Creating a Job Board a few tips for beginners.

What I have learned in the past couple of years and most recently in running my own job boards and helping others get their boards up and running has been most valuable learning experience. I wanted to share with you things I've learned to do and what not to do when it comes to starting or upgrading your job board.

What to do

Research - This may seem like a no brainier, but very few actually do research on the industry that their job board is going to be targeting ( I'm guilty of this ). You have to understand who your competition is - what they are currently doing in the industry and how the currently are going about doing what they do. You have to look over the monster's and careerbuilder's they are into every possible niche target market you can think of, your real competition are the niche sites that only target that particular niche you are going after.
Repeat Your Target - on every page that you are targeting you should have your tagline somewhere - your tagline basically just represents a quick description of your site for example.) Search ONLY the Best Mechanic Jobs - that would be a great tag line if you where targeting mechanic only jobs. This not only helps your users see what your about - but helps google pick up what you are about too.
Don't release to much at once - Going from zero pages to twenty thousand over night may seem suspicious to google roll out different pages of content at a constant pace - don't overwhelm google with new content - you may just look like spam to them.
Go Mobile - if your site doesn't have a mobile web version your loosing out on a huge nearly untapped market - nearly 1 out 3 adults now have a smart phone - and if you are to jump on this bandwagon while it's early it surly will pay off.
Headings - Use headings correctly that reflect your content - if a search is performed don't just put the search in the title tag throw it somewhere on the page - this helps not only users but helps with seo.

What not to do

Give Up - Never give up keep moving forward
Target to many categories in one board. - Give job posters a reason to post on your site - and job seekers a reason to visit - let them know that you are catering to their specific job needs - it just seems better.

I could go on and on about what to-do and what not to do - but if you really want to talk to someone who knows a thing or two about job boards talk to Chris Russell - http://www.jobboardsecrets.com - he is the best job board consultant you could ask for.

After you talk to Chris if you are interested in getting a job board up and running talk to me - I can help design a custom job board solution for you.

All the best,

Jody Fitzpatrick

jody(a)jobregate.com

Comment by Dennis Gorelik on May 3, 2012 at 5:57pm: Jody,

Why do you advise against multiple categories on the job board?

More categories (or even better - no limit on categories at all) means larger market segment, right?

Comment by Jody Fitzpatrick on May 3, 2012 at 6:25pm: You are right Dennis you would have a larger market segment - but more and more employers are moving to niche job sites for job listings. - When I say not to many categories I mean your main focus to attract jobs postings and job seekers, for example part-time jobs if you target that you could list every possible part time job option without problem - it's just when you throw in the full-time, contract etc... you want to be specific but not to specific in your target efforts.

A couple examples of what I'm talking about would be

WeekendJobHunt.com

AmericanMFGJobs.com

Parttimehires.com

Comment by Dennis Gorelik on May 3, 2012 at 6:47pm: What are the benefits for employers in using niche job boards vs general purpose job boards?

General purpose job boards allow benefits of the scale and can afford to have lower prices because of that.

Comment by Jody Fitzpatrick on May 3, 2012 at 7:24pm: Once again you are right - the purpose to have a specific niche is less competition. It makes it easier for you to show up for search terms that you are targeting. granted you probably will show up for some for some of the ones your general job board targets but it's easier to have one focus at a time. it also makes it easier for people ( employers ) to understand what you are about - they will know that if someone comes to this site they are looking for that particular target job category, industry location etc.

Comment by Dennis Gorelik on May 3, 2012 at 7:31pm: From what I observe, job seekers are not coming to job board, they are coming to job posting (from job aggregator, Google, or some ad on another web site).

From that perspective it should not really matter if job board is specializing in any niche or has general purpose - job posting itself is specific enough.

Comment by Shankar Srinivasan on May 8, 2012 at 7:15am: Why should Jobseekers come to a site that doesn't have any "own" jobs?

Comment by Dennis Gorelik on May 8, 2012 at 9:27am: Shankar,

I've meant that job seeker is coming from job aggregator, not that jobs are coming from job aggregator.

Comment by Shankar Srinivasan on May 8, 2012 at 12:16pm: Okay... got it.

But where will the Jobs come from. There are huge monsters out there. Why should some one post Jobs in our site that depends on Job aggregators or Search engines for Jobseekers to visit?

Comment by Dennis Gorelik on May 8, 2012 at 12:21pm: Huge monsters charge huge sums of money for job postings and tend to put these postings in front of irrelevant candidates. Posting job on job board that uses job aggregators and Google as the main source of candidates has benefit of attracting only relevant candidates (other candidates simply cannot find the job, because they are not even aware about relevant keywords).

Makes sense?

Creating a Job Board a few tips for beginners.

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