“We Find You” vs. “You Find Us” - Cut the Cord and Reduce Your Job Board Spend in 2009
Posted by AdminBy Jason Buss.
Nearly 3 1/2 years ago John Sullivan wrote an article on ERE called “The Best Recruiting Strategy is the we Find you Approach“. There are still so many relevant points today with the two strategies he outlined - “you find us” and “we find you“.
While some would argue there are more practical uses and examples of a “you find us” strategy today, there are clear advantages to those organizations building an internal capability to deploy the “we find you” strategy. If you want to give candidates a better experience and substantially reduce you recruiting costs keep reading.
This article will highlight specific reasons to rely less on over-priced job boards that yield mediocre results, at best, if utilized with a “you find us” strategy.
By now, most HR and Recruiting professionals know that that job board traffic has been on a continual decline for years. This is during a period of time where internet usage is up 57% overall.
- SEO. There are more people, and job related searches done via search engines vs. job boards, period. There are 4 million+ daily job related searches conducted on google alone. Candidates are on the search engines. Are you?
- If you are going to continue to utilize job boards, significantly reduce your expenses by negotiating. Do your research in advance, understand the trends, and use them to your benefit. In this economic environment, they will work with you. With the price per posting, gone are the days where you need to purchase a large number of postings to negotiate a good “per job posting price”. Negotiate other services, like branded templates, and site scraping. Have you tried negotiating a “per hire” price?
- In addition to negotiating try new tools and online methods to reduce your reliance on postings. Do you have a mobile enabled site? Can candidates sign up via RSS for new content or job listings on your site? Do you have the tools or technology to build, and effectively communicate with your talent community? Have you tried recruiting via social networking tools and sites? Are you using pay-per-click tools or recruiting services? Is your career site optimized? Are you recruiting past applicants? Company Alumni? You won’t get results with these mediums via job boards - specific to your company.
Most studies show 90% of corporate career site visitors don’t apply. Of the 10% that do, 50%-60% start but do not finish the job application process online for a variety of reasons.
As we close out the 4th quarter and proactively plan for 2009, get aggressive, be in the drivers seat, and take control of your recruiting strategy in an effort to “find them”.
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October 13th, 2008 at 2:05 am
[...] By Jason Buss. Nearly 3 1/2 years ago John Sullivan wrote an article on ERE called “The Best Recruiting Strategy is the we Find you Approach“. There are still so many relevant points today with the two strategies he outlined - “you find us” and “we find you“. While some would argue there are more practical uses [...] Read More… [...]
October 13th, 2008 at 9:10 am
This is clearly a branding issue. If you have a strong recruitment brand in your industry sector/location, then posting jobs on your own site and via channels you’ve created yourself is a much better option than using boards on job sites. On the other hand, if you’re trying to establish yourself and make your first 100 big placements, then it is a numbers game and taking the chance on job boards is where recruiters will develop their own voices about how to articulate what they have available, what they do and who they want to attract.
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November 6th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
[...] Buss points out that around 90% of people who visit a career site don’t apply. Of the 10% that do 50-60% [...]