When it Comes to Job Ad Distribution, the Best Things in Life are Free

What if you gave some of the largest recruiting organizations in the world unlimited access to post ads to any job board, AND you let them know just how much it cost per view, per applicant, and per hire?

Recruitment Marketing Platform provider Talemetry has been doing that for a number of years and the results are staggering.

Of the millions and millions of page views generated by ads posted through the Job Broadcast Module in Talemetry’s Recruitment Marketing Platform, a whopping 89% of all of them were generated by free job boards.

To look at it another way, according to data collected by Talemetry during 2014, only 11% of all page views generated by their clients’ posts came from paid job boards.

“Our Job Broadcast clients have access to any job board they want to post to, and most place ads to a combination of free and paid sources,” says Jade Bourelle, CEO of Talemetry. “The fact that 89% of all their page views comes from free boards tells us that there is a huge opportunity out there for companies to recognize significant efficiencies in their recruiting budgets.”

Which are the top free job ad resources among Talemetry’s clients?

69% of all views for Indeed.com
6% of all views for Simply Hired
6% of all views for DirectEmployers.com

There are two key factors that need to be pointed out in Talemetry’s numbers.

First, companies using their Job Broadcast Module get instant feedback on which boards are producing the best results, so the numbers are probably skewed toward free boards because the ROI is so strong.

Second, Talemetry is unique in that it supports auto-posting of jobs to any boards based on title, job type, etc., and there are no per-post fees for sending jobs out to free boards. The fact that it’s easier and more cost effective to take advantage of those free boards means that companies represented in these numbers are more likely to set up every job to automatically post to free and diversity boards.

So while these numbers may not reflect the experience of all companies who post jobs to online job boards, they probably should.

Bourelle points out that most companies don’t know where their traffic, applicants, and hires are coming from. He believes that once recruiting organizations get good data and proper tools for leveraging their budgets, they’ll take advantage of that data and funnel more activity into the highest ROI activities.

“When you look at the data, it’s not even close,” says Bourelle. “These companies need talent and they’re not averse to spending money to get it, yet they’re generating the most activity with free postings.”

Of course free boards are not a panacea for every company. And Bourelle points out that each company needs it’s own mix of advertising, direct sourcing, social media, and staffing agencies to fill their positions. And they need the data to understand which sources of hire are most effective for their company, location, job type, etc.

Until the relatively new discipline of Recruitment Marketing and Recruitment Marketing Automation take hold in the marketplace, there are a few things that any organization can do today that can increase their ROI. According to Talemetry one of them is to take advantage of free advertising in a big way.

About Talemetry

Talemetry(TM) works with existing recruiting systems to deliver high performance recruitment marketing for the world’s largest recruiting organizations. The Talemetry Platform helps organizations execute cutting edge recruiting strategies while integrating and optimizing their recruiting performance. The Talemetry suite includes candidate sourcing and candidate relationship management, job distribution, external agency management, mobile/social career sites, and mobile candidate application solutions. Formerly known as Talent Technology Corporation, Talemetry has helped hundreds of employers, including Fortune 500 companies, find better talent faster since 2000. To learn more, visit talemetry.com or follow @Talemetry.