Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Staffing Websites

by Sam Miller | Jun 22, 2020 | Guides, Nerd Stuff, Technology

Should You Consider Implementing AMP for your Staffing Business’ Website?

It depends on what your goals are. If your business operated mostly offline, through word of mouth referrals, or gets most of your client and candidate leads from third-party sources, it may not be that important to you. However, if your business operates online and relies on a fast, search engine optimized website you should consider implementing AMP.

What is AMP?

Accelerated Mobile Pages are a type of webpage that use stripped-down versions of HTML & CSS to serve faster mobile webpages on mobile devices. The technology was launched by Google as an open-source project with the goal of providing a better user experience for Google users.

AMP can be implemented in a number of different ways depending on your website platform. If you’ve used a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress you’ll find that creating an AMP site is much easier and cost-effective than hardcoding all of the AMP pages.

Why is AMP Important?

AMP greatly increases performance on Mobile devices for Google users. Faster load times result in better user experiences which results in better SEO for your website. Those better user experiences also result in lower bounce rates. If your website struggles with high bounce rates on mobile, it could be related to slow load times.

We’ve witnessed the power of AMP on several websites where we’ve implemented it. There have been studies that show AMP can lead to increased organic traffic as well.

Another secondary benefit to AMP is that Google hosts your AMP site. This means server performance is improved.

There Are Drawbacks

AMP isn’t perfect. It’s designed to increase page speed on mobile devices. That means removing a lot of what can make a mobile website experience interesting. Another thing to consider is how often your website changes. If you have new jobs opening and closing on a daily basis, you may run into issues using AMP on your job board. However, if you’re in a congested market with several high ranking competitors getting AMP set up on your website could make a huge difference.

Because Google hosts your AMP site you miss out on URL branding. This is something that some brands just can’t stomach.

Analytics can become more complicated. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress it’s actually not that difficult. However, if you’re developing your own AMP site using another method you’ll need to add analytics to the AMP pages as well.

Certain functionality may not be possible with AMP. If you have a custom web app for your job board or use a third-party service for live chat or chatbot functionality it’s possible they won’t work on your AMP site.

Should You Implement AMP?

It all boils down to what’s right for your business. If you’re neck and neck with a lot of your competition getting a boost in organic search results could make a big difference.

Pros

Faster webpages on mobile
Better user experience on mobile
Higher rankings on Google

Cons

Worse branding in URL
Limited functionality
Limited design

Learn more at amp.dev. Feel free to reach out if you have questions about implementing AMP for your staffing business’ website.

Writing Job Descriptions that Convert

by Katy Bailey | Mar 6, 2020 | Guides, Nerd Stuff, Technology

When it comes to contract and direct hiring, recruiters have a unique set of obstacles in today’s day and age. Between the low unemployment rate, competitive job market, and ever-changing technologies, staffing professionals have their work out cut out for them as they work tirelessly to find the right candidates for their clients.

Job seekers today are drastically different than they were 20 years ago. Modern candidates aren’t just looking for a way to spend eight hours and a paycheck. Instead, the majority are focused on finding a meaningful career with a company that aligns with their personal and professional goals. If you have noticed that your organization’s conversion rates have been dropping, it may be time to review the first step in your recruitment strategy – how your team crafts job descriptions.

Yes, the seemingly simple job post plays an enormous role in your overall hiring process. You may think you are merely outlining the position responsibilities to help job seekers determine whether or not they may be a fit for the job, but there is actually much more involved. You are doing more than just filling a job slot; you are bringing qualified, sought-after candidates together with companies eager for top talent. Consider yourself a career matchmaker.

Writing a job description is both an art and a science. It requires a whole lot of personality paired with considerable research (not unlike online dating profiles.) The perfect career match will include a clear understanding of what job seekers are looking for as well as thoughtful preparations. Let’s start with the big picture by reviewing best practices.

Job Description Best Practices

Describe how the position fits within the company mission:

Remember how we mentioned that candidates want to find purpose within their careers? Use this piece of know-how to your advantage by aligning the job description with the company’s goals. Studies show that employees with a strong sense of purpose are both happier and more driven in their careers.
Include items that candidates care about:

In addition to providing candidates with traditional role responsibilities and necessary qualifications, job descriptions can also act as powerful recruitment marketing assets. Cater to the needs of the candidates by including pertinent information that will impact their career moves. The Harris Poll and Glassdoor recently conducted a survey that found the top factors job seekers look for within a job description:

Salary
Benefits
Location
Commute Time
Employee Reviews

Including absolutely everything could get incredibly lengthy. Although there is a lot to cover, nothing turns job seekers away faster than a wall of text. Many will read through the lines and assume the company is either overbearing, filled with a group of micromanagers, or both. Shoot to find a happy medium between providing adequate information and being concise. Data collected from Indeed found that job descriptions between 700 and 2,000 characters typically outperform others.

Take a conversational approach:

If you had to pick a word that best describes your job description, would you say, “boring?” Long gone are the days of static job descriptions that sound like everyone else’s.

Each company is unique, so each job description should follow suit. Rather than monotonously spewing industry jargon, use language that real people would use in real conversations. Using the word “you” rather than “ideal candidate” can also make job seekers feel like the description was written specifically for them. Remember to write the same way you speak.

Your job descriptions should be a reflection for your company’s brand. If the company is considered a fun workplace, be sure to illustrate how the organization keeps the good times rolling. Meanwhile, if your company is always striving for the next level of innovation, use words to inspire a candidate’s entrepreneur from within.
Format for mobile:

Mobile recruiting is not a new phenomenon in staffing. For years, we have been listening to thought leaders telling us that a lot of job searches begin on a mobile device, but just how many is “a lot”? Glassdoor recently conducted a study that found over half of all searches are taking place on their phones, and 35 percent admit that applying on a mobile device is their preference.

Another reason to keep your job description short and concise is that massive blocks of text look especially intimidating on a mobile device when compared to a desktop monitor. Keep everything clean by including appropriate headers, and use bullet points whenever possible. Always keep in mind that we live in a world where the average attention span is only 8 seconds. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to make a memorable first impression.

Now that you know the inner workings of how and what today’s job seekers are looking for in their quests for true career love, let’s pull everything together with the must-have elements of the job description.

Anatomy of a Job Description

Title

Clarity should be the #1 focus of the job title. Rather than posting a position for “Accounting Ninja,” stick with “Financial Manager.” Avoid terms like “guru,” “magician,” or “hero.” While creativity is admired and appreciated, people still look for more traditional roles when job hunting, and will be more likely to click on the listing with the more well-known title.You’ll also want to stay away from internal lingo that may not resonate with the job seeker. Most people will not understand the “II” or “V,” that immediately follow a title. Stick with universal terms like “Junior” or “Senior.”

Summary

The job summary is your chance to win the attention of your reader. Accurately describe the expectations of the role and include a bit of information about your company. Identify what makes the company unique and define the culture, but don’t drag on and on. For bonus points, you’ll want to include the job location to optimize for proximity-based searches.
Roles & Responsibilities
Clearly outline the role, but don’t get too hung up on the specifics. Consider that those you are attracting have done the job before. At this point in the game, it’s not imperative to describe each person the role will report to or how often reports are prepared each week. Touch on a few activities involved for the day to day tasks and leave the rest for the interview.

Skills & Qualifications

When creating your list of skills and experience, separate them into what is absolutely essential, and what would be nice to have. In this section, you can also include any specific education requirements as well as character traits that will mesh well with the current team structure. After developing the list, pare it down – then do it again as it’s easy for these lists to go over the top and get out of control.

Remember to be mindful of the seniority level. For instance, if you are hiring an entry-level position, skip the cumbersome requirement list. Chances are, an industry newcomer is not going to have tons of experience. Avoid setting impossible standards, which is not only bad for your brand, but will likely limit your candidate search.

Salary

Although this is an area that many recruiters would rather shy away from, including a range will give your company some serious competitive advantage. Recruiters need to realize that earning potential is at the forefront of job seekers’ minds. Fulfill their need for salary expectations by providing a general range or include a “based on experience level” statement.

For recruiters looking to increase the number of conversions on your job descriptions, the best advice we can give you is to be honest. The companies that both attract and convert job seekers are those who have a solid understanding of the role and what the ideal candidate is looking for in their job search. The biggest challenge will be in differentiating the position from the competition. With a little time and research, companies can work to develop a branding strategy that gets results.

If you’re looking to put your best foot forward, contact the team at Staffing Nerd to take your employer branding to the next level!

Best Job Boards for Staffing in 2020

by Katy Bailey | Mar 5, 2020 | Guides, Nerd Stuff, Technology

The journey through the 2010s was a wild ride. We witnessed Steve Jobs reveal the world’s first iPad, saw the original WeWork open its doors in Soho, and watched the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Scandal play out in real-time. Technology played a massive role in the momentum we saw, which also had a tremendous impact on staffing industry changes.

In the past decade, we observed the beginning of several new job board darlings, including ZipRecruiter in 2010, UpWork in 2015, and Google for Jobs in 2017, among countless others. Now that we have more job boards available than ever before, the once seemingly simple task of posting a job online may seem a bit more daunting, and you might find yourself asking, “which sites will be the best use of my time?”

Have no fear! We’re here to help you out of your job posting paralysis. Review our top picks for the best job boards for staffing in 2020:

1. Indeed
  Have you heard the saying, “The more things change, the more they remain the same”? This statement holds true for our top pick. Indeed continues to prove its powerhouse status in online job boards straight out of the gate. If you are looking for the greatest volume of quality candidates in every major industry (and really, who isn’t?), Indeed should continue to receive a portion of your recruiting budget. As a bonus, you only pay after your new hire has a successful 30 days. By utilizing Indeed as your primary job site, you’re sure to see a healthy ROI for your paid listings.
2. LinkedIn
  Did you know that 90 percent of LinkedIn users are open to the right opportunity? Since LinkedIn is already established with its over 260 million working professional users, it will fit seamlessly into their job hunt. The professional social networking site is an affordable job board option if you need to fill a mid to senior-level administrative role in finance, human resources, marketing, IT, operations, customer service, or business, look no further.With the continual rise of social recruiting, advertising on LinkedIn is a no-brainer. Be warner, however, with its gradual increase in popularity; recruiters have now inundated the site. New strategies will be necessary to stand out from competitors.
  Bonus: Remember that LinkedIn can also be used as a supplemental resource when researching any new job candidate that may have applied through another job site.
3. Glassdoor
  The discerning job hunter is going to start with Glassdoor to investigate their potential future employers. The site’s primary purpose is to increase transparency between the employer and the employee, so its usage will translate to outstanding recruiting.
  
  Glassdoor is the ideal job board for filling positions in experienced business roles such as analysts, sales and project managers, and directors. It is also a reliable option for specific healthcare postings, notably registered nurses and medical assistants, as well as software engineers. While you may need to dedicate more ad dollars to Glassdoor, there’s no better place to find the best of the best.
4. Monster
  As the job board with perhaps the oldest legacy, Monster consistently delivers job posting visibility at an acceptable rate. Although it’s no longer the first job board on either job seekers’ and agencies’ minds, it remains to be the best site for filling entry-level administrative and office worker positions. Monster may have lost search volume as well as market share in the past ten years, but it is still worth using if you have the budget and have already reached diminishing returns on our number one pick.
5. Google
  To avoid overspending on other job boards, consider creating your own. Estimates show that nearly 70 percent of people start this job hunt on Google. To give them the best experience imaginable, you’ll want to make sure your listings appear on the first page of the search results. Since Google scrapes your postings automatically, there’s no need to add or remove positions manually. You also don’t have to worry about candidates accidentally submitting more than one application due to duplicate listings.The biggest difference between Google for Jobs and the other job boards is that it’s not a job board per se. Staffing companies can’t just create a profile and start uploading jobs. It’s a little more complicated to sync your website with Google for Jobs but is definitely worth the energy. Check out this post to learn how to start getting your jobs on Google.

Honorable Mention: Facebook

As the social network with more than 2.45 billion active monthly users, Facebook is useful when recruiting for menial jobs. If you’re looking for highly skilled jobs or professions requiring higher education, this is not the job board for you.

Rather than thinking about Facebook and Instagram as recruiting tools, you may consider them as outlets to improve employer branding. Learn more about building a strong employer brand.

Specialty Job Boards

If you’re recruiting creatives, sites like Dribbble, Dice, Krop, and AuthenticJobs are your best bet. While sites like Indeed will deliver more volume, these niche sites are used by savvy professionals and shouldn’t be ignored.

Other Industry-Specific Job Boards

Healthcare

Corporate

Hospitality

We have entered a new decade in the world of digital recruiting. Just because there are more job sites readily available does not mean that they are all worth your time. Stick with the best-performing job boards that also align with your company’s overarching goals. Here at Staffing Nerd, our team will help you decide on the right job boards while utilizing our skills in branding and SEO to go beyond generic platform recruitment. Contact us today!

Introducing WP Staffing by Staffing Nerd

by Sam Miller | Aug 29, 2018 | Featured, Nerd Stuff, News, Technology

Staffing Software built for your WordPress site.

An introduction to WP Staffing by Staffing Nerd.

Tackling Issues Unique To Staffing

If you’ve been working in staffing-related marketing or operations, you understand that much pain is caused by the technical aspect of staffing, specifically around dealing with the limited functionality and performance of web application integrations. As experienced marketers and developers solely focused on how technology impacts staffing and hiring nationwide, the team behind Staffing Nerd sees this as a problem worth solving. Our drive to fill some of the major gaps in technology pushed us to evaluate how job listings are published and disseminated online.

One of the most common issues we deal with relates to the setup, configuration, and optimization of WordPress-related functionality. While addressing these issues we built elegant solutions which have grown into tools now accessible to the greater staffing community. WP Staffing is our answer to the question of how to build a job board with cost performance and reliability top of mind.

Cost Performance

Upfront costs can cripple budgets and hinder investment in other areas. There can often be penalties related to changing services & technology partners. You may find that your applications need to be rebuilt to route information properly between an application tracking system, on-site job board, and API feeds. Constant delays can add an unnecessary layer of stress and can harm your bottom line. By reducing upfront costs and eliminating slow implementation periods we’ve been able to mitigate these issues.

WordPress Reliability

In an effort to make our tools accessible we turned our attention to WordPress. If you’re not familiar, WordPress is a content management system and online framework used by one out of every three websites on the Internet today. Our team is very familiar with WordPress, developing on the platform for much of our careers. Nearly 90% of the websites our team has developed and maintained run on WordPress. This pushed us to consider how we can supplement existing applications and plugins to create a solution that offers flexibility and reliability. These tools are designed specifically for the staffing industry, solving problems unique to your business. Introducing WP Staffing.

Before we let you dive into WP Staffing, it’s important to understand how it works with the existing WordPress ecosystem. We asked Peter David, a senior developer, to help bridge the gap and gain a sense of what currently exists and why WP Staffing fills a need currently unmet, even by enterprise staffing developers such as Bullhorn.

How WP Staffing Works

Can you give us a rundown of how WP Staffing works?
So, the plugin hooks into a plugin by Automattic called WP Job Manager, and what Job Manager can do is either set up a simple job board for people that want to just post a couple of internal job postings, or it can help you create a job board on your website that people will pay to submit listings to your job board.

How We Cater to The Staffing Industry

This seems like a functional plugin for non-staffing companies. There are nuanced needs for staffing companies specifically that are sought out. How does WP Staffing handle these?

Right, so what it doesn’t do is set it up to act like a job board tool for staffing agencies. So, what our plugin does is add profession and specialty taxonomies so that those are sortable fields. Our plugin also allows you to scrub off all of the company data on job listings in the job details and replace it with your own company’s information.

Premium Benefits

What are some premium benefits to WP Staffing that strengthen the utility for staffing agencies?

There’s also a Pro version of the plugin that allows you to hide different things that you wouldn’t want job seekers to see. For instance, you could hide the posted on date so older jobs won’t appear less valuable, or sometimes an agency won’t want to show the city of a particular job is located in, but they still need to track that information at the back end. It also can hide other stuff, like shift information if you don’t want to display that. There’s also a couple other handy things that we’ve added, like color pickers to help you match the colors to your brand.

Integrating With WordPress

So why the integration with WP Job Manager instead of just rebuilding the plugin from scratch?

Working with WP Job Manager allows us to still use the plugin for what it’s good for, which is a really tight integration with the WordPress platform. So, all of your jobs are posts in the back end, and those posts can then be entered into your sitemap for Google indexing. They have Google schema on the page. It’s really solid mark-up, and for developers, the plugin is a really great platform for extending and customizing functionality any way a staffing company might need it to be customized. But then we added all the extra stuff shown below.

WP Staffing Customizer

This plugin takes WP Job Manager to the next level for professional staffing agencies.
Add extra filters to your job search form and taxonomies to your job listing:

Professions
Specialties

Add a recruiter to a job
Set global information for all job listings:

Company Name
Company Logo
Company Website

WP Staffing Customizer Pro

Add extra fields to the job listing:

Branch
Work Start
Shift Information
Job Source Information

Easily Hide info from your job listing page:

Posted Date
City
Company Name
Company Logo
Company Website
Company Twitter
Tagline

This plugin also hooks into the WP Job Manager Applications plugin to track candidate analytics tags. Find out where your leads are coming from:

UTM_source
UTM_medium
UTM_campaign

Widget areas for the job search page and job listing page

Change your layout between grid, list, 2 column easily

Customize the colors in your job search widget with a color picker.

Learn More About WP Staffing

The out of the box solution from many ATS systems and other SaaS job boards ignore the fact that your WordPress website should be the hub of your marketing efforts. Our job board options keep users and google bots on your domain and don’t send job seekers to another website or display your jobs in an iframe.

Plugins

Services

Contact

Top Job Boards For Staffing

by Sam Miller | Jan 11, 2018 | Featured, Guides, Nerd Stuff, Technology

Top Job Boards For Staffing

The very best job boards for staffing agencies & recruitment firms

General Job Boards

Hospitality Job Boards

Healthcare Job Boards

Corporate Job Boards

IT & Creative Job Boards

Cannabis Job Boards

General Job Boards

These job boards are great for posting just about any job. Although some of the niche sites can perform very well, these sites are more well known and get much more traffic than the other sites. On these powerhouse job boards you’ll probably spend a little more money to promote your jobs, but its worth it.

1. Indeed

Indeed. Hands down the biggest and baddest of all the job boards. What was once a job aggregator is now the best website online for promoting jobs. That being said, here are some restrictions for staffing companies and Indeed’s quality control team is pretty strict about the content they allow on their site. That means that you’ll have to work a little harder than normal making sure your job titles and descriptions are unique and follow their rules. Expect to increase your budgets over time as more staffing companies are catching on to the fact that this is the best job board out there. The good news is that Indeed offers a pay per click ad model which allows you to easily scale your marketing efforts and adjust your strategy from day to day. If you could only promote your jobs on one website, it should be Indeed.com.

2. Zip Recruiter

Zip Recruiter has some great features and service offerings but can fall flat for some industries. One thing that I’ve learned here is that you have to be vigilant about the quality of your job descriptions and job titles. You can’t be lazy, you have to be creative and test performance as if that text we ad copy (because it is). Zip Recruiter offers a service called Zip Alerts that targets job seekers in their email inbox. This service has been effective in our testing for several different staffing industries including healthcare and tech staffing.

3. Linkedin

The professional social media site is a great place to promote your jobs for many different industries. Depending on how many recruiters you have you may want to restrict who has permission to promote jobs here as you may end up having recruiters doubling up on candidates and stepping on each other’s toes. We’ve found Linkedin to be most effective for corporate recruiting, sales and tech staffing. In addition to being a great place to post and promote your jobs, Linkedin is also a great site for sourcing talent & recruiting. Make sure your agency has a strong presence on Linkedin if you plan on promoting jobs.

4. Facebook

FB has always been a good recruiting tool for staffing agencies. Whether you’re advertising your business, participating in groups, building your recruiters’ social branding, or communicating with potential candidates Facebook is an exceptional tool for staffing. Jobs on Facebook was first released in February of 2017 with mixed reviews. Combining targeted ads with Job postings is an effective way to direct traffic to your jobs, your website and get more leads. Facebook targeting is robust in that it allows you to target by age, gender, location, profession, interest, email, phone number and even behaviors. You can generate retargeting audiences from your website to advertise to job seekers who have viewed your jobs but haven’t viewed your conversion confirmation page. The power of Facebook as a recruiting engine should not be underestimated.

5. Glassdoor

Glassdoor is most well known as a database of company reviews, salary reports, and CEO approval ratings. Logically, it quickly became a place for job seekers to find great companies to work for. As a staffing agency Glassdoor is a great tool for recruiting and company branding. In addition to being an effective place to promote your jobs, Glassdoor is vital for building brand trust. Candidates that apply on Glassdoor tend to be more discerning than the average applicant. This is probably due to the fact that their researching employers before applying.

6. Monster

From the job seeker perspective, Monster compares nicely to Indeed. From the staffing agencies perspective, it barely compares. Monster doesn’t offer a pay per click ad model like Indeed and other job boards. They’re stuck in the old school “pay a flat fee per job” business model. This works well for companies advertising a handful of jobs but it quickly becomes extremely costly or unscalable for most staffing companies. As one of the most well known and trafficked websites on this list, it’s a shame Monster isn’t higher on the list.

7. Career Builder

Despite having one of the worst logo rebrands of 2015 Career Builder is still a player in the job board game. Don’t underestimate them. If you haven’t used them and have an advertising budget that isn’t abysmally low, you should test Career Builder out. We recommend starting off small and building your campaign once you’ve established effective positions & locations to promote.

8. Job.com

Much like most job boards, Job.com only offers “job slots” type promotion. This means that you have a limited number of jobs that you’re allowed to promote at any given time. That being said, it can cost as little as $30 per job slot. The site also offers resume database access which is popular among many other job boards. Job.com tends to be less effective for highly technical positions like developers, nurses, and doctors but can be very effective for other types of jobs. As #7 on this list I wouldn’t prioritize Job.com over other general job boards. However, if you have a budget to test, it’s worth a shot.

9. Google Job Search

Technically Google Job Search should be higher on the list. Also, Google Job Search technically isn’t a job board. But it is one of the most powerful and cutting-edge ways to promote your jobs online. Google doesn’t actually allow you to “post” jobs to their careers search engine. Instead, they’ve developed a method for your jobs to be found by their crawlers. There are two ways to get your jobs picked up in Google Job Search. The first, direct integration, is the most straightforward and, from our experience, the most effective. In order to directly integrate with Google, you have to implement a structured data markup on your job details pages and job search results (this is assuming you have your ATS integrated into a job board on your website). There are a few other requirements and Search Console can be used to view the success of your efforts. The other option for getting your jobs listed in Google job search results is by using a third party job site that already integrates with Google. You should already be posting your jobs on many of these sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and Monster. There are a number of technical reasons why your jobs may not be appearing in Google’s job search results. Reach out if you’re having trouble getting integrated.

10. Jobs2Careers

You’ll want to work closely with your Jobs2Careers account rep as they have the control to open the floodgates or give you some really targeted traffic. The quality of candidates can vary greatly so it’s important to communicate to your account rep about what’s working. Jobs2Careers, like Indeed and ZipRecruiter, offers a Pay-Per-Click ad solution that allows you to only pay for the clicks or applications that you receive. This is great for agencies who have a limited budget and no time to waste testing job sites that don’t deliver. While J2C is quite far down on the list, it’s a tool that we often recommend to our clients. J2C tends to be most effective in retail, sales & corporate recruiting, and hospitality but has also proven itself time and time again in the healthcare industry (nursing, allied, and locum tenens).

11. Simply Hired

In May of 2016 Simply Hired announced that it was shutting down. Fast forward to July and Recruit Holdings, the same company that owns Indeed, acquired Simply Hired. Since then, it’s been as effective as ever as a recruiting tool. When you promote your jobs on Simply Hired it gets distributed across hundreds of affiliate job boards. Simply Hired is a potent source of lead volume. Quality is the real problem here and it can be difficult to nail down quality leads for highly technical positions in healthcare and information technology. If your agency is in need of a massive amount of leads to call on, train your recruiters with, or you’re staffing for an industry such as retail, hospitality or sales utilizing Simply Hired in your strategy is recommended.

Healthcare Job Boards

Healthcare Staffing is one of the biggest industries in staffing in the United States. Recruiters all over the country are jockeying for position in an extremely competitive field. Whether your agency staffs registered nurses, physicians, surgeons, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, nursing assistants, nurse practitioners, or any other position in the healthcare industry these job boards will be valuable to your marketing efforts. Ranking these sites has proven to be difficult since they all have pros and cons with varying levels of efficacy and are often for completely different industries (locum tenens vs travel nursing for instance).

1. Travel Nurse Source

One of our favorite Track5Media websites is Travel Nurse Source. The site accepts XML job feeds from most applicant tracking systems and has an API for you to easily integrate your jobs into their search engine. Travel Nurse Source (TNS) has also been around for a long time and it has developed a huge database of candidates which you can access, downloading full records of their application & resume. For that reason alone this is one of the most effective niche tools for travel nurse recruiters online. There are other opportunities on TNS to promote your business and with the applications downloaded from TNS you can create remarketing audiences to be used on Facebook and Google Adwords.

2. Allied Travel Careers

Another of our favorite sites from Track5Media, Allied Trave Careers (ATC) is a powerful tool for recruiters in allied healthcare. Find candidates for everything from Med Tech, Lab Tech and X-Ray Tech positions to SLP, PT and OT positions. Some of the biggest players in Allied Staffing promote their jobs here, and for good reason. If you’re looking for another place to promote your jobs in allied healthcare, this is where we recommend going immediately after Indeed.

3. Nurse Grid

Nurse Grid is a new-ish calendar and shift exchange application for nurses. It allows you to create a profile, select the facility you work for, and communicate with other nurses in your unit, mainly for the purpose of trading shifts. They also market their product to nurse managers who can use the app for managing their unit. The app also allows for job listings which is great since you have a captive audience of exclusively qualified candidates. While this option hasn’t been tested as much as all others, there is a very high potential upside. It’s absolutely worth testing. If you’ve promoted jobs on Nurse Grid we’d love to hear from you.

4. Nurse Recruiter

Nurse Recruiter is one of the more established and well-known niche nurse job boards. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best. While it’s definitely an effective site, as it becomes more popular it also becomes more competitive and expensive. We always recommend proven lead sources like Nurse Recruiter to our clients but also love to test new opportunities and growth hack our clients to the top of their industry. Nurse Recruiter will make a safe and effective part of the digital marketing strategy for your staffing company.

5. Nurse.com

This site is primarily a learning resource for nurses but has developed into a substantial lead source for travel nurse agencies. It is expensive, and can be hit or miss in terms of generating enough leads. There are additional benefits associated with being an advertiser here including added brand awareness and trust building in the nurse community.

6. Explore Health Careers

Explore Health Careers (EHC) produces a lot of content and resources that tend to lean toward nursing students and new grad nurses. This means that it may be less effective for travel nurse staffing agencies that often require nurses to have a minimum of 2 years experience before traveling. However, advertising on a site like EHC is effective at building brand recognition among students and new grads so that when they’re ready to travel, they already know you.

7. NGPT

New Grad Physical Therapy is similar to EHC in that it tailors content toward students and new grads. This is less of an issue for allied healthcare staffing as new grads and clinical fellows are often embraced in the travel therapy industry. NGPT provides an interesting advertising model that can only be described as “custom”. They provide job listings, content promotion, inclusion on their social media profiles and other unusual perks. While this wont be the most effective tool in your arsenal, it’s worth looking into as an option.

8. Locum Jobs Online

Yet another site from Track5Media, Locum Jobs Online (LJO) is a robust marketing and lead generation resource for locum tenens staffing agencies. As one of the lesser well-known niche locum tenens job boards, it has less competition while simultaneously providing exceptional quality candidates. Volume tends to be lower than Track5Media’s other sites, but it’s definitely a highly recommended job board for locums agencies. The fact that LJO is #8 on this list doesn’t reflect how valuable it is. From our experience nursing and allied staffing deal in greater volume and therefore provide more leads. Unfortunately, that was one of the factors we looked at when choosing the rankings for this list. Promote your jobs freely and with confidence on LJO.

9. All Physician Jobs

Essentially a duplicate site of Locum Jobs Online, All Physician Jobs (APJ) is equally as valuable for locum tenens & physician staffing agencies. One thing to note about these sites is that they allow you to create recruiter profiles which can then be reviewed. This allows candidates to research recruiters and work with only the best. If you have a positive reputation and employ talented recruiters this could be a boon for your firm.

10. Nurse.org

Primarily a source for hospital reviews, career guides and scholarships, Nurse.org also offers job promotion services. With a community of over one million nurses, this is another option for a nurse staffing firm looking to expand their marketing efforts. Nurse.org is somewhat untested for Staffing Nerd and our clients but could prove to be useful. If you have experience promoting jobs on Nurse.org we’d love to hear from you.

11. My CNA Jobs

Not all healthcare staffing agencies are interested in hiring CNAs. Those who are will find MyCNAJobs.com to be an practical source of applications. Although you may find that leads from Indeed are cheaper and more abundant, diversifying your efforts will be key to growing your staffing company.

BMJ Careers

BMJ Careers is a specialist job board for Doctor, GP and hospital based jobs in the UK and around the world. The site is continually updated, ensuring the latest medical vacancies are at your fingertips. The site is continually updated, ensuring the latest medical vacancies are at your fingertips. You can search all areas of medicine by sector, specialty, location, career level and contract type. Ensure that you are the first to hear about medical vacancies by signing up for job alert emails. They attract around 150,000 unique online users each month and the print editions of BMJ are delivered direct to the homes of 105,000 doctors every week. The BMJ Clinical Research edition reaches 81,700 hospital doctors and BMJ General Practice is delivered to 27,600 GPs every week.

Tech & Creative Job Boards

Staffing for information technology and creative jobs is difficult. You have one of the most Internet-savvy demographics as your potential candidate which means you have to be sharp. Utilizing cutting-edge tactics and venturing into the unknown is sometimes required to get a leg up on your competition. The following job boards are known to be useful tools for tech & creative staffing agencies. If you’re interested in growth hacking your industry with outside the box marketing strategies, hire Staffing Nerd.

1. Dice

Dice is owned by DHI Group, a parent company for many online job boards. Posting jobs on Dice is pretty spendy starting at $395 per job. Depending on your companies goals and advertising budget Dice may or may not be an option. If your agency is looking for a new lead source that has been proven to deliver, Dice is a great option. From our experience, it’s most effective for recruiting developers, engineers, and information architects but can be useful for recruiting game designers and other high tech designers.

2. Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow claims that applicants will never receive recruiter “spam” or see fake job listings on their site. While I would hope that nobody is posting fake jobs, I feel like there are ways for tech staffing firms to promote jobs on Stack Overflow. It’s one of the best places online to promote jobs for developers so getting your jobs here has a lot of potential upside.

3. Angel List

Startups are always in need of developers. Angel List is one of the best places for candidates to find open positions. However, chances are you’re not a startup. So figuring out how to get your jobs on Angel List is key. Once you solve that problem, you’re in for some fun. Contact Staffing Nerd to discuss how we can help solve complicated problems like this.

4. Dribbble

Along with most job boards out there, Dribbble offers a per job pricing model. The power of Dribbble lies in its user base. With so many talented designers visiting the site every day, Dribble has a captive and targeted audience waiting to apply for your positions.

5. Krop

Krop is a great site for creatives who are looking for new work. Similar to dribbble there are awesome portfolio building tools and the site is very robust from the candidates perspective. The job seekers user experience is excellent on Krop. From the employer/staffing agency perspective, it’s pretty good as well. They only offer single job postings for about $200 per job. This is pretty typical but considerably more affordable than some job boards. Krop also offers access to a database of over a hundred thousand resumes. This monthly subscription service grants you unlimited access to resumes for creative talent. This makes Krop a great tool for recruiters looking for top talent. Utilizing this tool you can sort by location, experience, specialties, education, availability and even willingness to relocate.

6. Behance

Behance was one of the first portfolio sites to make it big by being sold to Adobe in 2012. Since then the site hasn’t looked back. As a portfolio service for creatives, it’s top notch. As a tool for recruiters and marketers working in the staffing industry, it leaves something to be desired. Posting a single job is pretty spendy with Behance. They also have an option called Adobe Talent Unlimited which costs $1,500/mo. Now before you scoff at the price tag think about what the product offers, which is a lot. Adobe Talent Unlimited grants you unlimited job postings on Behance. While this sounds amazing, there are some cons to the service. First, when you search for creative jobs on Google (which is what most job seekers do), Behance rarely ever shows up on the first page of search results. Second, unlimited posting means a lot of manual data entry and account management. If you choose to go this route, you may need to dedicate some serious hours to working Behance.

7. Authentic Jobs

Authentic is another creative job board for your agency to test out. We don’t have much experience using Authentic Jobs but this is primarily due to the higher cost of entry (#300 per 30-day job posting) and the lack of control managing budgets, bids, etc. According to our research, it appears to be popular with some big brands. However, we’ve never worked with a staffing agency who has successfully utilized Authentic Jobs in marketing efforts for their company.

Hospitality Job Boards

Hospitality staffing agencies provide a wide variety of laborers. This can make finding the right job board for hospitality staffing difficult. Whether its food services or hotels, the following job boards are effective tools for promoting your hospitality jobs.

1. Snagajob

Snagajob isn’t exclusively designed for hospitality jobs. However, it is tailored toward hourly jobs and focuses heavily on retail, food services, hotels, etc. The site can be frustrating from the user experience side of things. Navigating the site requires sifting through complicated lists of categories. That being said, the pricing model is very affordable and structured in a way that lends itself to staffing. Snagajob allows you to manage multiple locations with one listing which is great if you’re hiring for positions in multiple locations.

2. Hcareers

Hcareers is one of the most prominent hospitality focused job boards online. The user experience for job seekers is better than most. However, for employers, they gate job posting with an annoying sales process. Hcareers resume search feature is valuable and can be a very effective recruitment tool. Since turnover is so high in many hospitality industries, even if your contacts are currently employed it can be good to simply make contact.

3. Hospitality Online

Many major hotel chains actively use Hospitality Online on a regular basis. That may or may not be the reason their price tag is so high. Although the site isn’t a huge powerhouse in organic search engine rankings, it does appear to get a lot of traffic (most likely paid traffic). This means that there are going to be a lot of qualified job seekers seeing your jobs. That being said $485 is pretty steep for something like a janitorial position.

4. Craigslist

The job board on Craigslist is a mixed bag. Chances are you’ll get a lot of unqualified candidates. That being said, it’s pretty affordable and the Craigslist job board lends itself to entry level positions and jobs that don’t require higher education or a lot of experience.

Corporate Recruiting & Sales Job Boards

For all you internal corporate recruiters out there looking to hire new recruiters for your staffing agency, these job boards are for you. Obviously, some of the top generic sites are going to be more effective but if you have the budget and/or the time testing out some of these sites could prove to be very valuable.

1. Ladders

Ladders exclusively promotes jobs that pay over $100k a year. This is where you want to go if you’re hiring for a director role, an executive, a high-end developer, sales manager or any other position that might rake in a hefty salary. Ladders is state of the art from the job seeker and employers perspective. This makes sense as it’s selling itself as the premium site for premium corporate talent. Ladders does not disappoint.

2. Sales Heads

Sales Heads is similar to Sales Gravy from the job seekers perspective. But from the employers perspective, it’s much better. Sales Heads is owned by a company called Nexxt that has a robust job promotion network and unique pricing structures for staffing agencies.

3. Sales Gravy

Sales Gravy is kind of herky-jerky. The site itself is built well and has proper functionality but it looks a little dated and has an awkward setup for employers. Posting a single job is actually pretty affordable but there are a number of issues with their dashboard. I wouldn’t highly recommend Sales Gravy but if you’re looking to branch out and test a new job board for hiring recruiters and sales professionals, this is a good option to try.

Cannabis Job Boards

Cannabis staffing is a quickly growing industry. With several new states legalizing cannabis for recreational use each year, the need is increasing exponentially. Many positions in the industry have high turnover rates (budtenders, trimmers, etc.) so it’s important for cannabis staffing companies to build a steady pipeline of candidates. Because many job boards are wary of the legal implications of promoting cannabis jobs they shy away from it. Which means cannabis staffing companies like yours have to use third-party job boards like the ones listed below.

1. Green Street Jobs

Green Street Jobs (GSJ) provides some interesting solutions to many of the issues that plague the cannabis staffing industry. When applying the site requires candidates to rank their skills and experience from 1-10. Then from the employer side, you can filter out candidates who don’t meet your criteria. Also when posting jobs you can customize the requirements to ensure that you only get interview qualified candidates. As of this writing, Green Street Jobs offered free job postings as well as premium options which is great, especially for new cannabis staffing agencies working with limited budgets.

2. 420 Careers

420 Careers offers free job postings as well as boosted jobs for only $50. Many leading cannabis staffing agencies are already posting here. The rules & regulations for posting on 420 Careers are pretty loose. Many companies post jobs that list the positions as multiple trimmer, budtender, and other jobs in cannabis across a whole state. This site is a great way for you to get your name out there and build brand recognition as well as collect leads for qualified candidates.

3. Weed Hire

Weed Hire doesn’t have the best user experience from the employer or job seekers perspective. Registering is kind of tricky but job postings are only $4.20 which is very affordable and kind of funny. Weed Hire also offers resume database access and “VIP” job postings for $500. The VIP package is very strange though. They give you 10 days to post up to 5 positions that last only 15 days on the site. This is abnormal for all job boards, even cannabis job boards. They quote a publication on the site that said: “Weed Hire is the Monster.com of Marijuana”. We’re not sure if that’s a compliment or not.

4. Ganjapreneur

Ganjapreneur no longer has a job board. That being said, they do have a job board directory and a massive amount of clout in the industry and they’re one of the highest cannabis career sites online. Getting your cannabis staffing agency listed on Ganjapreneur’s industry directory will help your firm build brand awareness and potentially drive traffic to your jobs.

5. MJCC

Marijuana Jobs and Cannabis Careers probably has the worst branding out of all cannabis job boards online. It’s almost as if they read an SEO article about exact match domain names from 2001 and built their business off of it. That being said, MJCC has a pretty decent site and affordable job postings. The biggest drawback is that they charge job seekers. Granted they only charge $10. But any cost to the job seeker is too much. When it comes to job boards the applicant is the commodity and it shouldn’t cost them money to apply.

6. Cannabis Jobs Board

Another winner of the boring website name award, Cannabis Jobs Board. Job postings are currently free and the site is associated with The THC University which means that you might find yourself interviewing trained, qualified job seekers for your positions.

7. 420 Jobs Board

One of the biggest problems that plagues the cannabis industry is brand recognition. With so many companies choosing generic names like 420 Jobs Board it’s hard to differentiate between who’s good and who’s not. 420 Jobs Board offers free job postings and premium upgrades. The site is very functional and has talent profiles which make recruiting a lot easier.

8. Cannabis.net

Social networking, dispensary maps, business listings, store, event calendar, and job board. Cannabis.net is pretty bulky. That being said they have a job board and they have an active user base that will continue to drive traffic to your jobs if you promote them here. Cannabis.net job postings are affordable and they’re live for 60 days instead of the standard 30 days. They also offer resume access and background check services.

9. THC Jobs

Update: THC Jobs is under new ownership and has a new site up. Available on the site is a signup for updates about the new sites launch date.

How To Find Influencers & Thought Leaders

by Sam Miller | Jan 10, 2018 | Guides, Nerd Stuff, Technology

How To Find Social Influencers & Thought Leaders for Staffing

A comprehensive guide to discovering social influencers and thought leaders for marketers in the staffing industry.

What is an “Influencer”?

Influencers are influential individuals who have a captive audience online. Most often these individuals have social profiles with a lot of followers but they also have blogs or write for publications. Influencers are often referred to as thought leaders and are admired or respected for their opinions in their communities and industries. Influencers in the staffing industry aren’t always affiliated with staffing in any way. Your goal as a staffing marketer is to promote jobs to candidates and sell candidates to employers. Therefore, influencers will often be people who work in the field of your target candidate. For example nurses (for travel nursing), developers (for tech staffing), physical therapists (for allied staffing), designers (for creative staffing), doctors (for locum tenens), etc. There are a number of ways to find & identify influencers as well as ways to gather their contact information for later use in influencer marketing & outreach campaigns.

Finding Social Influencers

Follow these steps to identify & collect influencer information.

1. Start Searching

Search your favorite social site (Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) using keywords associated with your industry. For instance, if you’re a travel nursing agency, you’ll want to search for keywords similar to “travel nurse” or “registered nurse”. The search results will probably contain a lot of competitors as well as a lot of noise. Sift through the results to find individuals who have followers.

2. Follow Them

This step is often overlooked but you should really connect with influencers. You’ll eventually want them to help promote your brand and in order to get to that point, you’ll have to build rapport with them. Follow them, retweet them, share their posts, talk with them, tell them stories, tell their stories. Get involved in the community that they have influence over. Do this and you too could soon become an influencer.

3. Search For More Info

Now that you’ve found an influencers social profile you’ll want to collect more information on them. Searching on social you’ve probably found their name, their “brand”, one of their social profiles and maybe a website. Chances are you’ll probably want more than that. In order to get more info, you’ll want to search Google using their name, their brand, or their website. Once found you’ll want to look for their email address and record info like other social profiles, websites they may blog for, events they attend, etc.

4. Record Contact Info

I prefer to use a spreadsheet with multiple tabs for different professions or social platforms. However you choose to record the information, you’ll want to jot down the influencers name, profile URL or handle and their website (if they have one). Gathering all this information in one place will allow you to more easily coordinate an influencer marketing campaign or an outreach campaign.

Many social platforms will suggest similar profiles to you. Utilize these features to bolster your efforts.

Finding Blog Influencers

1. Start Searching

Like the social process above we start by searching. Pull up Google and start searching for keywords related to your industry. For instance, if you’re in travel nursing search for “nursing blogs” or “nursing blog”. You will most likely find a lot of blog posts listing the best nursing blogs. This is a great place to start. However, you and everyone else who has thought about finding influencers have already used these lists. You may need to dig a little deeper into the search engine results pages.

2. Search For More Info

Now that you have an influencer’s blog, visit their site and look for social profiles, email addresses and other bits of contact information that could be used to contact them. If no email address can be found, record the URL of their contact page. You can also try searching their name with “email” in quotes. This will yield results in which their name appears on a web page with the word “email”.

3. Record Contact Info

Log everything in an organized way for later use. If you want to be extra meticulous, take notes on where you left off while working on this project. That way you can come back and pick up exactly where you left off. This project is never-ending and as you naturally discover influencers through your other marketing research efforts. Continue growing your influencer documents as needed.

Using Tools

1. Social Listening

Social listening is an aspect of social media monitoring that covers the tracking of conversations involving chosen subjects, phrases or keywords. This allows you to identify thought leaders that you might not have been able to find mining influencers manually. For example, you would enter into your social listening tool the topic of “travel nursing” and it would monitor Twitter and other social sites for uses of that phrase or related phrases. Looking through the feed you’ll eventually find influencers who are engaging in discussions surrounding your chosen topic. There are dozens of services and software suites out there that offer social listening services. We recommend trying out HootSuite or SproutSocial.

2. Hashtag Research

As you’re reaching out to influencers and sharing your lead magnet with them, you should also be trying to grab their attention by using relevant keywords. Hashtag research tools will help you do this effectively while also allowing you to find new influencers using hashtags you’re already familiar with. We recommend trying out FollowerWonk, TweetDeck, and KeyHole to start.

3. Google Alerts

Setting up Google Alerts will allow you to stay on top of topics as they emerge in the search engine. When people start talking about the next ice bucket challenge, you’ll know. Using Google Alerts will enable your staffing agency to stay ahead of the curve on current events and the social media zeitgeist.

How To Utilize Influencers in Staffing

There are dozens of ways to leverage influencers and thought leaders for your staffing agencies marketing efforts. Simply requesting that they take notice of you and help promote your business won’t work. You’ll need to be creative and produce something of value that’s worth talking about. That’s where we at Staffing Nerd come in. We’ll help your staffing company become more newsworthy and coordinate an outreach program that captures the attention of influencers in your industry.

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