If you own a job board, you understand how rapidly the industry is changing. Between jobseeker behavior, programmatic, and employer KPI’s, trying to keep up can be as difficult as me without a cup of coffee in the morning (trust me, it’s not pretty). In the midst of all this change, there is one consistent theme acknowledged by thought leaders throughout the industry. Understanding how to optimize your job board customer experience is at the heart of future success for your business.
DISCOVERY
No I'm not talking about Mythbusters. How do employers find your job board? What keywords are they typing into Google when searching for a solution?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for driving organic traffic to your job board. However, understanding and keeping up with how SEO works is incredibly complex and time consuming because the tech giant constantly changes the rules.
For those willing to put in the extensive time and effort into keeping up with Google’s constant updates to their algorithm; you can turn to tools like Google Trends or Google Correlate to discover some keywords that may be relevant to your audience. However, these tools aren’t exactly tailored to the job board industry so there are limitations.
Leveraging advanced job board software, that is specifically designed to the needs of all stakeholders within the industry, will help you drive discovery while providing a variety of features and tools to make your life easier – aka less work.
Though SEO is an important component of generating more organic traffic, I can't emphasize enough the importance of establishing, expanding, and constantly optimizing your online presence across all relevant channels and touch points.
Customer journey mapping is the process that will help you achieve just that. Go beyond just simply having a website, social media presence, and an email account. It’s about asking yourself how do employers and jobseekers search for solutions and how do they want to engage with the right solution?
ENGAGEMENT
Many career sites make the mistake of deciding how they want to engage with their audience. If you’re, directly or indirectly, forcing employers to adhere to your preferred modes of communication and engagement rather than giving them the experience they want, you’re driving away business.
The chart above from the Global Contact Centre, shows how preferences in communication channels vary by generation. For a job board owner, your audience encompasses multiple age groups so therefore it’s important to expand your channels for engagement.
For example, looking at the data it’s apparent that Millennials value live chat as a form of communication. If your website doesn’t have a live chat feature, you can possibly lose millennial B2B decision makers to a competitor that provides this form of communication.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you focus all your efforts on digital marketing without picking up the phone to call and follow up with prospects and customers, you risk alienating Baby Boomers. This is what it means to optimize the employer experience.
When creating a customer journey map, the secret sauce is viewing the journey from their perspective. Many companies talk about this, but very few practice it. In order to optimize your job board customer experience you should be able to answer some of these questions:
- What steps do they take to go from the research stage to loyal customer when they engage with your job board?
- What is their current experience at each stage of the journey when they visit your website?
- Does your messaging and content effectively communicate that you provide quality candidates?
- Do you have content that highlights success existing clients have had with your job board?
- After they post a job how easy is it to track data and review results?
Survey your current clients to get their take on what type of experience they had each stage of their journey. Comparing their desired experience vs their current experience will tell you what you need to do to optimize your job board's customer experience.
THE LAYOUT
Once you have the answers to those questions, lay out each step relevant to your customer’s journey:
Analyze each stage and consider what are they:
Thinking - What's the cost? Will I get quality candidates?
Feeling – Apprehensive, excited, frustrated
Experiencing – What is the experience at each step? How to complete an action to move to the next step?
And lastly, conduct a content audit to see where you can fill in the gaps for their preferred experience; for example, at the research stage:
Provide additional channels for information – social media, blog, explainer videos, etc.
More educational content – guides, webinars, infographics
Website – simplify forms, clean up job postings, etc.
As your company grows, so will the customer journey. As you take on new technology, implement new strategies, or expand your partnerships, it’s essential to reflect those changes in the customer journey map if relevant to their experience.
Completing this practice will help you identify gaps in the customer experience. You’ll gain insight into how much content you have for each stage, what type of experience you’re providing, and if it’s in tune with employer expectations as they navigate their path to making a purchase, and beyond.
COMPETING IN THE AGE OF THE CUSTOMER
As the job board market becomes more saturated, the old adage of working smarter not harder is more relevant than ever. Customer journey mapping is founded on this philosophy. The goal is to make the greatest possible impact at each stage of the funnel with every resource your audience deems relevant. This not only means capitalizing on data, technology, and advanced marketing strategies but also in-depth knowledge of your customers’ complete journey. The insights you gain from successfully creating a customer journey map will lay the foundation for you to optimize your job board customer experience.
The more you understand the various questions, roadblocks, and problems both employers and job seekers encounter at each stage of the life cycle, the more effective you can be in delivering the right experience at the right time.