Wait, there’s more than one?
On top of that scary, 12-letter, four-syllable “p-word,” there are multiple options for staffing agencies to consider when looking at programmatic job advertising. In this post, we examine both programmatic options and how your company can decide which, if any, is the best fit.
Programmatic Job Board
Let’s start with an analogy. Think of purchasing directly from a job board (Indeed, ZipRecruiter) as purchasing a stock. If the “stock”/job board does well, so does your applicant flow. If the “stock”/job board doesn’t do well, your applicant flow will suffer. That’s what it’s like when you spend directly with one of the job boards.
A programmatic job board is like a mutual fund. Whereas a mutual fund is comprised of small percentages of lots of different stocks, a programmatic job board distributes your jobs to dozens, even hundreds, of different job boards.
The main benefits of working with a programmatic job board focus on increased reach and distribution. Instead of needing a relationship with dozens of job boards, you can purchase from one company and have your jobs distributed.
So, who needs a programmatic job board?
We manage millions of dollars of job spend for companies in the staffing industry and work with dozens of staffing agencies. We have seen the most success on programmatic job boards with higher-level jobs, sometimes called knowledge worker positions. That’s not to say it won’t work for traditional staffing positions (manufacturing, clerical), but we have seen the best results come for those higher-level jobs.
The programmatic job board is probably what most companies are familiar with when they have seen marketing materials about programmatic and the staffing industry. It’s the right fit for some companies.
But the second option is the right fit for almost ALL staffing agencies.
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Programmatic Software
The usage of programmatic software to manage job spend works with any job board that spends on a performance-based model, traditionally called a cost-per-click (CPC) tactic.
What actually takes place is the jobs on your career site make their way into the programmatic software. Your budgets, strategies and rules get programmed into the software to meet your unique recruitment goals. Then, the software sends out the jobs with your budget and strategy to the job boards where you are spending money.
Let’s walk through an example with a fictional staffing agency:
- Budget: $5,000 with $3,750 on Job Board A and $1,250 on Job Board B.
- Campaigns: Two campaigns (high priority and normal priority) where the recruiters designate the status in the ATS.
- Rules: Stop sponsoring a job when reaching 50 applies. Stop sponsoring a job if it has 100 clicks and converts less than 3% of the time.
- Job Count: Between 50 and 100 jobs.
With everything set up to run through programmatic software, all a staffing agency needs to do is make sure the jobs are set up correctly on their career site. Then the applications come flowing back to their recruiters.
What is the business benefit? We’ve seen clients using programmatic software to manage their budgets reduce the CPC by 17% in the first 3 months and by 33% in the first six months. Most of that success comes from optimizing the budgets on Indeed and ZipRecruiter.
If you need help determining which programmatic options are the right fit for your staffing agency, the team at Haley Marketing is here to help. Our team is happy to analyze your current recruitment spend and provide feedback for your company!