Where do all the jobseekers go? |
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September 12th, 2007 -- by Joe Stubblebine
There’s nothing more annoying to a jobseeker than to visit a job board, do a search, review the job and click the apply button, only to be redirected to a company’s cumbersome applicant tracking system on the corporate web site.
OK. Now, they’ve got to create an account - sometimes having to search for the job again on the corporate site - and go through what can be a painful and time-consuming process that can take thirty minutes! Multiply this by ten jobs and ten different applicant tracking systems, and now you’ve just spent 3 hours of your life applying to 10 jobs, when this process could be completely streamlined! No wonder job search is so painful.
On our site, we’ve found that almost 40 percent of jobseekers simply give up and go away. Where do they go? A loss of 40 percent of your potential applicant pool is pretty expensive, considering the amount of money employers pay to post jobs on job boards these days. At least 35 percent of job listings on job boards do nothing more than farm candidates by redirecting them to the client’s corporate web site, and this number seems to be growing daily.
Can’t we make life easier for these jobseekers? How about a standard API or object (or even XML) that EVERY applicant-tracking tool & corporate employment site would accept from job boards? That makes real sense. When the job board redirects the candidate to the corporate web site, the board also passes the jobseeker’s information along with the redirect. This standard “application object” accepts the information, and automatically inserts it into the applicant tracking system or into the company’s homegrown applicant collection database…instantaneously. Problem solved.
Perhaps a new business idea? Could a third party build this “application object,” and act as the middle man, charging a few cents to the job board or a few cents to the applicant tracking system to handle the transaction? How much revenue could you generate if you charged 2 cents on every online job application on the web that used this third party object? Could this middle man perhaps warehouse the jobseeker data for the job board and act sort of like Microsoft Wallet did or Google Checkout does now? Interesting.
Seems like a win-win to me. The job board is happy because they boost their candidate response for their client’s jobs (which will justify ROI so they keep buying the job board). The jobseeker is happy because they didn’t have to do tons of work inserting resumes on ten different corporate web sites, making their job search just a little bit more pleasant.
As more and more job boards simply become a tool to redirect candidates over to corporate web sites, the job board and applicant tracking systems should start looking at teaming up to benefit both of their customers – the jobseekers and the employers.
September 12th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
At what point does it become too easy to apply though? The question is: do small barriers to entry such as applicant tracking systems and sign up processes weed out good candidates or bad? I’m not sure.
September 12th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Isn’t this exactly what HR-XML could solve? Except 1) vendors would need to support it and 2) jobseekers would need tools to render it. And its that very “chicken and the egg” problem that keeps this from being solved.
September 12th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Let’s take it one step further… What if a jobseekers’ employment file, were similar to a credit file and managed/protected in one secured area. Think about it, a central point of validation for all employment data. Makes sense to me.
September 12th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I use Craigslist exclusively. The other “job” sites are annoying, ungainly and inaccurate more often than not.
September 12th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I agree with Willy, I’ve been on both sides of this situation, griping my way through some company or others’ ATS back when I was a job seeker. And now, as a recruiter, I start thinking I would rather see fewer applicants who took their time. When I’ve made it too easy–eg “send your resume as an attachment’ I look at the higher numbers and at the applications and think, hmm….did this person even read the job description? Do they even know what we do as a company?
I vote for quality over quantity.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
I almost always believe that it’s better to have too many people respond than run the risk of turning the right candidate away. And in this case I think that the candidates most likely to abandon the process are those who are busy being successful at their present position (passive job seekers). The unemployed have tons of time to jump through ATS hoops.
And if you think that your process is not that bad, verify that it’s as user friendly as you think it is. Try to apply from a machine outside of your network. See how easy it is, and then see if you as a recruiter get the resume you submitted to yourself. You might be surprised.
September 13th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Doug-
please email me at jbrunsmd@hotmail.com
im interested in talking with you.
September 13th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Totally agree that as a job seeker it is rather annoying to be redirected to a company’s site only to search for the job that you just spent 20 minutes searching for on a job board. As a job board employee though, we can only deliver as much as the employer allows us to. I think that some employers need to step up and think about their recruiting efforts. We as job boards are making it easier to find and access opportunities, but then what?? Employers step-up!
September 13th, 2007 at 8:49 am
I couldn’t agree with you more.
My company, Career Liaison, offers the solution to this exact problem. With our Application Agent for Job Boards, users apply directly to employer ATSes without ever leaving the job board. The application forms are auto-filled with information from previously submitted applications, which can be integrated with the user’s job board profile.
Incidentally, I think the best solution for employers to get quality over quantity is through well-written questionnaires, rather than filtering jobseekers by their willingness to jump through hoops.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Joe:
Your solution would also provide for seamless candidate source tracking so the employer could effectively measure the ROI of each site - something desperately missing today.
Jason
September 13th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Joe and all…
I think this is a great topic for the IAEWS meeting coming up on Monday in San Francisco. I don’t know if Chuck Allen from HR-XML will be attending, and unfortunately, there probably won’t be many ATS folks there, but it is a great topic to bring up at the 1 day event.
I’ll be there trying to push for a Standardized “Source of Hire” that we can all agree on. I think Jason has it right… it should be a combo effort. Standardized xml api for all boards and ATS systems, for both application and Source of Hire info.
The big issue is WHO will back it and implement it?
That will take commitment from a lot of players. In the end. It would be a win-win for everyone.
If anyone is interesting in chatting about it find me at IAEWS on Monday or Onrec on Tuesday and Wednesday.
September 26th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Hi, i dont knwo much about the american market, but in europe there are quite a few jobboards that offer in addition to the listings a form that directly delivers data to the customer. the user can use his jobboard-CV in this online application, he could also use his application letter that he stored on the jobboard.
that spares time and you can do appliations within a few minutes.
the downsite of course it that a general application is never as good as a application that was uniqute written for a special application..