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From The Pinconning Journal
Question:
Why, if I run a small business in the Great Lakes Bay region, am I also stuck posting on a site like Indeed (Indeed.com) to get employees for jobs? How come we don’t have any local regional job boards like this? A daycare with regular turnover should have a better option than sending their money out of town or out of state to get employees in our area.
Answer:
Great question!
You would be correct in assuming that websites like Indeed aren’t rocket science. In essence, any online job board is similar to what also exists in the gas station or the library, with people’s business cards and phone numbers attached to a peg board on the wall. And, we do have some online spaces for that. Our own local paper proudly still advertises Help Wanted ads - when they come in. For online, job board-only style posting, you have Michigan Works for the Great Lakes Bay Region and in Midland, the Midland Business Alliance has the busiest board. Most other city governments or schools tend to have their own locations, just like the bigger chain stores.
Nevertheless, it’s no use denying – even when stopping in a Pier21 gas station in Au Gres, or the Community Mental Health location in Midland, you’ll find almost all of them still source candidates through Indeed. So, why is that?
More than complicated tech, everyone I spoke to on the issue mentioned “conversion rates.” By that I mean, the issue isn’t a local business being perfectly willing to send their money to a local job board vs. out of state. The issue is that when they take the time to post on sites in the area, they often struggle to get the eyeballs that justify the effort.
This is in no way meant to assume that this is somehow the fault of a job seeker in the area. For them, the ones that I spoke to said very similar things. Whether it’s the specificity of the hours, the pay, or the type of work they are looking for – they only have so many hours in the day and, in terms of bang for their buck time-wise, Indeed delivers way more variety.
So, what does that mean? It means that to have a thriving regional job board, there has to be something for the job seeker to keep them engaged beyond just jobs. Like how newspapers kept eyeballs on their help wanted sections because job seekers weren’t just buying newspapers for the classifieds. One place making a bit of a go in that direction is Hey, Bay City which operates a local job board for Bay City and the surrounding area. It is a job board, but it’s also connected with a community events calendar and the like.
Taking a page out of the newspaper classifieds of the past, but with a modern twist to promote community engagement AND local jobs is really the only way I see any local job board able to compete. Because a local job board can’t just be a job board, or it will forever be as effective as business cards and paper advertisements tacked to a peg board or a telephone pole. Yes, you’ll get some people sometimes – but for immediate needs, it will not be a reliable solution. As local regional businesses work out how to fix that aspect of their job boards, I predict they’ll have a lot better ability to capture the interest of local businesses to post there as well.
