Maciej Noga: Job boards of the future

I first meet Maciej back in 2000 when he was the co-founder of the leading Polish and Ukrainian Job Board, Pracuj. Today, as Chief Investment Officer of Grupa Pracuj, Maciej is responsible for investments and the development of new ventures.

Maciej is still passionate about job boards and we meet in Prague to discuss job boards and their future.

Maciej is convinced that job boards will move up in the value chain but we have to take responsibility for the process and offer the whole package: Do we hope to find a candidate (attract) or find a candidate and help manage the whole process (attract and source) including a job offer?

Discussing the main trends that influence the future of job boards, Maciej listed the following:

1. Focus on Candidate

2. Lack of work force and the aging population (The Demographic Time bomb)

3. Change in generation at work Y-Z. How you look for a job and what work you want i.e. Part-Time v Full-Time)

4. Development of Technology and Recruitment Software

5. Social Media and Employer Transparency

6. Mobile Devices

Aggregator Concept

There will be two big Aggregators; one for all the jobs and a second for all the CV/Talent
Database/Social Profiles. Job boards will be companies that use the best algorithms to extract the value and match job offers with candidates.

Career Hub Concept

Many will remember that pre-2000 the term ‘career portals’ was often used instead of ‘job boards’ and we add editorial teams providing excellent career content. However, in the dot.com bust of 2000 we had the choice of keeping sales people or editorial and most of us, kept our sale teams intact.

Today, Maciej sees a move back to these roots; The User Centric, Career Oriented, Talent Communities will emerge, where all the candidates from the specific industry will be present. The community will service not only job offers but career development.

There will be a one stop shop for candidates with tests, salary reports, career advice, company profiles, company reviews and all the tools for candidates. Employers will be buying the access to talent communities and find the perfect candidate for them.

Sites like StackOverflow etc. reflect this trend and the added value services are, in reality, content that makes the site sticky and engages the audience.
Data Driven Matching Algorithm

Job Boards will gather all the information about candidates, test for skills, search preferences and match it with the preferences of companies. Data will be the main driver of value. Look at sites like LENSA.

ATS/CRM concept

Job boards will provide the employers (mainly MBS) not only with candidates but with all of the tools for making better hiring decisions, which will be enabled rom the special dashboards

The Ideal Job Board

The ideal job board is based on a mashup of concepts, however the main idea is:

Job boards will be gathering all the information about candidates and employers and by using the big data algorithm looking for patterns for the best match.

• The company profiles will be complemented with the information about cultural fit, reviews, evaluation salaries report, talent community/network (discussion forum of the people interested in working in the certain company), reason to apply (like Booking com) etc. and change its appearance to be more user friendly (experience and informative).

• The candidate profile – we collect all the information about candidates into one record i.e. profiles, experience, social data, tests results, salaries inquiry.

• Based on the comparison of the data we give a scoring system where we give automated feedback about candidate fit on different levels and create an ‘Overall Fit’ (cultural, salary, experience, skills, boss, team, etc.).

User/Candidate

1. – All the CVs will be adapted into Searchable/Structured Profile database, where algorithm can read and understand the content. Based on this, we can create:

• Better matching algorithm

• Better recommendation tool

• The career developmental tool – your next steps and what to do to achieve them (like Monster’s 6thSense or BurningGlass’ type focus). These can then help with the following:

◦ Understanding your future salary potential – when crossing with the salary report for a certain position we can show how much money you can earn in the future.

◦ Using this data to suggest what skills candidates need to develop to move up in their career (suggesting new training courses).

◦ The data will be complemented with understanding a lot of CVs/LinkedIn Profiles and a career path based on that.

2. – Aggregation of all the information and social behaviour of the Candidate and a search for patterns to better fit the candidate with the company:

• Tools that enrich CV/Database Profile of the candidates from professional networks, talent communities (LinkedIn, GitHub etc.)

• Tool that compare employee inside with new hires to increase the probability of the good hiring decision

• Tool that shows corporate culture fit

• Tool that predicts the next move in the career

• Tool that builds psychometric profile

3. – Referral Programs based on JB ecosystem;

• Internal – where recruiters do the search among CV+Talent Database and Social Profiles, which JB provides and based on downloaded contacts of their employees, they ask them to recommend the potential candidates from their pool

• External – Users download their contacts to the program including;

i. Algorithm suggests the job offers where the contacts can be

ii. Users are asked by email to recommend their

iii. Users search through the offers and recommends

• Show me matching job offers where I can get recommendation from my friend – users download their social graph of linkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc and by uncovering the matching offers they can see, who from their friedns work there and ask for recommendation. recommended. contacts to the matching offer matching contacts

4. – Tests for Candidates – Job Boards should provide many tests that can help;

• Candidates in their career development (psychometric, General Mental Ability, IQ, EQ, hard and soft skills, languages, preferences, corporate culture fit, team fit, boss fit)

• Employers for better hiring decision by comparing inside of the company to outside using the same tests and big data and looking or the best fit

5. – Profiles and the Reviews of the companies which are complemented with the special matching algorithm where the company fill their needs for desire candidates and candidates can look for a fit.

6. – Talent Communities – each company should create along to its profile talent community, where there will be moderated discussion about the career in the certain company. The main goal of it is to create talent pool i.e. potential vs already needed candidate interested in the company

7. – Salary Reports – collecting the information about the salary, we can create many tools including;

• Constant feedback how you benchmark to the market

• What should you expect at the next level in your career

• What should you expect in certain companies?

8. – Career News – News, advice sections about the career development. Not created just aggregated

9. – Career Alerts – to increase the interaction between the candidate and the portal. Candidates should get the personalized information about their career enhancement, suitable job offers and hiring companies.

10. – Career Goals (Discovery) – the tool, which helps the candidates to plan their career goals and to achieve them, would be a kind of guide on how to develop their career. By completing some tests and surveys about their dream job and dream boss, candidates give a lot of data that can be used in matching with the company.

For employers

1. – Access to all of the candidates

• Active – using the traditional job offers, multiposting, aggregators, marketing campaigns, recommendations etc.

• Passive – using a searchable/Structured database of candidates (Dynamic Profiles)

• Passive – using Social Aggregators – all the social profiles from LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, StackOverflow, GitHub, Talent Communities etc.

2. – Referral Programs (see 3 models above) as a tool to engage the contact to passive candidates by using their friends/social graph.

3. – Tools to make better hiring decisions:

• Test of all kinds (see above)

• Video Recruitment – as selection tool

• Corporate Fit – company, team, culture, boss

• Dashboard with all the analytical data (acquisition funnel, salary, supply and demand, corporate fit, skills, comparisons etc.) increasing good hire probability

• CRM of candidates and tools for process management (new ATS)

4. – Employer Branding – companies need the tool to create their image in front of the candidates. The following tools help to achieve that:

• Profiles with reviews

• Videos picturing corporate culture

• Employees endorsements

• Salary offered

• Reasons to apply

• Talent communities – a discussion group where potential candidates can talk about a career in the company

5. – API for Data Interchange – for integrated talent acquisition and integrated talent management. To avoid broken funnel job boards this will provide the integration with the internal systems for the company.

6. – Tools for the Contingent Market – since the future will bring changes in the workplace, job boards need to adjust its matching algorithm to look for skills and experience not the talents itself.

7. – Niche Specialization – Job boards will provide channels and talent communities for the specialisation.

8. – Global Search – Job boards will provide the search across the countries.

Other ideas/issues include the following:

1. Everything Mobile

a. For Candidates (looking for the job is personal, mobile search is personal) ultimately all the processes and holistic candidate experience should be represented on the mobile devices.

b. For Employers – they should have the possibility to search, review, compare and communicate.

2. Lack of the desire to fill anything by candidates

a. Job boards will be the aggregator of all the information from the web and will be providing tools to understand and match it with i.e. job offers/companies

b. Semantic recruitment technology – to analyse language and web. This will be providing tools to understand and match it with job offers/companies, providing searching, sourcing and matching software.

 

   

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