Names can be useful but misleading things – Job Board Doctor

: a name is just a name right 3NOTE: I’m re-upping this post from ear­li­er in the year because: a) it’s still rel­e­vant; and b) I asked what job called them­selves in the lat­est Recruit­ing Site Trends Sur­vey. Turns out a lot of them call them­selves ‘job boards’ – but a lot don’t!

A cou­ple of times a year I do a guest lec­ture in a col­lege at my alma mater that focus­es on cre­ative and non-tra­di­tion­al careers. It’s always inter­est­ing because it puts me in direct con­tact with some very smart soon-to-be col­lege grads – who usu­al­ly don’t a clue about find­ing their first job. How­ev­er, my is not a ‘how do I find a job’ lec­ture – instead, it’s about how peo­ple like me used their lib­er­al arts degree to cre­ate some kind of career (the class includes lec­tures from about 24 alum­ni in total, rang­ing from big com­pa­ny types to odd-balls like myself).

It’s fun because almost every time, I see some light bulbs go off in var­i­ous stu­dents as they real­ize that career paths are not straight and pre­dictable, but instead wind­ing and sur­pris­ing. These kids are smart – but in gen­er­al, they’ve nev­er been taught about con­nect­ing what they learn to mak­ing a liv­ing they might enjoy. So it’s a great class!

But one ques­tion I always ask the stu­dents dur­ing my pre­sen­ta­tion is, ‘Do you know what a job board is?’. At best, I usu­al­ly get one or two raised hands. Then I ask, ‘Do you know about Indeed or Mon­ster or ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn?‘. This usu­al­ly gets a pos­i­tive response from about half of the class. And when I ask them where they begin a job search, the almost uni­ver­sal response is ‘Google’.

This is, of course, not a ‘ran­dom­ly select­ed valid response’. It’s just a bunch of col­lege kids answer­ing some ques­tions from a dod­der­ing alum. But the con­sis­ten­cy of the that I get from semes­ter to semes­ter – and the cor­re­la­tion with some more exten­sive I’ve seen (or par­tic­i­pat­ed in) – make me the answers are pret­ty typ­i­cal. In short, job seek­ers – par­tic­u­lar­ly younger ones – don’t know and don’t care about the term ‘job board’. It’s right up there with ‘galosh­es’ and ‘main­frame’.

What do they know? Brand names like Indeed or Google. Func­tions like ‘find a job near me’. Refer­rals as in ‘my class­mate in PoliS­ci showed me this cool site for jobs’. They know they need a LinkedIn . And they know they need at least one good intern­ship to get some expe­ri­ence.

I doubt you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly wed­ded to the term ‘job board’ (says the man whose con­tains the term!). You and I use it for con­ve­nience. But to the ‘out­side world’ it is becom­ing mean­ing­less. That’s why star­tups rarely use the term when describ­ing them­selves (unless they say ‘job boards are bro­ken’). It seems to have become a curse  in some HR cir­cles.

My advice? Remem­ber that ‘job board’ is a mean­ing­less term for much of your can­di­date base – and a grow­ing seg­ment of your employ­er audi­ence. Instead, use a mean­ing­ful term for your ser­vice – what­ev­er it is. Use it, repeat it, and pound it into your audi­ence’s con­scious­ness. You’ll be glad you did.

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