By Peter Weddle, CEO TAtech
One of the biggest challenges facing job boards today is the absence of talent in the job market. Employers are desperate for qualified applicants, and many job boards are struggling to deliver them.
The operative phrase in the above paragraph is “in the job market.” If job boards expect to continue as employers’ primary source of new hires, they have to find a way to acquire more talent. In consumer terms, they need to attract more customers, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that a leading retailer – Nordstrom – provides the perfect model for doing that.
What makes Nordstrom such a great solution? It knows how to attract the demographics job boards need most. The chain is the only one of the top three retailers in the U.S. that is more popular with both Millennials and Gen X shoppers than with Baby Boomers. It’s even popular among Gen Z.
It’s pulled off that astonishing feat by expanding its product line and focusing many of those new products on major life transitions like graduating from college, getting married and welcoming a child. And, equally as important, it doesn’t offer the same products that every other store stocks, but instead sells those that characterize its own distinctive brand.
Most job boards, in contrast, offer a single or small number of products for talent – basically it’s job postings with a little resume support around the edges – and focus only on a single transition – job search. If you accept the latest research from Jobvite, that means they’re offering the same talent every other job board is selling – the 40 percent of the population actively looking for a new job – and are doing nothing for the 60 percent of the workforce that’s not engaged in a job search (but is experiencing other employment transitions).
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Operating Like a Retailer
How can a job board operate like a retailer? First, it’s important to recognize the mindset of today’s talent. Few employees in any contemporary generation – be it Millennials, Gen Xs Gen Zs or even Boomers – have any faith at all in corporate loyalty. Oh sure, a company might send them to a skills training course, but other than that, it’s nada.
Notwithstanding the c-suite platitudes about the HR Department, employers simply will not look out for their workers or help them through the transitions they face at work. As a result, even high performers are forced to deal – on their own – with an idiot boss, an incompatible work team, a job reassignment they neither requested nor wanted and all of the other stresses that can and often do occur during employment. And, that reality creates an opportunity for job boards.
By reimagining their value proposition as job search and career support, job boards can offer products that attract 100 percent of the workforce, the 40 percent they’re attracting now and the 60 percent they need to access in order to meet employers’ needs. Now, to be clear, I’m not proposing a repackaging of current products, but an entirely new collection, one that provides prospective applicants with the skills, knowledge and encouragement to perform effective career self-management.
These products might include (but are not limited to):
• Career counseling by career stage
• Aptitude and interest testing
• Guidelines for managing career transitions
• Best practices for salary negotiation
Some of these products can be delivered by conversational AI and other talent technology, while others might still be best delivered by a human. Regardless of the approach, there’s no arguing that such a shift will be costly or at least disruptive to the longstanding job board model. It can, however, be worth the trouble. According to Innovius Research, “the global Career Counseling Market size was valued at $2.12 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $4.65 billion by 2030.”
In other words, by seeing themselves as “an end-to-end career solution,” job boards can BOTH acquire more talent to offer employers and add a new and potentially lucrative revenue stream. Just look at what Nordstrom did. It started as a shoe store, and saw the value of moving to where its customers were. Job boards can do the same.
Food for Thought,
Peter
Peter Weddle has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and CEO of TAtech: The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions.