Before you start exploring strategies to boost your job's visibility, confirm that you do not already have the same role posted on Indeed in addition to your post with CareerPlug.
A delay in receiving applicants for up to 24 hours after creating your posting in CareerPlug is expected. Our job board partners need time to pick up, review, and index your job posting.
If it’s been more than 24 hours since you posted your job and you’re not getting many applicants, first know that you’re not alone.
This article will discuss the current hiring climate and provide solutions for ways to get your jobs in front of more qualified applicants.
Where are the applicants?
The job market across the U.S. is seeing more open jobs posted than pre-COVID levels and fewer job seekers interacting with these posts. More jobs spread across fewer applicants means a decrease of applicants per job compared to the past.
We know that the size of your applicant pool can vary based on a number of factors, and some, like where the hire needs to live, may even be outside of your control. However, there are a few things that are within your control as an employer: job titles and job descriptions, compensation, desired experience, benefits, and where/when your job postings live can all make a difference!
To increase your applicant flow, try the following strategies:
- Follow CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria
- Share your job to custom sources
- Incentivize your current employees to recruit from their networks
- Update your careers page
- Sponsor a job on Indeed
Follow CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria
We recommend posting jobs that meet CareerPlug's effective job posting criteria because it 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.
Share your job to custom sources
Custom sources likely won’t bring in high numbers of applicants, but they will produce higher-quality applicants. In fact, applicants from custom sources are 11X more likely to be hired than an applicant from a major job board.
Sharing your job on social media sites and local job boards, like universities and your chamber of commerce, will all help you bring in more applicants.
To get started, click Share.
Get more information on posting your jobs to social media and using custom sources.
Incentivize your current employees to recruit from their networks
Employee referrals are 13X more likely to be hired than job board applicants. Ask your team members with strong social networks to share your job using your job's referral link, and consider offering them a bonus for making a referral who gets hired.
Follow these steps to share your jobs with your employees:
1. Click the Share button next to your job on your Jobs page.
2. Send the email that appears to your employees. Or you can copy the link in the email content box to share the link in another way.
Here's more information on creating an employee referral program.
Update your careers page
An applicant who applies directly from your careers page is 7X more likely to be hired than an applicant applying from a job board. Your careers page is the hub of your employment brand — take advantage of it!
Top applicants are interested in working with a driven team that is truly passionate about their work. You can greatly increase your applicant flow by writing a strong company description and adding team photos that show off your company's culture.
Here's a detailed guide for configuring your careers page.
Sponsor a job on Indeed
Sponsoring a job posting on Indeed can help promote your job to make it more visible. Sponsored jobs on Indeed generally receive a higher volume of clicks as they are prioritized over organic jobs in Indeed’s search algorithm and aren’t affected by how recently a job was posted.
To get started, click the Sponsor icon.
Here's an in-depth guide to sponsoring jobs on Indeed.
What if I want to slow applicant flow to a job?
There is no way to pause a job posting in CareerPlug. However, if you need to temporarily slow applicant flow to a job so you have the time to evaluate your current applicants before accepting any more, we recommend setting your job's status to passive. A passive job posting is only advertised on your careers page as a future opening.