With my fledgling
UK based Jobboard Empire being added to a few weeks ago with the successful launch of
Just4Medical, I found myself looking back to my first venture,
East Midlands Jobs. I had a few questions that I needed answering regarding the purpose of this Jobboard. Published in early 2008. I needed to know whether this Jobboard was fit for purpose.
Since its inception nearly two years ago I have been marketing the Jobboard as Employers Only and not allowing agencies to post their vacancies.
I’m glad to say that from the launch there has been many job postings on the site and from some high profile East Midlands based businesses, namely; Next, Punch Taverns, Harlon Laboratories to name a few, but not in the amount that I had been expecting.
Had I been wrong in wanting to create an Employers Only geographically specific Jobboard?
Well, with a fantastic source of information on my door-step, I asked my audience what they wanted.
Of the 541 registered* employers asked, 51% said that they would like to see agency jobs and 49% said that they wanted the Jobboard to themselves. I must note here that 74% of employers, who said that they wanted the Jobboard without agency jobs, had only used the site to post a job once.
The same question was asked of our 2529 registered* Job Seekers.
*Of the total employers questioned 35% responded, of the total job seekers 74% responded. I also asked my
Twitter audience. Of the 19 people (I find it amazing that out of 3100 followers 19 gave me their time, to you I am most humbly thankful) who answered the question, 12 people stated that the Jobboard should have agency jobs and 7 said that there should be a mixture of agency and employer jobs. Unfortunately, I am not 100% sure what or rather who was answering the question and also I had posed a slightly different question to them. Apologises if you took part in the Twitter survey but your input has been a valuable learning curve, thank you.
So, with all this information; what am I to do?
1. I am being told that Jobseekers want more choice; they want to see as many suitable jobs in their local area as possible.
2. Employers can live with agencies sharing their Jobboard. I think I might know what I need to do for East Midlands Jobs! I can almost hear some Jobboard owners thinking this is old information. All I can say is that I’m prepared to share this information and more as I go through my business trials and tribulations.
It is not having the information that is important, it what we do with the information that is far more important!
