Job Boards and their likely future is a topic that we’ve not really covered in-depth on the podcast. Despite the decade long predictions of their demise, Job Boards still play a crucial role in many talent acquisition strategies. They are evolving quickly, and some of the new generation talent marketplaces are attracting enormous venture capital investment.
My guest this week is Martin Lenz. Martin is CEO of innovative job board software provider Jobiqo and is therefore ideally placed to get us up to speed on the current state and future potential of job boards.
In the interview, we discuss:
- What role are job boards currently playing in talent acquisition and how could they be better at it
- Creating value in niches
- Leveraging increasing amounts of data
- Improving the candidate experience
- What factors are driving change in the job board market and who are going to be the winners and losers.
- What functionality should talent acquisition professionals be demanding from job boards both not and in the future
Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from jobiqo. Jobiqo provides the next generation Job Board software, an AI enabled matching technology combining both the benefits of a scalable SaaS platform and the flexibility of a custom solution. With Jobico, businesses can reach a new level of quality and professionalism in online recruiting and can take advantage of the rapidly changing market. Jobico helps leading brands in 12 markets globally to engage talent and grow revenues with job Boards. To find out more, go to www.jobiqo.com. that’s www.jobico.com and jobiqo is spelled j O B I Q O.
Matt Alder [00:01:05]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 217 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Before we get started with the show, a quick announcement next week, which is week commencing 21st October 2019. For those of you listening in the future, I’m launching a new visual look for the show. So just be aware of this when you’re looking for the show in your podcast player as the logo will look different. If you want a sneak preview then head over to Instagram where I’ve already posted the artwork. The show’s Instagram account is Recruiting Future, so please connect with us there and I’ll be sharing a lot of content on that account moving forward. If you’re not an Instagram user then I can think of no better reason to join than to follow the podcast there. So now on with the show. Job boards and their likely future is a topic that we’ve not covered much on this podcast. Despite the decade long predictions of their demise, job boards are still a key part of many talent acquisition strategies. They’re evolving quickly and some of the new generation talent marketplaces are attracting huge venture capital investment. My guest this week is Martin Lenz. Martin is the CEO of innovative job board software provider Jobiqo and is therefore perfectly placed to get us up to speed on the current state and the future potential of job boards. Hi Martin and welcome to the podcast.
Martin Lenz [00:02:47]:
Hi Matt, thanks for having me.
Matt Alder [00:02:49]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Martin Lenz [00:02:54]:
Sure, absolutely. My name is Martin Lenz. I’m the CEO of a company called Jobiqo. We’re focused on building chopboard software and AI based matching technology. We’re based in Vienna in beautiful Austria. We’re in the market for more than eight years now. The company founder is in the chalkboard business for more than 13 years now and I’m with the company since two years now. So I’m CEO for the last two years and we were very happy to see very good growth over the past two years. So we basically work in 12 different markets globally, so mainly Europe, UK and the US. And yeah, really looking forward because we recently had a big announcement. We got a big investment by RUS Media International. Maybe we can talk a little bit more about that then and maybe also something to my background. I have a computer science background, so I used to be a developer and I used to be a developer more than 12 years ago when I worked for the founder for a job board business. So I basically started in programming job boards from the very beginning, then moved to consulting and now I got back and focusing a little bit more on the strategic part, the management part.
Matt Alder [00:04:22]:
So it’s funny, I was looking back through the archive and we actually don’t talk about job boards very often on the show, which is kind of crazy when you think about it in terms of how important they still are. I mean, what role do job do you feel that job boards currently play in talent acquisition? And could they be doing a better job of it?
Martin Lenz [00:04:43]:
Yes. So my opinion on that is that they still play a very important role. I think there’s still the at least second most important channel when it gets to talent acquisition. Chalkboards have been in place for a very long time. So it’s easy to say something like chalkboards are dead or like it’s like old fashioned. But for many people it’s the first go to position either to search for people or also to search for jobs. And if the question is can they do a better jobs job, Absolutely. So we truly believe that job boards need to evolve over time. Maybe they will not be called job boards anymore in the future. You never know. But the Internet and online recruitment will be will stay a very important channel for talent acquisition. And at some point job boards will get the chance to evolve and to create much more services around the recruitment that they do now at the moment.
Matt Alder [00:05:43]:
So you kind of very much believe that they have a long term future.
Martin Lenz [00:05:46]:
Yes. So they can, they can. So I’m always about to say they can, they will evolve. So if you just have a job search where you can enter keywords and you find jobs, this may not not be relevant in the further future. But, but still there will be job boards that work like that even in the future from now. So we believe that you have to create much more of a go to place where you create all kinds of services around recruitment. And it can mean services for candidates, but also services for employers. And that starts with content, with courses, with services. And we very much believe that the more you can be particular about, for example, a niche or a region or a specific functional level, a job level that you can talk to, you can help the community, you can help your customers and you can create value for the business. Because what we see at the moment, moment is it’s a very crowded market. There’s all kinds of solutions popping up and moving out of the market. Again, like we’re talking about programmatic, we’re talking about AI. So many solutions, a very crowded market. So both, both for candidates and for employers, it’s very hard to understand what is happening. And I think at that point job boards can also be a very important stakeholder in this game because they can make it more easily understandable for, for both candidates and employers. How, how to leverage tools that are available in the market.
Matt Alder [00:07:25]:
I mean it certainly, certainly seems to be massively changing times or potentially changing times in that, in that market. I suppose just to dig a little bit deeper into it, what are the factors that you think are going to change job boards in the, in the next two years? What’s, what’s going to happen in the short term?
Martin Lenz [00:07:41]:
Yeah. So first of all we will be chalkboards will have the opportunity to leverage much more data. So everyone is talking about AI. We in particular are talking a little bit more about machine learning. So how can you create more relevancy in the search and in like additional services that you bring to candidates and to employers? I think there’s still a lot of room on how to leverage on this data. And creating more relevance in search also means you create a better candidate experience. And we started mainly in the German market. Now we do, we create job boards and recruitment platforms globally. But the German market was always very particular about the quality of search and the candidate experience. And I think especially when everyone talks about the war of talent, it’s very hard to find the right people. Everyone talks about targeting passive job seekers. I think what still manage operators can do and the whole recruit online recruitment industry is focus a little bit more on the candidate experience. So make it more convenient for candidates to enjoy your platform and to get value out of it.
Matt Alder [00:08:55]:
Absolutely. I think that’s something that’s, that’s, that’s critical in terms of talent acquisition as a whole. Obviously, whenever job boards are discussed, we always tend to talk about what the big players in these sectors are doing. That sort of the big Internet Giants. I mean, what effect do you think indeed and LinkedIn and Google are going to have on generic job sites and niche job sites?
Martin Lenz [00:09:22]:
So if you look at the market and how it changed over the past few years, you see that these players had a big impact not only on where the revenues were going, but, but also in the way the market looked up to these platforms and tried to anticipate how can they work together, how can they cooperate, how can they use these sites as a channel but also compete with this channel. So they definitely had an impact in the way chop boards and other players in the market structured their services and tried to improve their products. So basically, basically everyone knows the indeed story and everyone followed how also LinkedIn and Google evolved, like with Google Jobs, et cetera. So it’s a very powerful channel and there will be a growing competitors, especially on generic sites. So in my opinion, it’s always a good thing if there’s competition because it makes you start to think about how can I improve my service, how can I maybe get a more bespoke service to my customers? So it will definitely improve the way that employers, but also candidates will get new services in the market because everyone now has to compete with these big platforms as well.
Matt Alder [00:10:48]:
So obviously lots of shakeout going on and change going on in the industry. I mean, who are going to be the winners and losers here? And why do you think that?
Martin Lenz [00:10:57]:
Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. I think there is not a, like, there’s not a sure bet who will be the winner. I mean there are some frontrunners for sure. I mean, Indeed, absolutely. Google, LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is still undervalued in the way they, they can create a very valuable service to the market. They have, they have maybe the best data of candidates and engagement in the market. So maybe start with the small, with the smaller, with like the smaller sites. I think that niche sites can be the big winners of this current change because they’re the ones who can provide a very bespoke service to their communities and to their customers. They just have to be a little bit more aggressive in trying out new things, being a little bit more talk about their branding and the service that they add on top of just being a job search for a particular niche. So I think, but in the end, generic sites even, indeed and Google, they can’t, they can’t bring the same level of service like niche sites can do. And even if it comes to data, we see that even niche sites, much smaller sites than the generic ones, if they’re niche enough they can create still they have so much valuable data in their niche about the candidates, about the, about the market that they can also leverage a lot on that. And on the long run, I think there will be a consolidation of generic job boards. We still see that there’s a lot of regional players like each, especially in Europe, each market, but also in Asia there’s some markets that have local chalkboards that are very, very powerful. They will have a lot of effort to retain their revenues. So they will have to do a lot of additional work creating new products to stay competitive. And on the global scale, I think there will be definitely a consolidation. It does not necessarily mean that it’s just Indeed Google or LinkedIn. I think there’s also other platforms out there that could succeed, but they are definitely the front runners.
Matt Alder [00:13:15]:
One of the biggest complaints I hear about job boards from talent acquisition professionals is they don’t always offer the sort of types of services that are perhaps required in the modern world of talent acquisition. I mean, what kind of approach and specific features do you think that talent acquisition professionals should be demanding from job boards?
Martin Lenz [00:13:39]:
Yes. So on the one hand the convenience of how to use it chop boards can like just imagine if you’re a small and medium sized business, you’re not necessarily recruit all the time. So every time you start to recruit again you have to catch up with the market change. And I think chop boards can do a very good service to their customers in making it much easier to understand what they can do and how to get the right talent. Without talking too much about this is AI or this is programmatic, but more like in a more direct way of saying, okay, we get you the quality candidates and build trust and build trust in the market at the same time. I believe that recruiters within employers will be more KPI driven more of a time. So I think that the level of digital processes and the ability to track things like what’s the cost of application, what’s the cost of a hire, what’s the cost to retain people. I think that retention will be basically the biggest challenge in the future to keep to retain best talent. And there will be also solutions that will enable that. The more they get these KPIs, the more they also need to have the right analytics solutions to see if they invest the money in the right way, if they target the right people, but also in a way of getting feedback. Like most of the. What we see very often is that candidates have a very good candidate experience on job boards because job boards are purely Online. Right. They are mobile optimized and mobile responsive. You can basically use them on any kind of device. But as soon as you have the, the switch from the job board to the applicant tracking systems, there may be a switch in user experience and sometimes you lose candidates. But at the same time also sometimes job descriptions are just not written well enough so you target the right people. So also use data to give this feedback to customers at the beginning of the process so they save money at the end. That’s services that they can sell to their customers.
Matt Alder [00:16:05]:
Looking forward to the job board of the future, what kind of functionality do you think they’re going to offer?
Martin Lenz [00:16:13]:
Yes, so on the one hand, if we look at job boards, we truly believe that the niche job boards will be one of these sites that will succeed. So make it possible that job boards can create a much more bespoke service to their customers, like in the terms they show the content, show the right content and the way the matching works. So as a customer, like as an employer I would expect an increased quality of the relevancy of applications that I get. So to save time when it comes to the recruitment process. So to have like a better pre filtering of the applicants and to have more time to do the, to do quality interviews and to also get more transparency around when I invest money, what is the return? Like have more transparency also around that at the same time as a candidate I also expect to get a much better candidate experience and that I truly believe that our whole industry needs to talk a lot more about integration. So have like an end to end experience for candidates. That makes it much more convenient to work, to work with shop boards.
Matt Alder [00:17:40]:
Final question. You mentioned right at the beginning that you’ve just had some investment into the business and I also know that you’ve recently opened a UK office. What’s next for your business?
Martin Lenz [00:17:50]:
Yes. So yeah, so maybe start with the opening of the UK office. So we hired a, we had a very well known person in the market, Richard Essex, he was at broadband for a very long time because we don’t only want to sell technology, so we want to sell a full service to our customers. So as besides selling the technology, we always consult our customers what to do next. And having someone on board who is with the recruitment market for more than 20 years and online recruitment for more than 20 years I think was the right decision in building this trust and also building this, creating this service that we can give to our customers. So we recently got this investment from RUS Media International, it’s an investment fund that Basically invests in sustainable businesses. So we had to prove that we already have been in the market for a very long time, that we have always been profitable and that we are still growing. And we also had to present our roadmap. We had a lot of ideas that we presented in the roadmap and they truly believed that the roadmap was right and it exactly goes in this direction. So on the one hand we wanted to keep our usp, that is we are very flexible solution. So you never know how the market is changing. So the the best thing that you can do is be prepared in changing your platform when market changes happen. Like Google for Jobs when it was introduced in the US it just happened from one day to the other mainly. And you have to be able to more and more even faster react on market change. Right. And that on the second, like a second big thing is data. We are currently researching together with a research fund and also with universities. We are researching in AI and machine learning and also in the area of context awareness to be able to target passive candidates because people are not always going to job boards as a first place and they are sometimes not not actively searching. And we want to create a technology that makes it simpler to target these potential passive candidates and engage them to interact either with your brand or with jobs, or like with courses etc. So to have to have more information out of the data so we can target these people. And the third, the third vision on our product map is to stay flexible. So really to enable these very bespoke sites, like niche sites, where you can create a very bespoke service for your customers. And that can be a chalkboard in a niche segment. But that can also be a career side or career platform, a career marketplace from a larger company that creates really a mix of presenting their jobs, but also employer branding. And at the same time you leverage the potential of creating more traffic to the side targeting passive candidates and also have a better pre filtering when it comes to applications. For example with the matching.
Matt Alder [00:21:29]:
Martin, thank you very much for talking to me.
Martin Lenz [00:21:31]:
Matt, thanks a lot again for having me. Have a good day.
Matt Alder [00:21:35]:
My thanks to Martin Lenz. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app which you can find by searching for recruiting future in your app store. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. And of course please follow the show on Instagram. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
