The Dirty Little Secrets Job Boards Don't Want You to Know

Experiencing Hourly Turnover

We've all experienced high employee turnover in the hourly workforce. In some industries, hourly employee turnover is 3 or 4 times higher than the turnover rate of salaried employees. Also, hourly workers may leave with very short notice – it could be one week or even less. Therefore, businesses with a lot of hourly employees need a constant supply of candidates. It's an ongoing challenge for most businesses to attract enough applicants. 

 

Analysis of Job Board Data

At Cadient Talent, we offer a recruiting solution for employers with large hourly workforces. We have supported large companies with distributed hourly workforces for over fifteen years. We evaluate every aspect of our clients' talent acquisition process to help improve their quality of hire. An analysis of the job board data reveals some interesting realities. 

Public job boards are the top source for candidates for some of our clients. While job boards do often provide many candidates, it may come with a hefty price. Most job seekers applying for an hourly position, 70% to 80% in our experience, will complete their application on a mobile device. According to a study published by ERE Recruiting Intelligence1, only about 1.5% of people using a mobile device who click on a job ad actually complete an application. 

 

Analysis of Our Client’s Employee Sourcing Data

Across our client base, the application-to-hire ratio for candidates sourced through job boards is usually the highest of any candidate source by a large margin. It's not uncommon for businesses to hire only 1 out of 40 job board applicants. Unfortunately, after you've hired that person, the retention rate at the 180-day mark is near the bottom of all candidate sources. 

 

Evaluating the Impact of Job Boards on Your Hiring Process

Let's reverse engineer the process and evaluate the impact. To get an employee through a job board, you need about 40 applications. To get 40 applications, you need 2,667 clicks on your job posting at the 1.5% click-to-apply ratio. The average cost-per-click charged by job boards ranges from a dime to $5.002. That's an advertising cost of at least $267 to fill a position. Your cost could be much higher. There's a high probability the employee you just hired will quit or get terminated within the first six months. As if that's not bad enough, in September 2020, Cadient Talent surveyed over 1,100 managers3 responsible for hourly hiring. They told us that they only look at about half those applications you paid for dearly. 

 

Dirty Little Secrets

Not very efficient or cost-effective, is it? Other candidate sources, such as employee referrals and company career sites, provide a better applicant to hire ratio and better retention rates – usually at a lower cost per hire. Job boards serve a purpose, but over-reliance is hurting your business and your bottom line. 

 

Additional Information

Learn more about how you can improve your recruiting process to increase profits and achieve better business results by making more quality hires.  Visit our Simplify Talent Acquisition page.

 

  1. The Impact of Mobile Recruiting on Click-to-apply Rates, ERE Recruiting Intelligence, May 7, 2015
  2. https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/how-much-it-costs-to-post-a-job-online/
  3. Cadient Talent's Hourly Hiring Manager Survey

 

 

Jim Buchanan

CEO