If you’re interested in developing a recruitment marketing strategy for your company, chances are you’ve been heavily researching how to advertise or post jobs online.
One resource you’ll absolutely want to consider is our recent blog: The 3 Most Common Ways to Advertise Jobs Online. In it, we take a quick look at Sponsored Jobs, Job Postings and Job Slots--the latter two of which can be a constant source of confusion for recruitment professionals of all experience levels.
To address this potential confusion, let’s take a more in-depth look at job postings versus job slots:
As a recap, job postings are essentially the most common form of job advertisement given the fact that they’ve been around longer than most other job posting methods. The best way to think about job postings are as the direct descendants of the job advertisements you might find in a newspaper’s classified section. And, as such, there’s not much room for modification or optimization, which is why this method of advertising jobs is often referred to as the “post and pray” method.
Job postings are bought individually or in bulk through a contract, at a fixed cost and for a specified period of time. For instance, if you have five jobs that you want to advertise on a job board that offers 30-day postings, then you would be required to purchase five, 30-day job postings to advertise your jobs.
Many in the industry call job postings the “post-and-pray” method because once a posting is purchased, and an open job published, the HR or talent acquisition professional responsible for that job posting can do nothing but “pray” that they get the return they need, in the time they have the posting for. Since you’ve paid a flat fee for the posting, and can’t replace the job that’s attached to the posting if it’s underperforming, there’s really no guarantee that you’ll receive the number of applicants you need to make a hire. While buying job postings may be easy, they are not very flexible advertising spots and offer little to no room for optimization.
Job postings are attractive to HR and talent acquisition professionals because of their simplicity. Job slots, by contrast, are attractive because of their flexibility. As said above, job postings are like 21st century newspaper classifieds, but if we were to compare job slots to anything they would have to be compared to a monthly parking spot. Why a monthly parking spot? Because when you buy a job slot you’re not paying to advertise one job, you’re paying for the digital real estate where that job will live over the course of the contract. Therefore, like a parking spot, regardless of how often you use it or which car you decide to park there, the cost remains the same.
Since job slots are essentially digital real estate on a job board or other job ad vendor, they are purchased on a contract basis. The HR or talent acquisition professional interested in purchasing the job slot, will pay a flat fee over a specified period of time, usually 30, 60 or 90 days, but sometimes for as long as a year. During the time of this contract, the owner of the job slot can advertise as many jobs as they’d like, but with the restrictions of advertising only one job at a time. For instance, if you have to advertise those same five jobs that we mentioned before, over the course of 30 days, you may be able to do so with the purchase of just one job slot.
When we look at job postings and job slots head-to-head, it’s hard to say which is “better” because the method by which you advertise a job is largely determined by the size of your organization and your recruitment needs. With that said, although job postings are easy to understand and manage, they often produce a lower ROI and have a higher potential of creating wasted spend in your recruitment marketing strategy.
Conversely, when optimized and managed properly, job slots typically produce a higher volume of applicants, at a much lower cost-per-applicant, making them significantly more valuable to HR and talent acquisition professionals. To learn how you can optimize and better manage your job slots, keep an eye out for our next blog post in which we’ll provide a detailed look at how you can accomplish just that.
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