Running a successful recruitment marketing strategy is about more than just publishing your job listings to a number of job boards, job aggregators and other employment websites.
It’s also about optimizing those job ads once they’ve been posted to these sites.
And, when it comes to advertising jobs, as in life, timing is everything. By this, we mean that, when trying to get the most out of your job ads it’s not just important to know when to post, but when to repost. Which brings us to the focus of this week’s blog.
Below, we’ll walk you through the basics of reposting, including why you would want to repost a job ad, when it is (and isn’t) appropriate to repost a job ad, and how to do so properly.
Why would you want to repost a job ad?
Job boards, job aggregators and other employment websites that host your job ads can all be boiled down to one common denominator: their search function.
In order for your job ads to be seen, and therefore be effective, they need to surface in the search results of the job seekers you’re looking for. There are a number of factors that affect where your job shows in search result rankings, including but not limited to:
- Your bid: how much you’re willing to pay per click or per application, for your job to appear near the top of search results.
- Job SEO: how well the content in your job description is optimized to match the job seeker’s search queries.
- The job’s freshness: how long the job has been “live” (or published) on the website for.
But that last point is particularly important when it comes to recruitment marketing. In regular marketing, where SEO is of critical importance, timeliness isn’t something that is heavily weighed in ranking the most relevant search results. For instance, you might Google something and find the top result to be an article written three years prior. All this means is that the information in that article is still relevant and that searchers have continued to find it to be the most useful result--regardless of how “fresh” it is.
Conversely, in recruitment marketing, timeliness is more heavily weighed when ranking job results. First and foremost, this has to do with the fact that, the longer a position has been posted, the more likely it is that a company has filled that position. Because of this--coupled with the fact that many businesses often forget to take down old job ads--means older job ads are often ranked lower. Further, as a rule of thumb, job seekers are less likely to click on older jobs because of this common perception.
Therefore, when your jobs begin to age and you still haven’t reached your recruitment goals for those jobs, it’s time to consider reposting.
When is it appropriate to repost a job ads?
If you’ve been following along since the start of this post, you might be thinking, “Couldn’t I just repost the same job every day and rank higher in search results based on the fact that my job ad is only ‘one-day old?’”
The short answer here is, no, you can’t. Just as Google has safeguards in place to ensure no one games their system (even so, there are entire websites dedicated to this), so too do the sites you post your job ads to. Therefore, it’s important that you only repost jobs when appropriate, to avoid any negative consequences--such as getting banned from a job board or job aggregator!
That said, let’s take a look at the two most likely scenarios you’ll come across, where reposting a job is necessary and appropriate:
- When the job has reached the source’s age limit: The safeguards put in place on a given jobs search engine aren’t there to penalize job posters--they’re there to ensure job seekers are getting the best search results possible. Therefore, many sources will have “age limits” for jobs to ensure they’re serving job seekers the jobs that are most likely to be still available. Most sources don't allow jobs that are 90 days or older to show on their results pages. As such, if you have jobs at or approaching the 90-day mark, you’ll want to repost to ensure your jobs are still visible to the job seeker.
- When the job has been live on your website for more than a year: It’s important to remember that the age of your jobs go beyond an individual post for an individual job board or job aggregator. Especially in the case of job aggregators, where traffic is diverted directly back to your website, the age of the job on your careers page is critically important. If the job on your careers page has been live for more than a year, and you’ve simply been posting it to different sites over that span of time, you’ll want to refresh that job on your careers page. Doing so will help you avoid not showing in search results on sources that check the date of your job ads on your own website. This is especially true for companies that use evergreen job listings for particular roles.
With this in mind, it’s equally important to understand when you shouldn’t be reposting jobs in order to avoid being penalized by the job boards, job aggregators and other employment websites where your job postings live.
When it is NOT appropriate to repost job ads
The websites you advertise your job ads on aren’t just concerned with businesses leaving their job ads up for too long. They’re also worried about job ads that are constantly reposted or don’t live on their sites for long enough--as both are indications that the job ad might be fraudulent.
Let’s take a look at two scenarios where you’ll want to avoid reposting your job ads:
- If your job isn’t at least 30 days old: As alluded to in the previous section, job search engines won’t rank your job ads higher by simply reposting your jobs frequently. In fact, doing so can have the exact opposite effect you wish to achieve. For example, many job boards and job aggregators have safeguards in place that are triggered when a job is taken down and then reposted before 30 days of age. Doing so has the potential of having your job flagged as potential spam and can even get you banned from the website you’re posting to.
- If the job has already been reposted at least once: Reposting older jobs is important to maintain the relevance of said jobs. However, doing so is tricky in that each time you repost a job ad, that same job ad is generating a new link and deactivating an old one. If you repost a job too frequently, you increase the possibility of job seekers having access to outdated or broken links. Not only will this negatively affect how many interested job seekers are able to view and apply to your job, it also reflects negatively on your employer brand. After all, in a talent-constricted market, the difference between making a hire and having a candidate pass on an offer, can very well come down to broken links and a poor application experience.
Editor’s Note: Here, it’s important to point out that not all sources will allow you to repost jobs. In fact, some sources actively monitor the jobs that are published to their websites to ensure each job ad is unique and not a repeat. Therefore, it’s important that you understand what your source’s policy is in this regard before you attempt to repost a job.
How to properly repost a job ad
The goal of reposting a job is to show the job search engine that your job is still relevant. Therefore, when reposting a job, you’ll want to keep these tips in mind:
- Repost the job on your career site. This is one of the most important rules you’ll need to follow when reposting jobs to ensure (1) your job isn’t seen as “outdated” and (2) to avoid your job being seen as a duplicate.
- Modify your job title to be similar, but not exactly the same.
- Even if the context of your job description remains the same, update the content a bit. It may be difficult, but try to ensure no two sentences match, word for word.
- Try adjusting the location you’re looking for a candidate in, even just slightly.
- Consider adding new information that may have been previously omitted.
Aside from these tips, you’ll want to follow job title and job description best practices when reposting your job--just as you should when the original post goes live. We strongly suggest you re-read and bookmark the following resources:
How to ensure you’re getting the most out of your job ads
At the end of the day, reposting job ads is about optimizing your job ads in order to improve performance, or to get higher quality applicants cost-effectively. But, to get the most ROI from your recruitment marketing strategy, you need to go beyond the reposting basics.
True optimization in recruitment marketing only comes from making data-driven decisions and through the automation of time-consuming and costly processes.
To learn about how Recruitics can help you accomplish both, reach out today!
