Most of us have heard of online job boards or job portals. And while they have a certain appeal to many job seekers, rarely does a job seeker focus on only one single job portal. Most candidates are willing to look across many different job boards for opportunities. Conversely most companies choose only one to advertise in given the costs associated with advertising on multiple boards.

Many companies have started experiencing great success finding candidates at a lower cost per candidate utilizing many less well known, free job boards. One of the keys to having success with any job board is the frequent "updating" and utilization of the job posting.

A System that has functionality that allows a company to create a job description and automatically posts to a variety of free job boards such as GoogleJobs, Simply Hired, Craigslist, and Kijiji will lead to an increased number of candidates. In other words a company that now posts on 10 job boards versus just one will clearly not have any less candidates and in fact will have significantly more. Subsequently, the System must automatically keep the post updated. This will keep the job listing fresh and listed towards the top of similar postings.

There are numerous examples of Systems working as described above. A major Real Estate Brokerage has utilized a System for five months now. Since the System was implemented, there has been over a 100% increase in the number of leads generated through job boards in the past. This has significantly lead to a decrease in the need to spend as much money on the more expensive job boards thereby leading to a significant return on investment. For example, here are some job boards without a System and with a System:

• Job Board Ad per Month: Without System: $695; With System: $0
• Costs for posting on other boards: Without System: $200 (time it takes to post and update up to 10 job boards once per week); With System: $135 (auto-poster capabilities of System)
• Total Costs to generate leads through  boards) Without System: $895; With System: $135
• Number of Leads from job board: Without System: 40; With System: 0
• Additional Leads Generated: Without System: 0; With System: 10
• Postings on other boards: Without System: 40 (If not updated, leads begin to diminish), With System: 40
• Total Leads: Without System: 80; With System: 50
• Cost per lead: Without System: $11; With System: $2.70.

I'd be interested in your input, success and pitfalls with regards to your organization using job boards. Do you have a System in place? Are you interested in finding such a System?