Costs are going up everywhere – so the fact it’s going up on job boards shouldn’t be a surprise!
It’s vital on the job boards to minimize avoidable mistakes to limit the wasted spend. At Haley Marketing, we manage millions of dollars of job spend and see mistakes made all the time.
Let’s jump into those mistakes and share how you can avoid or fix them!
Overpaying for Clicks Equals Overpaying for Applies
Most companies focus on the cost per apply when really the factors that go into the cost per apply are where attention needs to be. Let’s dig into how cost per application gets calculated.
Candidates search for a job and click on the job or start the apply – that’s when you get charged. Remember Indeed charges on the apply start while most other job boards charge on the click (or the apply). Then, the cost per apply comes from the conversion rate (percentage of time a click leads to an application.) Let’s do some simple math – I promise!
If it costs $0.50 to get the click/apply start, and then you have a 10% conversion rate, your cost per application is $5. If you pay $0.25 to get the click/apply start, and then you have the same 10% conversion rate, your cost per application is $2.50.
So, what goes into factoring the cost per click / apply start?
The market has a big factor – is it better for candidates or companies? But we aren’t going to focus on that.
We’re going to focus on the jobs-to-budget ratio. If you are allocating $500/job vs. $100/job – for the same jobs – you could easily be overpaying for the candidates when you allocate $500/job. The job boards will gladly take your extra budget and charge you more for the same candidates. (Here’s a case study explaining how to quickly adjust!)
It’s vital to know what your cost per click should be in your market for your industry and get as close to that as possible – or even less!
Not Enough Jobs in the Campaign
This mistake is similar to the first one, but it can be a little bit different way to look at the common question of “how many jobs should I sponsor?”
Let’s look at some data from a professional placement agency in Florida:
- 5 to 9 jobs sponsored: $2.79 CPA, $0.37 CPC, 13.19% conversion
- 10 to 14 jobs sponsored: $1.74 CPA, $0.22 CPC, 12.96% conversion
With more sponsored jobs and the same budget, the CPA came down 66 percent! All because of knowing how many jobs should be sponsored for that industry in that market.
Make sure to test different amounts of jobs for your budget and understand the metrics – if cost per click is dropping and conversion rate is staying fairly consistent, that’s a sign to keep adding jobs!
No Flexibility to Meet a Changing Market
Each industry and geographic region can be unique – especially in this example from the education industry.
All of the companies had fresh budget at the start of the month and it became ultra competitive! When this education company competed with the other companies by inputting its full budget at the start of the month, the CPA was 55% higher than when it paced the budget throughout the month.
What does pacing the budget mean? It means inputting a smaller percentage (50 to 75%) of your budget into the job boards and then adding more funds throughout the month. That strategy accomplishes two things:
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- Saving money to have in the back half of the month to beat your competition when they budget has run out.
- Not allowing the job board algorithm to pace your budget faster than the duration of the month
Wasted and Runaway Spend
This last mistake encompasses a lot of areas, but let’s focus on jobs that are running away with a disproportionate amount of the budget.
A staffing company didn’t have an upper limit on its jobs – meaning jobs could collect as many applications as possible. The top five positions were using 25% of the budget and driving a 68% higher cost per application.
Look into the job boards you are using or software platforms managing your budget – is there a way to put spending cap on individual jobs or an application limit on the jobs? For example, this company added a hard cap of $125 on the jobs. They couldn’t spend more than that amount on the jobs.
By the third month – the changes led to the company receiving more applications (1,339 applies) in the third month than it received in the last 3 months (1,284 applies) before instituting the rule!
Stop Making Those Mistakes
Your company might not be making all of the mistakes listed above. It could only be making one of them! Look at your own data, analyze campaign structure, talk to experts in the industry and make the best data-driven decisions for your company!
Haley Marketing is here to help – contact us today to learn how we can help with getting more ROI out of your recruitment spend.
