Job Board

What a job board is

A job board (لوحة الوظائف) is a website or an app that gathers the vacancy ads of several establishments in one place. A person looking for work searches the board and applies through it. An establishment posts its ad on the board and receives the applications there. A board gathers several establishments, and that feature separates it from the careers page on a single establishment’s website. A careers page is one destination, and a board is a marketplace.

A board sells the reach of an ad to an audience that is searching. It does not sell a hire. Between the appearance of an ad on a board and the employment contract come stages that the board does not control: screening the applications, the interviews and the job offer. An establishment that confuses reach with hiring misjudges what a board is worth, and the worked example below shows how.

How a job board differs from related tools

• A careers page on an establishment’s website. It holds the ads of one establishment and reaches the people who visit that site. A job board can put an ad in front of people who have not heard of the establishment.
• An applicant tracking system. It is an internal tool that gathers applications in one place and follows each candidate through the hiring stages, as covered under applicant tracking system. A board is a source of applications, and the system is where the establishment manages them.
• A candidate database. It is an organised store of the records of people who applied to the establishment or whom the establishment contacted, as covered under candidate database. A board may supply records to the database, but the two are different things.
• Talent sourcing. The establishment approaches a candidate before the candidate applies, as covered under talent sourcing. A board waits for people who are looking for work now, while sourcing can reach people who do not browse ads.
• A recruitment agency. It offers a service of putting candidates forward for a fee, and one of its arrangements is covered under contingency recruitment. A board displays ads and does not necessarily put forward any candidate.

Types of job board

Boards can be classified by audience and by the way they work. The classification below is descriptive:

• A general board. It gathers vacancies from several occupations and cities. Its audience is wide, and the ads of several establishments compete for the attention of each person searching.
• A specialist board. It limits its vacancies to one occupation, sector or city. Its audience is narrower, and a larger share of its readers may be the people for whom an ad is meant.
• An aggregator. It displays ads that were published elsewhere, and establishments do not post ads on it directly. The same ad can appear in more than one place without the establishment having posted it there, so an establishment withdraws an ad at its source and not at the aggregator.

What a job board measures and what it does not

A board may report figures on reach: how many people saw an ad, how many clicked it and how many applied. These figures describe inputs. The value of a board to an establishment is measured by outputs, meaning how many of the people who came from the board were hired.

The difference between the channels that applicants came from and the channels that hires came from is covered under source of hire. What goes into the cost of a hire, including the fees of recruitment platforms and the time spent on screening, is covered under cost per hire.

In the sources we reviewed, we found no benchmark rate for how often an ad on a job board is clicked or how often it leads to a hire. The figures in the example below are assumed, to show the method of calculation.

A worked example: two boards with assumed figures

A company in Riyadh posted an accountant vacancy on two boards during one month. The posting fees, the application counts, the hire counts and the hourly cost are all assumed. They do not come from a particular case.

• Board A. The posting fee was SAR 9,000, the board brought 300 applications, and 3 people were hired from it.
• Board B. The posting fee was SAR 4,000, the board brought 60 applications, and 4 people were hired from it.

By the number of applications, Board A looks five times stronger, because 300 ÷ 60 = 5. By applications per hire, Board A needed 100 applications for each hire (300 ÷ 3) and Board B needed 15 (60 ÷ 4). By the fee alone, Board A cost SAR 3,000 for each hire (9,000 ÷ 3) and Board B cost SAR 1,000 (4,000 ÷ 4).

Now add the time spent on screening. Assume that screening one application takes 15 minutes and that an hour of the human resources team costs SAR 100:

• Board A. Screening took 4,500 minutes, from 300 × 15. That is 75 hours, which cost SAR 7,500. The total cost was SAR 16,500, from 9,000 + 7,500, so the cost per hire was SAR 5,500 (16,500 ÷ 3).
• Board B. Screening took 900 minutes, from 60 × 15. That is 15 hours, which cost SAR 1,500. The total cost was SAR 5,500, from 4,000 + 1,500, so the cost per hire was SAR 1,375 (5,500 ÷ 4).

Board B, with fewer applications, has a cost per hire four times lower, because 5,500 ÷ 1,375 = 4. Ranking the two boards by the number of applications would reverse the order. The example shows that a decision rests on outputs and on the full cost, and not on the size of the audience.

How to choose a job board

A comparison of boards starts from the need of the establishment, meaning the occupation and the city for which it hires. It then puts five questions to each board:

• Who the board reaches. Do people with the needed occupation, in the needed city, search on it? A board with a wide audience may not help an establishment that wants a skill in short supply in one particular city.
• How an application arrives. It may enter the applicant tracking system directly, or it may go to a mailbox from which someone moves it by hand. Moving applications by hand adds time and leaves room for an application to be forgotten.
• What the reports show. A board may give only the number of applications, or it may let the establishment link an application to its outcome after the hire. If a board shows only reach, the establishment has to work out the outputs.
• How the fee is calculated. The fee may be charged for each ad, by subscription, for each click or for each application. Each model gives the board a different incentive. A fee for each click pays the board for audience and not for the suitable part of it.
• How an ad is withdrawn. Can the establishment close the ad with one click, and does the ad stop appearing at once?

An establishment with no earlier data can post the same ad on two boards for a set period, work out the cost per hire from each board in the way the example above shows, and compare the two results before deciding.

The effect of a job board on the applicant’s experience

A board may be an applicant’s first contact with an establishment, so the application steps on the board form part of the applicant’s experience. If the application form on the board differs from the form the establishment uses, the applicant may begin an application in one place and finish it in another. The share of applicants who complete an application is then affected, and that share is covered under application completion rate. The effect of what an applicant meets during the application process is covered under candidate experience.

A quick one click application may raise the number of applications without raising the number of suitable ones. That resembles what the example shows, where Board A brings more applications and yields fewer hires.

Jobs that suit a job board and jobs that do not

A board suits a job that people looking for work are expected to search for themselves at the time of posting. It does not suit a job that rests on a skill in short supply, because the people who hold that skill may not browse ads. Approaching those people instead of waiting for them is covered under talent sourcing.

In hiring that needs large numbers of people within a short period, a board may bring thousands of applications. The problem then changes from too few applications to the capacity for screening them. The capacity calculation that decides whether such a plan is feasible is covered under high volume hiring.

Job boards in the Saudi labour market

Jadarat (جدارات) is the unified national employment platform. It advertises vacancies and connects job seekers to them. The sources we reviewed describe it as a national platform run by the Human Resources Development Fund, on which vacancies directed to Saudis are advertised. They do not describe it as a commercial board.

The following provisions bear on employment channels and licensing:

• Article 22 of the Labor Law. It provides that the Ministry offers employment channels free of charge. The tasks of those channels include registering job seekers, obtaining data on vacancies from employers and matching the applications of job seekers to vacancies according to their qualifications.
• Article 30 of the Labor Law. It makes a licence from the Ministry a condition for practising the activity of employing Saudis, the activity of recruiting workers (الاستقدام) or the activity of outsourcing (الإسناد).
• Annex 3 to the Implementing Regulation. Article 1 of Annex 3 to the Implementing Regulation defines intermediation in employment (التوسط في التوظيف) as a service of employing Saudis, male and female, for the benefit of employers in the Kingdom. Article 2 of Annex 3 to the Implementing Regulation provides that only offices or companies established for this purpose may practise this activity, and only after obtaining a licence from the Ministry.
• Article 31 of the Labor Law. It counts Saudis whom offices or companies helped to employ as workers of the employer, bound to the employer by a direct contractual relationship.

In the sources we reviewed, we found no text on whether merely posting establishments’ ads on a board counts as an employment service (خدمة توظيف). We also found no text in the Labor Law or its Implementing Regulation that deals with commercial boards by name.

An establishment that relies on a body that screens applications and puts names forward, instead of a board that only displays ads, does well to check that body’s licence. This is a practical recommendation.

When an ad runs on several boards

An ad posted on three boards brings three separate sets of applications. If the establishment does not gather them in one system, the same applicant may appear on more than one board and be reviewed three times, and an ad may stay up on a board where nobody remembered to close it.

The establishment can record the source of each application when it arrives, so that source of hire can show where the hire came from. When the vacancy is filled, the establishment can withdraw the ad from every board where it was posted. An ad that is never closed is the first of the situations described under ghost jobs.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.