I’ve been working in the realm of recruitment marketing for over a decade. During this time, I’ve experienced plenty of ups and downs. I’ve navigated the labor market when candidates have the upper hand and when employers have the upper hand. That being said, I’ve never experienced anything like the job market we are experiencing right now.
The amount of unknown and volatility in the job market have, without a doubt, created challenges for any company looking to hire in 2021. The unknowns have created confusion and desperation about where the most impactful places are to recruit talent. Every day I am asked if we are posting jobs in the right place or with the right bid.
With Appcast’s managed service, Appcast Premium, we’ve been able to help companies because we are publisher agnostic. What this means is simple: We have no preference over where applications come from, as long as they are coming in at a good price (and bonus points for quality, but we will touch on that in a bit). And while being publisher agnostic sounds fancy, it really can give a company a competitive advantage in a few ways.
First, we get to align our definition of success with a client. We can do this because we don’t have to meet any spend quotas with a publisher. We simply direct financial resources to whichever job board is performing best based on performance indicators (usually a mixture of volume and cost per apply).
Second, it rewards an intelligent use of data. Here at Appcast we get an in-depth look at how a company’s roles are performing. And most companies have a diverse set of jobs.
Let’s use a gas station as an example. Yes, you have the front-line workers (cashiers), but you also have the restaurant-type workers who make food, the CDL drivers that deliver fuel to the station, the warehouse workers, and many other types of roles. Each of these roles likely requires a different job board strategy. Remaining agnostic as to where to spend recruitment marketing dollars is a competitive advantage.
In a similar way, job boards perform differently in different geographic locations. This isn’t always obvious, so having the data available to drive these decisions really drives that competitive advantage to get the most applications at the best cost per apply. We wouldn’t be able to do this if we weren’t agnostic as to where the spend went. Instead, we’d have to factor in where we need to spend based on contracts and quotas.
Third (and this is the bonus points), when we have the ability to track down-funnel metrics, meaning quality applies and hires, we can really start to separate ourselves from the competition, because we know not only what the cost per apply is, but the cost per qualified apply.
I have run into several instances where the cost per apply for a role might be lower on job board A, but for whatever reason the cost per qualified applied (meaning candidates that a company has reviewed and deemed qualified for a role) is lower on job board B. Here at Appcast, we use that data to drive our action—and since we are agnostic as to where the spend goes, we can shift funds to the publisher giving us the best cost per qualified apply for our clients. We aren’t tied to continuing to spend in an area that is sending us the volume but not the quality.
In summary, being job board agnostic means having the freedom to divert resources to whichever job board/publisher is working for any specific role at that time. Without a doubt, the freedom of being agnostic and the agility that comes with a programmatic offering driven by data result in a competitive advantage when recruiting talent in this competitive and volatile labor market. And while recruiting talent right now is hard for everyone, I’m happy knowing that we can take these steps to help our clients have an advantage over their competition.
