Webinar: Why a job board can be an essential part of your association's sucess

Ted Dacko

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to our webinar: 'Why A Job Board Can Be An Essential Part Of A Trade Association's Success.' My name is Ted Dacko, and I'm going to serve as your host for this webinar and I will be introducing Michael Kling in just a second.

Before we get started, a couple of housekeeping issues. You are all in listen-only mode to make sure there's no background noise. If you have a question, please ask your question by typing it into the dialogue box, which should be located on the right hand side of your screen. We're going to try to answer all questions at the end of the webinar, and if we don't, we'll get back to you individually.

Slides will be sent to you, and a recorded version of this webinar should be available within two days. During our webinar today we'll be asking some polling questions, and would appreciate your attention and participation for those. If there's anything that you're interested in or anything that you hear today that you would like to follow up on, we will be happy to do that with you next week.

So, here's our agenda: pretty simple. I'm going to introduce our guest speaker in just a second, who's going to provide a brief introduction to TrueJob. We're gonna talk about the goals that trade associations have and why a job board is essential to their success. We're going to talk a little bit about the key criteria for a job board that we have found trade associations are interested in. We're going to show you a brief example. We'll then talk about the benefits that can be derived by implementing a job board for the trade association's website, take your questions and talk about the next steps.

So let me start by introducing our guest speaker today. Mike Kling is the co-founder of TrueJob. He was trained at MIT and is responsible for product development and customer support. Mike is committed to, and passionate about matching the right companies with the right candidates. Mike, welcome.

Michael Kling

Thanks Ted.

Ted Dacko

Mike, let's start off the agenda today by having you tell us a little bit about TrueJob.

Michael Kling

Sure. So, TrueJob was founded two years ago in 2015 and we provide job board software that's built to meet the specific needs of economic development organizations, trade associations, like those of you attending today, and chambers of commerce. What all these have in common is an opportunity to benefit their members by connecting the employers who they serve with job seekers. And we're excited to be here hosting the webinar today.

Ted Dacko

Thank you very much. So, Mike tell me a little bit about the goals of trade associations, and I know this obviously will be a background and will be something that trade associations know, but tell me what you think the goals are that these organizations have?

Michael Kling

Sure. So, briefly as those of you attending already know, trade associations are a broad category of organizations. You might call yourselves 'Industry Trade Groups' or 'Business Associations' but whatever you call yourselves, typically, trade associations are founded and funded by companies in a specific industry. Maybe they have a regional focus, or maybe they're national, but they always exist to support a specific industry.

Here we've listed some of the activities that trade associations participate in, and your organization might participate in some or all of these. They include outreach functions, educational functions, networking events, but what we're going to focus on today is the opportunity that trade associations have to help their members with recruiting, specifically.

Ted Dacko

So, you're going to help them understand how they can attract talent from outside their associations and inside their associations?

Michael Kling

Exactly.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. So, tell me Mike, why a job board? Why does a trade association need a job board?

Michael Kling

Well, there are a number of reasons. First, every trade association is interested in improving the perception of their brand. A better brand for your association means that you're going to have an easier time attracting new members. You're going to have an easier time retaining your existing members, and more members is going to give you more revenue in the form of dues, but also more opportunities to collect revenues outside of dues.

Part of your approach to improving that brand might include improving your website or increasing traffic to that website. So, we're going to be talking about how a job board can help you with all of these.

Ted Dacko

Now, an association, as you mentioned, also needs very much to focus on providing key metrics back to its funding sponsors and we're going to be covering that as well?

Michael Kling

That's right.

Ted Dacko

Okay. Alright, so let's start with a survey question for our audience participants today. Does your organization's website currently have a job board? And if you have career resources but no job board, please answer no. So, let's launch that poll and see what our members say.

Does your organization's website currently have a job board? Okay, so I think we've got pretty much everybody so. Mike let's go ahead and take a look at what the results were.

Michael Kling

Okay, interesting. So, in this case we've got about a two-thirds, one-third breakdown. Two-thirds of you have a job board already, and one-third of you don't. What we're going to be talking about going forward is going to help both of these groups.

Ted Dacko

Okay. So, let's move on. Tell me about the problems these organizations have.

Michael Kling

Sure. So, what's the problem that a job board is trying to solve? A couple of slides ago we mentioned some of the problems of organizations like those of you attending today. That's trade associations as well as EDOs, that's Economic Development Organizations. You're looking to increase your membership, looking to increase revenue, but you have limited resources. At the same time, there are employers and those are typically your members, they're looking to hire the best talent for the positions that they have open. And then the third group that you see here is the job seekers. That's job seekers currently in your industry, or job seekers that are outside of your industry but looking for opportunities within the industry.

A job board is an opportunity for you to be the connection between those employers and those job seekers. You're the organization that already has the expertise in your industry, and you already have the connections to your members through the employers, so it really presents a great opportunity.

Ted Dacko

So Mike, I think the key questions that are on people's minds are: what's wrong with Indeed? What's wrong with Monster? What's wrong with the generic job boards that they might have right now?

Michael Kling

Yeah, like you said, your members right now, they're hiring somehow. They're using these kinds of websites, whether it's Monster or Indeed, or they're using recruiters so, why not just let them keep doing that? Why not just link them to those kinds of sites from your website?

Well, there's a number of reasons. First, if you're not part of the process at all, then you're not getting any credit for the success that your members are having in their hiring. Also, these large job websites, they are generic. They have postings across different industries, across locations, and they really care more about having a large quantity of job postings and less about the quality of those job postings. There's not going to be any opportunity for them to focus, specifically, like you could on the needs and positions relevant to your industry.

Ted Dacko

It might actually be that you are sending your member's employees outside your industry, as opposed to attracting them inside your industry.

Michael Kling

Yeah, exactly, which you obviously wouldn't want.

Ted Dacko

Right.

Michael Kling

And finally - and this ties into the other points but - when employers are getting sent out to these other websites, there's no way for you to track them. You don't have any data, any analytics to track their success that they're having with hiring. You're losing out on information. Losing out on any kinds of key insights into your industry, and that can be really valuable data for you to use to attract new members and retain your existing members.

Ted Dacko

Before we move on, you're using the word 'curate.' Tell me what you mean by curate certain kinds of jobs? Give me a little more color on that if you could.

Michael Kling

Sure, so curate just means you choosing what's appearing on your job board. We'll talk about it more again as well, but like I said, a generic job board like Monster and Indeed, they have positions across industries. But you have a job board on your website and you'd like to only highlight certain, maybe certain types of jobs. Maybe you really want to be focused on high-level positions within your industry. That's what I mean by curate.

Ted Dacko

So, the people on the phone, they can control both who posts on the job board, and specifically, what positions get posted on the job board?

Michael Kling

Right. Both of those things.

Ted Dacko

Okay. Very good. So, how will they, the people on the phone, or on the webinar know if they are a candidate?

Michael Kling

Well, we've listed a few questions here that you can ask yourself to try to figure out if a job board makes sense. So, are you happy with the support that you're providing to your members right now? Are you interested in attracting more talent to your industry? Are you concerned about member attrition and losing funding? Are you currently happy with your website, and would more traffic to that website help your organization? And finally, is one of your goals promoting the kinds of jobs that your member companies are recruiting for?

So, if you find yourself answering 'yes' to some of these questions, then you could be a great candidate.

Ted Dacko

Absolutely. Or in the case of the first one, no. Alright, so if I am trade association, what criteria should I be interested in if I want a high quality job board?

Michael Kling

Yeah, so first a couple of important things. First, you want to make sure that you look for a hosted solution. So, what I mean by that is something that you don't have to install, or maintain, or update on your own - something where that's taken care of for you. Secondly, you want to make sure that you're looking for a solution that's designed with the need of trade associations in mind. There's a lot of generic job board solutions out there, and they lack some of these critical features that we're about to talk about that trade associations really need.

So, let me dive into those. The first one I'll mention is something we touched on already, which is branding. Your organization wants the credit for what's happening on your job board. So you need something that's going to integrate seamlessly into your website, and the communications via email that are happening with the employers that are using your job board need to have your brand, your logo, front and center.

Next is the curation. Ted, you mentioned this before as well, but this is you choosing what's appearing on your job board. As a quick example, one of our customers, Ann Arbor SPARK, is an economic development organization in Ann Arbor. They were interested in highlighting, specifically, tech jobs and knowledge worker jobs in the Ann Arbor community. So, they accept different postings from different employers in the area, but they curate that list and they only choose to display those types of jobs because that's what they want to highlight.

Next, easy to use. You don't want a job board that you set up to be more work for you. As another example, that same organization, SPARK, right now the administrative assistant to the president manages the whole job work process; all the approvals that happen, looking at the analytics, and that only takes minutes a week.

Ted Dacko

And I would imagine that in that same context, you want something that you would be proud of, that would be appealing to technology or advanced kinds of users as well, right?

Michael Kling

Yeah, exactly, if you're trying to hire tech workers, if you're trying to promote those kinds of jobs, or that kind of high-level position, then it's going to be embarrassing if you have a job board that just doesn't look good.

Ted Dacko

And I've seen that happen in trade associations over and over, where they put up a job board and then what happens is people complain about the user experience and it actually has the counter, or wrong effect.

Michael Kling

Right. So next on the list here is Pandora-like matching. If you've ever used Pandora, it's a music service where you listen and you like or dislike different songs. Then you get recommended more relevant songs that you like better over time. So on a job board, when job seekers come to the site, if they can see job postings, like or dislike those postings and get better recommendations, they're going to get better matches over time and that's going to make the job seekers happier and the employers happier.

Ted Dacko

So before you move on, tell me more about that. What I think I hear you saying is that the job seeker can like and dislike words and things that are on a job posting that will get them jobs and promote jobs to them that match those things and that feedback goes back to the individual employer of, well, what people said 'yes,' they liked and they didn't like?

Michael Kling

Yeah, exactly.

Ted Dacko

And then the reverse of that, too? Can an employer do the same thing with the resumes?

Michael Kling

Right, so just to reiterate that, as the job seekers are on the job board platform, and liking or disliking different jobs or job titles, locations, all that information that's used to improve recommendations for the job seeker, and also is passed back to those employers. They can learn what those job seekers that are viewing their jobs are interested in.

Ted Dacko

Wow, so it's bidirectional Pandora?

Michael Kling

Exactly.

Ted Dacko

Outstanding.

Michael Kling

Alright, so next on the list is job scraping. So, where are these jobs on the job board going to be coming from? Especially when you're first launching and you don't have a lot of employers that have signed up already. So, job scraping is a way that you can pull high-quality job postings directly from company websites, so that your job board has something there and is providing a lot of value from the first day that you launch.

Next we have member support. When you add a job board to your website, you don't want to start getting calls from your members that are having technical problems with the job board. At TrueJob, for example, we provide different assets - that includes videos and written documentation - so that you can stay focused on what's important.

Ted Dacko

So you're providing all the training and support that's required so that the trade association itself is not in the direct line of fire from its members on these kinds of questions?

Michael Kling

Exactly. Next here we have applicant tracking system. So if your association works for smaller companies, this is especially important. This is a tool that gives members the opportunity to accept job applications, track the candidates as they move through the hiring process, and if a small company doesn't have an HR department, or doesn't already have a system in place, then this can be especially valuable.

And finally is analytics. So, analytics kind of ties everything here together. You need to know how your job board is doing. How it's doing from week to week, month to month. Are you getting more engagement? Are you getting more sign-ups, more job postings? All this is information you can use to help you understand the industry, help you understand how your members are succeeding, and finding good hires.

Ted Dacko

So this is a way to help justify the existence of the job board and the trade association itself because this is a way where automatically reports will come out that will tell you how many jobs were viewed, how many jobs were actually placed through your trade association. All of those good things are woven into this.

Michael Kling

Exactly. All that data you can export, you can use it whatever way you want to promote your association, attract more members, and etc.

Ted Dacko

And obviously you can't do this with a Monster, or Indeed, or generic job board. That's one of the limitations that we have seen with trade associations is they have very generic job board capabilities that do not have some of the features that Mike just covered.

Alright, so let's go to our next survey question. Which of the following criteria would you find important in a job board? Something that's branded to your association, job curation, as Mike described it, easy to use and maintain, and Pandora-like matching between the job seeker and the employer, and automated member training support. And you could list as many of these as you want, is that correct?

Michael Kling

That's right.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. Let's see what the audience has to say about this. Couple more seconds for submissions to come in. Okay, let's close out the poll, Mike, and let's see what we see. Well, everybody wants everything.

Michael Kling

That's what it looks like and that's not too surprising because, as you said, all of these are really important features for trade associations. It looks like 100% of people are interested in that branding and that matching component, and two-thirds of the responses were interested in curation, easy to use, and the member support.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. So let's move on in our agenda, and thank you for participating folks. And Mike, I'm gonna ask you if you could to provide an example of what a job board might look like in a trade association, if you could.

Michael Kling

Sure, so I'll switch over here to a .row.mb40ser window. So what we see here is a mock-up of an association website. So your trade association right now, you have a website, and it might look something like this. We've included sections for a list of members, maybe the latest news in your industry, information about upcoming events, that type of thing.

When you choose out a job board, if you work with TrueJob, for example, what we'll do is add a new page to your website where you can store that job board. So, I'll click on that up here at the top. Great. So, this is what it might look like. You have a job portal, it has what you'd expect. Here we'll use an example of a real estate focused association, so we have some different open positions in the real estate industry. This is a place where job seekers can .row.mb40se, they can search for different jobs, and TrueJob has integrated that like and dislike feature here, so that those job seekers can get more relevant recommendations over time.

Now, how difficult would it be to set something like this up? Well, with TrueJob it's very easy. If you've ever installed something like Google Analytics, you just paste a single line of code into your website and the job board appears, but if you haven't, that's no problem. We help you out with that, too. So, that's what the job board would look like on your website and to the job seekers as they're .row.mb40sing the website. But what would it look like for employers that are signing-up and posting jobs?

So now I'm going to switch over and show you what the Employer Dashboard looks like on TrueJob. So this is what employers would see if they sign up and they log in to TrueJob to post the job position to your association job board. They can click on 'new job posting' here. And it presents them with a form, which has everything that you'd expect. Employers enter the job title, the job description, other relevant information about how to apply and where the job is located. Now once they've done that, this job is going to be submitted and it's going to appear to you as an administrator of your association job board. And you'll be able to see here I'm going to open up a list of the employers that have signed up, and you have the opportunity to look at those employers.

This is where that curation aspect comes in. You have the chance to approve or reject different employers that sign up, so that you can highlight what you want to be highlighting on the job board.

Ted Dacko

Now this will prevent you from ending up posting jobs from outside your industry or for non-members?

Michael Kling

Exactly.

Ted Dacko

And also, help you choose what kinds of jobs you want posted on your particular job board: executive level, or maybe in this particular case, even all the way down to administrative assistants.

Michael Kling

Sure. So, we're showing a broad range of positions here, but as Ted said, this is your opportunity to curate those positions however you want. So here, that curation piece on TrueJob includes both the employers and the job postings. So this where you'd see the list of job postings that were submitted and have the opportunity to look at those and curate that list before they appear on your website.

Finally, I just want to highlight the analytics section. So, this is a feature of TrueJob, and we talked about how important this is before, but this is the place where you can see all this important data. And this data here is just mocked-up for you, but after you've been using the job board for a few weeks, or a few months, you can see graphs of how many employers you're signing up, how many jobs have been posted, who's viewed those jobs, whether people are actually engaging with those jobs, clicking on or applying to those jobs. And all of this data can be exported. You can save it, you can use it in whatever way is most helpful to you. Learn about your industry or to share with your members and attract new members.

Ted Dacko

Outstanding. Okay, so let's go back to our agenda and Mike, I'm going to ask you a question. Tell me what a trade association could expect as results if they implemented a job board. What are the benefits?

Michael Kling

First, so we looked at some of the key benefits here. First, if you recall that diagram from earlier that highlighted the three constituents - the employers, the job seekers, and your association - a job board on your website is really a win for all three. For you, specifically, it's going to help with your brand perception. We've seen job boards be a key source of web traffic for organizations. I'll just mention Ann Arbor SPARK again, one of our customers. They get 50% of their web traffic coming to their job board. I'll just emphasize that again: half of their web traffic goes to their job board. So it's really a big draw and brings more people to learn about their organization.

Next, the same way that the job board is going to help you support your members, it's going to help you retain those existing members. All those analytics that you're getting that you saw on the dashboard just a minute ago are going to help you learn about the industry, and you're gonna be able to share those, and track your members as well.

Finally, you're going to be able to recruit talent into the industry with the job board, and if you do choose to charge for job postings, which is something that you could do, then it's an opportunity for you to increase revenue outside of the dues that you're charging to your members.

Ted Dacko

Most organizations do not necessarily charge for the job board though, right? And it's not a certainty, you just said it's optional, it's not required?

Michael Kling

Right, yeah. It can just be something that you provide to your members.

Ted Dacko

But if they wanted to then charge for successful placement, you have the ability to make that happen for them?

Michael Kling

That's right.

Ted Dacko

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Okay, let's move to the next survey question. Which of these benefits would be most valuable to you: improving your brand perception, assisting members with a major challenge that they might have (and that would be recruiting talent), increasing your web traffic, increasing non-dues revenue, or recruiting talent to the industry? You can choose as many of these as you'd like. So, let's wait a couple of seconds for everybody, audience members, to participate. And let's show the results. Nobody wants to charge.

Michael Kling

Interesting. Okay, well that does reflect what you were just saying. Looks like everyone is interested in recruiting talent into their industry and increasing web traffic, and then two-thirds of our respondents were interested in improving brand perception and assisting members with a major challenge.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. Alright, so finally, let's take some questions from our audience today, Mike, and as you would probably expect, the first question is the most common question that we get is 'so what does it cost?' So, how does pricing work, or what's the general thing that you can tell the audience about what to expect in terms of cost if they want to implement this?

Michael Kling

Sure, so at TrueJob we have three components to our pricing, and I'll talk about how that looks. So, there's an implementation fee, a subscription fee, and then a customization fee. The implementation fee is an upfront charge, and what that is for is integrating a job board with your website, including your brand as part of it, working with you on our promotional plan so that people know about the job board, and that pre-population, that job scraping, so that we have high quality postings on your job board from day one.

Ted Dacko

I'm guessing branding is in there as well?

Michael Kling

Right, branding does tie in with that.

Ted Dacko

Okay. What does that cost on average?

Michael Kling

So at TrueJob that starts at $850.

Ted Dacko

Okay. So it's not tens of thousands of dollars to do this. It's pretty simple?

Michael Kling

No.

Ted Dacko

Okay, great.

Michael Kling

Then next is the annual subscription fee and what that covers is hosting - so, as we mentioned, you don't have to host this yourself. This is something that's hosted by TrueJob. It covers all future releases and new features that get added to the job board, and it also covers that support process so that you don't have to be on the front line if your members should happen to have any kind of challenges using the job board.

Ted Dacko

How often do you provide updates to the software?

Michael Kling

We're always updating it, and it's not something that you need to worry about as your association. We're always working on improvements to the site and adding new features and releases.

Ted Dacko

And I'm guessing that these features and functions are requests from trade association members who have asked for something specific that may not currently be in there?

Michael Kling

Exactly.

Ted Dacko

Alright, great. Thank you. What's the third aspect?

Michael Kling

The last one is just the customization fee, and that's just if there's something that is not part of the system that we built already, and it's very important to you, then that's something that you can ask us to build for you and we would charge you a customization fee based on the scope of that project.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. So, the next question relates to the first one. If I wanted to implement, am I looking at days, weeks, months? How long does it take to implement this?

Michael Kling

It doesn't take a long time. So, adding the code to your website, that's a very easy process. It just takes a couple of minutes. Now, as part of the launch process, we work with you on a promotional campaign to help you reach out to your existing members and have them join onto the job board and post some positions. So we typically do some kind of a soft launch, and it might take a week or so, or a few days to get you up and running completely. Then, we usually recommend having the job board up and running for a good amount of time, a couple of months, before you evaluate how successful you're being.

Ted Dacko

And I imagine this is where those assets come in where your training videos, and the things that you have to help them, your members, get going, I'm guessing that that's a very, very important part of this whole process as well?

Michael Kling

Exactly. All that training is part of it.

Ted Dacko

Alright, and then somebody asked: what do we need to do an implementation, in other words, what do you need from the trade association other than, perhaps, their logo?

Michael Kling

Right, so we need that branding information. We have a whole checklist that we go through when we set this up. But we work with you to figure out what would be the best way to promote this job board? What kind of marketing avenues do you have set up already? And then we work with you to figure out what are the relevant companies, that are your members, that you want to have appearing on that job board? Then we help you pre-populate the job board with those positions, so you have a good job board from the first day you launch. So, it's all information that you should have readily available.

Ted Dacko

Okay. Now I think you've answered this next question, but I might ask you to repeat it. Somebody typed in: so, we don't have a lot of staff and we don't have a lot of resources to maintain this. Who would maintain this? I think I heard you say that an administrative assistant can do this?

Michael Kling

That's right. Yeah, so at one of our current customers, the administrative assistant to the president manages the whole job board, and does all of the accepting and declining of positions, looking at the analytics, tracking the progress. It's a simple process. It just takes minutes a week.

Ted Dacko

And then, the last question I see - remember early on, some people said they already had a job board. Somebody asked: how difficult is it to migrate from our existing job board to TrueJob if we were interested in that, and how does that work? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Michael Kling

Sure. So, that's definitely something we can do. As part of the implementation process, we would pull your existing job postings from your existing job board and bring them over to the new system on TrueJob. There's no gap there, and you're right where you left off, and now you have a high quality system going forward.

Ted Dacko

Excellent. Okay, in the interest of time, let's move on. If we didn't get to your question, we'll follow up with you independently. You can take some next steps with us, if you'd like. You can visit our website at www.truejob.com. A lot of the things that Mike covered are listed on that website. There's a white paper on trade associations and their needs and requirements for a job board. There is a case study out there that you can look at that will help you understand how other organizations have done this, and why they've done this.

A recorded version of this webinar will be available on the website. And if you would like, you can call us or write to us and sign up for a free consultation and we'll talk to you about your specific needs, and what an implementation would look like. So with that, I would like to wish all of our participants a pleasant afternoon, and thank you for joining and Mike, thanks for such an informative webinar today.

Michael Kling

Thanks a lot, Ted.

Ted Dacko

Alright, well, have a good one and thank you everyone. Bye now.