Why is my job ad appearing in media that I didn’t buy?
‘Scraping’ job adverts first became prevalent in 2011 and since then, the practice has ramped up to the point where advertisers bemoan that they have almost lost control of where their content is seen.
Put simply, ‘scraping’ is the practice where major job boards (like Indeed and Jora), send out an internet ‘spider’, that trawls through company career sites and competitors’ websites, identifying new job adverts and reproducing them as their own.
Whilst there are plenty of reasons you may dislike this practice (loss of control and your candidate data being harvested for someone else’s profit is just a few), we thought in today’s article, we’d concentrate on the big positive:
When your job ad is scraped, you get free adverting!
Why would you invest big for adverts on Seek, when you can simply place the advert on a low-cost or free job board like Talent Propeller Jobs, and the scrapers will pick it up and promote it for you?
Here are some clever tips to take advantage of this industry practice and drive your advertising dollar further.
1. Get a careers page
Many scraping spiders not only check other job boards but also go hunting for listings on company sites. So, if you have your own ‘job vacancies’ page, this can improve the chances of your vacancies being picked up and promoted. If you don’t already have your own HRIS, Big Splash offers a low-cost online candidate management system on a monthly subscription model, that gives you all the benefits of a CMS without overheads and software investment. Plus added opportunity for scrapers to find you!
2. Pay for an advert on a site that scrapers target
The mainstream job boards are regularly scraped, so rather than paying for adverts on every site, this presents an opportunity to think about where you prefer to invest the bulk of your funds. You could choose to pay for one advert, then rely on the scrapers to ‘blow it up.’
It’s important to mention that ‘scraped’ ads are different from syndicated networks; for example, if you pay for your advert on CareerOne, your advert may also appear on Rural Press sites, which CareerOne also manages. The principle is the same though; think about where you want to get the biggest bang for buck and be aware of what you can get for free. Your Big Splash account manager is up to date with over 800 media across Australia and NZ and advice is part of our service.
3. ‘Buy 1 get 1 free’ with a sponsored advert and an indexed advert.
The terminology varies between sites but, if we use Indeed as an example, scraped ads are ‘indexed’ or, in other words, ‘free’ adverts. They will rarely perform as well as a paid or sponsored advert. As you’d expect, the more that an advertiser pays for their job ad, the more likely it is to appear at the top of a search list.
It doesn’t do any harm to put some advertising dollars into a paid advert (on Indeed, for example), whilst also having a second indexed advert running on the same site. The more chances a candidate has to find and apply for your vacancy, the better.
Recruitment advertising is the same as any other advertising investment - especially in the current candidate short market. To work out the best way to use your budget to reach your target audience, talk to the Big Splash team. We’re here to help.