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10 Comments

Opinion on my Graduate Job Board

Hi guys and girls,

I hope everyone is well. I’m looking for some feedback and criticism for my UK graduate job board. I’ve had this job board running for just under 2 years but have been running a graduate recruitment agency for about 5.

My issue currently is lack of regular sign ups and repeat users who will regularly apply for jobs. I send cold emails to small to medium sized businesses and get them to register on the website without any difficulty.

My website is free for employers to post 3 jobs (free until there are regular graduates applying for jobs), I send weekly email newsletters, monthly blog, twitter updates and LinkedIn updates. Up until recently LinkedIn seemed to be automatically crawling my jobs which lead to about 15 sign ups a day (graduates), but they are no longer crawling so I have about 2 -3 signs up a day. In total I have about 1500 registered graduates since the sites inception.

I also have a paid option for employers to use but I am not pushing this option yet based on the above.

It would be great to get your thoughts on ease of use, what you think may be lacking?

You can view my website here: www.ourgraduates.co.uk

Much appreciated!
George

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    Really like the design of your site George! I see you're using Wordpress - which theme did you use? Or did you design it from scratch?

    I'm much earlier on in building out my job board so am very hesitant to give any advice, but one channel where I've had some success in attracting candidates is instagram. I post 2-3 stories each day that are basically a summary of some roles that are on my site.

    There are some nice characteristics of using instagram to grow your job board

    1. It's a useful top of funnel tool to get people signed up for my weekly jobs newsletter
    2. People send the stories around to their friends which helps grow the page and site further
    3. There are a million recruiters promoting jobs on linkedin, but very few on instagram (so less competition!)

    My only other thought on your site is that it's not that simple to sign up for your newsletter. Looks like you have to click through to an article to find the signup form? Perhaps you could make put it on the homepage and make it more prominent.

    Anyway, keep up the good work. It's an interesting niche and you've certainly put your own twist on it with innovations like the "video vitae"

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      Hi Alex,

      Good to hear from you! Thanks for the response. I have an Instagram company page but never use it to be honest. I always thought Instagram meant pictures/videos can only be posted or uploaded through a smartphone? As most of my social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter are operating through my laptop. Perhaps I should indeed get back on there!

      The site was built from Wordpress, custom based so no theme. Your advice is great and as definitely been appreciated. Do you have your website up and running yet? The newsletter tip is great too, I'll speak to my developer about it.

      Any advice I can give you too feel free to ask!

      Cheers
      George

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    I'm not sure the rest of the feedback you got here was particularly helpful George. Used to work in the recruitment space however and a couple of things I'd mention:

    • Bear in mind that grad schemes are on the backburner at a lot of place at the moment due to Covid. It may be that grads are just resigned to this and aren't looking for grad placements at the moment. If this is the case you'd be an impacted business in the UK and might be entitled to support.
    • LinkedIn - do you have an API key set up with them? I believe you need to do this for the scrape to happen regularly but it might have changed since I last worked on this 5-ish years ago.
    • Branding - the site feels a little corporate - not sure if that's to appeal to the employers who post roles however the days of grads in suits working 90 hour weeks at a corporate office in the city are going the way of the dodo - could your branding be more appealing in terms of exciting job opportunities, specifically tech etc?
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      Hi there,

      This is a very useful comment. LinkedIn were scraping my jobs automatically up until a couple of months ago. The scraping really helped bring in new job seekers but that has now ceased. This must be an internal change within LinkedIn I imagine but not sure.

      Thanks for the mention of the corporate feel that you get from the site, I will think of some ways to make it more appealing to grads. Did you manage to take a look at the sign up process by any chance?

      Thanks again
      George

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        Hi George,

        No problem. Definitely have a look into the LinkedIn thing as I'm sure you need an API key. LinkedIn support should be able to help :)

        The site looks great - absolutely nothing wrong with it, I just know that if I were looking for a job in my kinda field it would feel a bit corporate but I may be biased. Totally depends on which employers are using the site. I think it's perfect for banking/consultancy/finance type roles etc, but if they majority of your job postings are in the tech/design space I would feel a bit put off as a candidate. Not sure where the bulk of your roles come from in terms of sector so I might be wrong on this one.

        Sign up looks perfectly fine to me - just remember as well people want the smallest forms possible when it comes to jobs usually so anything that isn't absolutely essential to site function/legal I'd strip out.

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          Hi again Lukey,

          Interesting about the corporate response, one or two friends have said this in the past. I am going to give it a go with a change on the focus on finance/banking/consultancy roles and see if it draws in any more job seekers and I will definitely look into the API key.

          Your feedback has been really useful. If I can help you in any way too, please let me know.

          Thanks!
          George

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      Thanks for the response! Can you elaborate as I'm not sure what you mean?

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        This comment has been voted down. Click to show.

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          I see. I'm not trying to be the next Google, Amazon or any large giant that already exists since you mentioned 3. In my space this would be Indeed, Monster, Reed etc. There are not a large number of graduate job boards only in the UK and the ones that are available lack a number of features. Finally, I am providing graduate schemes, jobs and internships to graduates. For employers I am helping them find future employees so there is indeed value to humanity.

          Anyway, thanks for your opinion!

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