for which there are many great candidates and few vacancies. I’ve seen this recently with talent acquisition, HR and marketing.
The state of the market is out of our control.
At least job boards aren't the be all and end all.
When your skills apply, provide evidence.
This is the main case in which tailoring CVs is effective.
If an advert uses synonyms for your skills, and they are proveably the same, use their language. An HR Manager can be a Head of People if the duties are the same.
This post on LinkedIn may help with searchesl
Show common process, common lifecycles, common context (company size, trajectory, culture) - show how you meet their requirement.
These principles allow a human reader to see your candidacy, and allow you to ‘beat the ATS’. Any choice or tool to eliminate you afterwards is a human decision.
Always show how you meet the essential requirements, and the desirable ones too if you can. A perhaps obvious point the majority of applications neglect.
… tips and bits
Finding vacancies is as important as applying for them. Collect those synonyms you’ve been tailoring your CV with and use these in your searches.
If you find an obscure term which represents what you can do, why not search solely on that term?
You might find a horribly written advert whose only correct word is that term.
It’s a trick we use to find candidates too - occasionally I might search on something like ‘egnieer’ because typos don’t make a bad candidate.
Location is a key search criterion.
Most people search from their home address. How about running tight searches where you are prepared to work - e.g. 1 mile from CB4 0WZ (where I worked many moons ago)?
Lastly, try not to let a ‘bad recruitment’ process get in the way of what might be good enough employment. Many of us know not what we do.
Competitive salary. Cover letter. All these unsavoury things - I know great companies who ask for the same.
4/ How to optimise for CV databases
When you apply to a vacancy on a new job board, invariably they will have a CV database tethered to your application.
Maybe it will be hidden in their terms and conditions.
A CV database is an opportunity for you to be found.
Sometimes this will be for vacancies that are never advertised, such as an example I wrote about today.
You have an opportunity to leverage your use of CV databases to improve the amount of inbound enquiries you receive.
Log all the job boards you’ve applied for
Make a list of all that have CV databases, including login in details
Ensure your CV is up-to-date containing the key words for the job you are most suitable for (skills, job titles, memberships, frameworks, tools, processes, everything)
And that your contact details are correct.
Check all the details on your account. Salary details, location, preferences should all be current.
Register your postcode for where you want to be found. If you plan to move to Scunthorpe in April, that should be your current location. It’s where we will look for you.
Update your CV and profiles once a week. It’s a chore but won’t take long. If you are active in the past week, this will show up in recruiter searches. Particularly if, for example in the post I shared above, I only look at active CVs from the past 14 days. This is a mega-hack no one talks about (it’s not a hack, there are no hacks, just bloody hard work, it is true though).
That’s it! I’m sure I’ve forgotten a bunch of stuff that should be included. But this has taken me two hours to write on a Tuesday night. I’ll correct any errors when I can.
DM me on LinkedIn with any questions, or email me at greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk with any questions. I’ll reply when I can and, if appropriate will update this article.
Thank you and good luck.
Greg
p.s. don’t forget to check out my recruitment newsletter, if you recruit at any point or know someone who wants to break the transactional mould - gregwyatt.substack.com.