In an effort to stretch recruiting budgets these days without sacrificing candidate quality, employers of all sizes are going online to look for places where they can post jobs for free. From social networking sites to niche job boards and online communities, there are plenty of ways to get your jobs advertised at no cost. Advantages to free online job postings include no out-of pocket costs, exposure to new audiences, and a potential lower cost per hire. When evaluating the effectiveness of free online job postings, however, it’s important to consider the time spent listing, managing, and tracking success, the size of the audience, and the type of job seekers and potential candidates they attract. At the end of the day, no one wants to waste time promoting jobs – free or not – to the wrong talent pool and sifting through a sea of resumes from unqualified candidates. High applicant to hire ratios don’t help anyone!
Here are a few ideas on where you can go online to post jobs for free.
On your career site
Clean house first before advertising your jobs outside of your own career site. Work with hiring managers to update the content, and then make sure you’re leveraging tips to optimize your job descriptions for online search. If your job descriptions aren’t up-to-date or SEO optimized, listing them on different free job posting sites is a waste of your time.
Social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, Google+
It doesn’t cost anything (except your time, of course) to post your jobs on various social media channels associated with your organization. Post links to jobs in the form of frequent Facebook status updates. Leverage an automation tool like Hootsuite to schedule job announcements on your company’s Twitter feed. Add connections and use tools like FindPeopleOnPlus to search an index of Google+ users and post jobs and related content to your circles. Just remember to keep your posts fresh and frequently updated or risk your social presence looking stale.
University and alumni community job boards
Most four-year colleges and universities offer students and alumni the opportunity to post jobs for free. If you’re looking for a summer marketing intern, a newly minted MBA, or a scientist, this might be a great place to advertise your open positions. The alumni networks of larger institutions offer an additional talent pool which typically extends far beyond the city or region where the campus is located. Know of a few local schools where you’d love to advertise your jobs but you’re not alumni? Not to worry! Reach out to career services and request guest access if you don’t see it promoted on the site.
Craigslist
From its earliest days, Craigslist has offered an easy way to post a job online. Depending on the city, you might be able to post a job for free on Craigslist although most markets will run you $25-$75 per job listing for 30 days, which is still significantly cheaper than most online job posting sites available. Remember, however, that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Due to the ease through which candidates can apply for jobs posted and the wide net audience it attracts, many employers have found that the cheap or free cost to post jobs on Craigslist isn’t worth the time required to screen the massive flood of resumes from often-unqualified applicants.
Niche job boards
At any moment, there are upwards of 40, 000 niche job boards online. Having trouble filling that dog groomer position? Or finding a manager of a retirement community? There’s probably a job board for that! Just make sure you do your research first. Advertising a job on a niche job board might be the equivalent of posting a classified ad in a newspaper with a circulation of 6 people spread across the U.S.
Even though it doesn’t involve any out of pocket costs, it’s up to you to determine if using free online job posting sites are a worthy use of your time, depending on how easy it is to list your jobs, the size of audience and the candidate quality and fit.
Pros and cons of free jobs
So if all of these unpaid avenues are available, why should anyone pay for a listing? What are the pros and cons of free job sites? One obvious positive is the lack of money being spent. You can send your message through social media at no cost, so even if your postings don’t reach the right audience, you haven’t lost any money in the process.
The other benefit is the swift spread of information; you can reach thousands of people at once on platforms that are heavily used each and every day.
The downsides? If you’re not paying for a job to be specifically targeted to qualified candidates, you may not be reaching anyone of value or quality. This means that the time you’ve spent crafting a recruiting message has gone to waste if there is a meager response or wave of unqualified candidates bombarding you with applications.
You also have no way of tracking your metrics – making your money work for you using real-time data – so you’d have no way of knowing which avenues and regions are the most fruitful for your efforts. Lastly, while you do not spend money, you spend time, energy, and creativity on a post that does not promise any positive results that can be measured or replicated. That’s where Glassdoor steps in. Whether you post one job or one hundred jobs per month, you’ll receive live job metrics, consistent client support at every step of the process, targeted job advertising throughout your job’s life cycle, and an effective use of your time and money. Not only is our job posting process affordable and involved, but our Employer Profile tool is completely free. That’s what we call a smart buy!
MUKESH SHARMA