All aboard the niche job board!

Broadbean

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Last year, 83% of recruiters said the job market is candidate driven, a 29% increase from four years ago. In a candidate-driven market, recruiters have their work cut out for them.

Candidates with certifiable skills know they can be more picky with where they work, and recruiters need to entice them in any way they can if they want to fill the gaps in their workforce.

How does a recruiter in any industry find the best candidates? Now more than ever, the answer is the niche job board. The passive candidates account for 60% of the workforce and are looking at more job boards each year. 59% of these passive candidates are using job boards, whereas only 51% and 49% of them are using search engines and newspapers, respectively.

Active job seekers are more prone to using search engines (74%), but still use job boards (67%) more than social media (65%). Job boards are a big asset to job seekers because they offer a more focused environment than search engines or social media for searching for jobs, but without the clutter.

So why opt for a niche job board? There a couple of convincing reasons.

Niche job boards: when you need focus

Niche job boards are a matter of quality vs quantity, and you should use them when you need to increase the quality of your hires and don’t necessarily want a large candidate pool. In this regard, while internet job boards have seen 15% more usage in the last four years, they remained a top source for sourcing talent in 2014, making up 42% of quality hires for the year.

Job boards help you find candidates that better fit your openings in some industries, but can be a bit more touch-and-go when it comes to others. This is where the “niche” part of your board comes in.

Online job boards are the top source for quality hires followed by social networks and employee referrals.

In the medical industry, 60% of job seekers use job boards to look for jobs. With more than 11 million candidates in the field and about 25 applicants per job posting, they need any available support.

If they can find a job board that would allow them to look for positions in their field instead of having to sift through a large number of job postings that may not be relevant to them (for example, if nurses could search for nursing jobs only without having to look through doctor or orderly positions), then they’re more likely to find the right job for them.

Niche job boards can better sort through positions because they’re built to cater to specific job markets. Take the one example of a job board for younger, more digital candidates from Stephanie Walden (@StephLizWalden), marketer and writer at Mashable:

“The Muse is one such example… The platform is a useful resource for millennials and digital natives interested in pursuing careers at startups and new, innovative companies across a variety of industries. The platform recently upgraded its resource center, Muse U, to include downloads, videos, webinars, classes and a variety of helpful tools that provide training resources and guidance for job-seekers and junior hires… users can also save their favorite resources in a career content-focused board…”

Niche job boards: for when you need diversity

There’s more to niche job boards than catering to specific industries, too. 36% of startups use niche job boards to attract more diverse candidates. Startups want to make the most of every hire, and with the potential to increase revenue by 41%, diversity is one of the best ways to assure that your hires will give you the most bang for your limited buck. Many job boards cater to groups of all kinds, from women, to minorities, to veterans, and if you want to reach these audiences, you need to look in places where they are likely to look.

There are over 40,000 active niche job boards as of last year, so regardless of what kind of candidate your organisation is looking for, there’s a specialised job board to post to. A niche job board doesn’t even have to be a job board in the traditional sense.

More recruiters are posting their job ads to Pinterest, where 65% of the audience are women. Earlier, we said niche job boards help candidates who are looking to focus their job search. However, posting job ads in places like Twitter and Pinterest can pique the interest of a passive candidate, possibly leading them to more of your job postings on a niche job board.

Between their ability to help candidates find the jobs they’re looking for and helping with diversity initiatives at your company (and increasing your profits in the long run), niche job boards help you link with candidates in industries and groups often overlooked by regular job boards, making for better workforce on all fronts.

Access thousands of job boards in the Broadbean Network. Post your job adverts to hundreds of countries, reaching millions of candidates, for free or for a fee with Broadbean’s integrated job board partners. Distribute jobs to generalist, niche and regional job boards located throughout the world as well as post jobs to free sites, aggregators and social channels. Contact Broadbean on 020 7536 1661 or visit www.broadbean.com