For many small businesses, taking on a member of staff is a huge risk; unless they start pulling their weight immediately, and as a business owner, you may see your income drop as a result.

How you go about recruiting job seekers can play a big part. Do you:

• Advertise a job with a leading job board advertising or job ad site, in some cases paying over £700 to do so
• Work with a recruitment agency who will charge 10-20% of salary as a fee (when I explain what they do for this, you will be shocked)
• Post jobs with a multi-site job poster, giving you instant access to many job boards, such as Hiring People (we naturally think this is the best option, but I will now explain why)

Posting Job Ads Online Yourself

Job advertising with a job site is great, but only if your future employee is searching for jobs on that one site. When doing your job advertising research, make sure you advertise on a site which is appropriate for your job. There is no point in advertising for a cleaner on CWjobs (they specialise in posting IT jobs) It is surprising the job ads which are appear there, some which are definitely not related to IT at all. If a company got any applicants for misplaced job adverts, we would be surprised. The top job boards that you might find useful to work with are:

• Reed
• TotalJobs
• CareerBuilder
• CVLibrary
• Jobs Today

For more inspiration, look at the job sites that we work with.

Working With A Recruitment Agency

Before the birth of the internet, recruiters used their network to find potential candidates for you. They were able to add value by bringing qualified candidates to hiring managers. This has changed. Ever since the internet has come along, especially for junior and mid-level roles, recruiters have had it easy. They advertise your job online, normally across multiple sites, wait for the CVs to come in, conduct a few telephone interviews, posing screening questions, and send 3-10 new candidates your way.

For that, they will charge you 10-20% of salary, meaning that for an average paying job (approximately £28,000), they will charge you between £2,800 and £5,600. For a lot of small businesses, this is money they should probably be spending elsewhere. If you could advertise a job online across for only £199, and pose screening questions and conduct telephone interviews yourself, you would save at least £2,601!

Multi-site Job Ad / Job Boards Provider

By now, I hope you can see why going directly to a single job site or job board is not good value and working with a recruitment agency results in high fees for relatively little work on their part, which leaves us with working with a multi-site job poster.

Reputable job advertising services will:

• Tell you which job posting sites your job advert will be on
• State how long the paid or free job advertising campaign will last
• Provide support for optimising your job advert (job sites display job adverts in order of relevance, so it is important to have appropriate keywords in your job title and job description to improve the visibility of your job ad)
• Provide software to help you manage your job postings, manage applications, view CVs, and make informed decisions

Read How To Write A Job Description and How To Write A Job Advert.

Flat Fee Recruitment

Additional services which might be offered as part of a flat fee recruitment package (which bridge the gap between the dedicated support of a recruitment agency and a multi-site job poster) might include:

• CV filtering
• Going through CV databases to create a shortlist of passive candidates
• Conducting telephone interviews and interview setting

The great thing is that the costs for the above services are considerably cheaper than using a recruitment agency. If you use Hiring People, including advertising your job, we would charge a maximum of £1,199.

Read our article: Should I advertise My Job On More Than One Site?

Final Thoughts On Posting A Job Advert

Learning How To Advertise A Job Online with our complete guide and job advertisement services, will save your company money.  Working with a recruitment agency or posting vacant positions in the local press, would have definitely been the right decision 15 or so years ago. I would struggle to put together a business case to work with a recruitment agency when you can take charge an post your job today. If you can, it would be great to see!

Posting Jobs FAQS

Here we answer your questions on how to advertise job openings.

WHERE SHOULD I ADVERTISE MY JOB?

To find your ideal candidate, we recommend posting jobs on social networking sites (social media sites where you should have a presence include LinkedIn and Facebook), your careers page (adding job openings to your company’s career page improves visibility in search results on search engines such as Google), and multiple job boards.

When you advertise job openings, your job title can appear on general job boards or a niche job board if vacancies require candidates to have specialised expertise, knowledge, qualifications, or certifications. Hiring People offers various job board hiring packages, to suit the budget and individual needs of your business.

WHAT DO I NEED TO POST JOB ADVERTS?

You need key company information and a job description to post jobs on job boards, your careers page, and social media. The company information includes details of your company culture, values, mission, and location. These are vital for attracting potential candidates and conveying why your company is a great employer.

We also recommend that companies include a link to their social media and careers page (which could have testimonials from existing employees). Your job advert will need a job description to target the right candidates, stating responsibilities, duties, tasks, skills, and qualifications. We provide free access to our job description templates when preparing your job description. We recommend including a salary range when hiring and if your company offers flexible working hours, remote, or hybrid roles.