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Job board best practices

Our partner job boards have established guidelines and policies for job postings to ensure the best possible experience for job seekers. We strongly recommend following these guidelines when posting jobs in CareerPlug to ensure maximum visibility on job boards.

Learn more about Indeed's job posting standards and specific job policies. Violating any of these rules or policies will put your job's visibility at risk.

In this article:

Follow CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria

We recommend posting jobs that meet CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria, as this expands your talent pool with higher-quality and motivated candidates, accelerates your hiring process to save on recruitment costs, and fosters a positive employer brand.

Our criteria target 5 key components — job titles, job descriptions, compensation, desired experience, and prescreen questions — to make your job postings as effective as possible. Each industry and type of job will have unique challenges, but, on average, jobs that meet our criteria for an effective job posting receive 4x as many applicants.

CareerPlug's recommendations align with best practices from major job boards like Indeed, and they're the best place to start if you want to improve the performance of your job postings.

Respond to CareerPlug's Smart Suggestions

Smart Suggestions will recommend improvements to your jobs that align with our effective job posting criteria. Suggestions range from making updates to your job posting to ensure it's compliant with job board standards to sharing your job on custom sources to attract more high-quality applicants.

These recommendations are tailored to your job so that as your posting ages or you make changes to it, we'll update our Smart Suggestions to help you stimulate applicant interest.

Some examples include:

  • "Select at least three benefits."

    • This suggestion appears when you have not added benefits to your job posting.

    • To address this, click the Edit Job button, scroll down the Job Posting tab and add at least three Benefits to your job, and click the Update Job Post button to save your changes.

  • "This job may not be visible on all job boards. Are you still hiring?"

    • This suggestion appears when an active job has been posted for 90+ days.

    • To address this, click the Yes button to refresh your job posting if you're still hiring. If you're done hiring for this role, click the No, Close the Job button to close your job.

    • Do not close a job and create another identical posting within a 90-day period in an attempt to improve job visbility or increase applicant flow. Closing and reposting an identical job can lead to job boards flagging your posting and negatively impacting its visibility. If you are still hiring for the same role after 90+ days, refresh your job by following the steps above.

One job, one post

Most job boards don't allow posting duplicate jobs or using individual job postings to advertise multiple openings. Ensure every job posting stands on its own to avoid limiting its visibility or having it removed from job boards altogether.

  • Don't pluralize job titles
  • Don’t use phrases like “we’re always hiring” in the job description
  • Don't reference any other open positions in the job description
  • Don't advertise your job as part of a job fair or as an attempt to recruit a crew (such as for landscaping)
  • You may post multiple job opportunities, but make sure that each post is for a unique job opening
    • If your company has multiple physical locations within a 25-mile radius, you should include the physical address of the unique location within your job description

There are two exceptions where you can post duplicate jobs:

  • When recruiting Spanish-speaking candidates, you can post two identical jobs — one in English and one in Spanish.
  • When recruiting for different employment types, you can post two identical jobs — one for a full-time position and one for a part-time position.

Avoid calls to action and external links in job descriptions

Avoid including instructions to apply outside of a job posting in your job descriptions.

External links and calls to action that drive applicants away from your job posting can negatively impact visibility on job boards. Many job boards consider this behavior a violation of their posting guidelines, a spam or low-quality job post, or a poor candidate experience.

Examples:

  • "Email your resume and cover letter to [example@gmail.com]."
  • "Call [888-123-4567] to apply."
  • "Visit [www.examplewebsite.com] to apply."

Instead of including external links or calls to action, encourage candidates to apply directly through the job posting to ensure maximum visibility and applicant conversion.

Avoid location blasting

You should only post a job opening within the zip code of the workplace's physical location. Posting a job opening outside of its true working location — sometimes known as "location blasting" or "location variation"— may cause job boards to flag or remove your posts.

If the location of your job is near a larger city, it is okay to select that city as your job's location as long as you specify the physical address of your location within your job description.

Be clear about remote jobs

A remote job does not require reporting to a specific location and can be done from anywhere in the U.S.

We recommend being clear about remote positions and including one of the following phrases in your job description:

  • “This is a remote position”
  • “Employees will be working remotely”
  • “Remote work allowed”
  • "Will be fully remote"

Consider making your job remote

Job seekers who previously worked in on-site positions are now searching for — and finding — remote jobs. Remote job postings doubled during the pandemic and continue to rise.

We know that making a role remote is not possible in many industries, but if it is in yours — do it! You’ll most likely see an immediate increase in applicant flow.

Job boards track and prioritize the search terms that job seekers use, and the overwhelming majority of job seekers are searching for remote work.

Fill in all job template placeholders

If you choose to use template placeholders that are filled manually, ensure they are filled before posting the job. Unresolved template placeholders are a huge red flag for job boards.

Maintain a single, consistent source for your jobs

All job boards handle incoming jobs differently, but some don’t allow overlapping jobs or jobs from multiple sources. To ensure your jobs have the best visibility across all job boards, only post jobs from one source. 

This is a one-time housekeeping action you need to take, so this won’t have to be done again. If you have ever posted a job outside CareerPlug directly on a job board, such as Indeed or ZipRecruiter, go to those sites and double-check that the older jobs are closed. If you are still hiring for that position, it is considered best practice to close the jobs posted directly on the job boards first, and then make a new job posting from your CareerPlug account. 

You can double-check the list of where CareerPlug automatically sends your jobs to ensure there is no overlap with older job posts that may still be lingering. 

Do not search for your jobs on job boards

Even if you're uncertain about a job's visibility, we strongly recommend you do not search for your post on job boards.

Job boards tailor search results to the specific job seeker, which means your job isn't guaranteed to show up in every search. For instance, you may not be able to find your job on Indeed because it's been collapsed in search results (due to having the same title and location as another job from your business) or you previously searched for it but didn't click it, causing the search algorithm to assume the posting was irrelevant and stop showing it to you.

Rather than search for your job, try one of these strategies instead.

Beyond the job boards: other recruiting strategies

In addition to the partner job boards where CareerPlug automatically posts your jobs, we recommend diversifying where you share your jobs to hire consistently and reliably.

CareerPlug can help you show up in more places and diversify your applicant sources. It's your always-on, multi-source applicant engine.

Here are some other sources you can focus on using CareerPlug: