Job boards changing strategy: Better value for HR?
August 3, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In This Week's E-Newsletter, Latest News & Views, Online recruiting
Online job boards are changing, and it could be good news for HR. Take the shift announced recently by one the major classified sites:
Yahoo HotJobs recently announced a new pricing option for companies that post openings: Instead of paying for each ad, they’ll be able to pay based on candidate response.
Calling the model “Pay Per Candidate” pricing, Yahoo says the format will give businesses greater control over their budgets and ensures they only pay if the ad attracts qualified applicants.
Employers can set up a customized questionnaire to filter out candidates who don’t belong (and not be charged for them). Also, the system allows companies to set a cap on the number of applications that are allowed to go through.
Recruiters do have to pay up front, by purchasing “credits” from Yahoo. But credits aren’t deducted until a candidate submits an application or clicks through to the company’s Web site. And unused credits can be transferred to other job listings.
Hot Jobs is the first of the “big three” job boards (the other two are CareerBuilder and Monster) to announce a switch to pay-per-applicant pricing. Experts predict the model will become more common as job boards try to compete with cheaper recruiting methods like Craigslist and social networking sites.
Tags: HotJobs, job boards, pay-per-candidate, Yahoo
August 16th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
As someone who first worked in the field of web marketing and SEO/SEM, then got into the job board “space,” this is like deja vu. In the earliest days of Internet advertising, CPM was the rage and advertisers gladly paid up to get…well, something. They just didn’t know exactly what (other than a certain number of “impressions,” which is rather nebulous). Then, the PPC model came out with Overture and others and the advertising (or at least paid SEM) game was change forever. PPC quickly led to “pay per lead” or “cost per lead” (PPL or CPL) models and companies automatically had much greater control over their marketing budgets. Now, it appears that recruiters and hiring managers will be afforded that same luxury by the big job board. I can’t imagine it will be too long before the other big boards follow suit. They may not want to, but they may “have” to.