Eight Reasons Niche Job Boards Fail

Most startups fail, and job boards are no exception. Creating a successful niche job board in today's competitive online recruiting landscape requires more than a unique idea and deep knowledge of the niche, industry or region. To succeed, you need to have a strategic approach that considers your specialization, SEO optimization and customer acquisition.

In this insightful blog post, I want to share my experience building multiple highly automated job boards and advising successful large and small international job boards and aggregators. I will explore the common pitfalls new job board owners encounter and provide actionable advice on overcoming them.

This guide covers essential aspects of launching a successful job board - from choosing the right niche—balancing competitiveness with demand—to implementing a robust SEO strategy. We also explore the importance of customer acquisition strategies, selecting the right job board software, and the necessity of having sufficient capital. Last but not least, I will highlight the significance of promoting your job board through social media, attending industry-relevant conferences, and networking for growth and visibility is emphasized.

This article is for first-time job board owners and experienced professionals looking to refine their existing job platform.

You are picking a niche that is too small. 

It is excellent to find a niche or a new trend and build a job board for it, but make sure that: first, there are jobs, and second, candidates are looking for these jobs. You can check the candidate site by using Google Trends and Ahrefs / Semrush for some combination of job titles and the usual keywords (jobs, career). You can also check Indeed and Google Jobs to see if there is job volume. 

You are picking a niche that is way too competitive.

For example, new job boards will emerge during every crypto cycle, and after the cycle is over, they will disappear. Crypto and Web3 are very competitive; three leading platforms have combined over 100K unique visitors/day! So are remote jobs.

You don’t want to enter a niche like this.    

How to avoid picking a too-competitive niche? Cross-check the search volume on Ahrefs or SEMrush for your identified primary competitors. Trying to enter a niche where 3-4 competitors have six-figure organic reach daily is very risky.  

Unless the competitors lack SEO expertise, this is another topic and not a great start for a first job board. 

So, combining the suggestions from both paragraphs, let’s look at some examples.

Good Job Board Niche Examples

Golf jobs are a great niche - it is not that competitive, there is search volume, and there are plenty of jobs:

Golf Jobs Search Volume

Open Golf Jobs

As you can see, the gods of jobs have almost 5K jobs matching the search term "golf jobs" in the US alone.

Bad Job Board Niche Examples

As mentioned, remote jobs have a very high search volume, but they are highly competitive niches. According to SEM Rush, these jobs are "tough." As a beginner, I would stay away from a niche like this.

You are ignoring SEO.

If you are going into a niche, there is an underlying assumption that you understand this niche much better than others. So, you have to develop a niche-specific job taxonomy and categorization of jobs, for which your job board will create search landing pages. Ideally, you also have a supporting content strategy (“how/why to get a job in niche X”) or a programmatic SEO strategy (“average salary for role X in city Y” or “top companies hiring in X for Y”). Launching a job board and waiting for the traffic will not work.  

No customer acquisition strategy

What products are you going to sell, and how are you going to reach your potential customers? This is something that most first-time job board owners ignore. Yes, it is true that if you execute the three steps above, many customers will come organically, but you still need to reach potential customers beyond that. Also, it might take a long time before your organic strategy starts bringing customers.

Be ready with a plan on how to find potential customers and how to approach them. Job scraping can be a great way to start here as a lead generation.

Picking the wrong job board software

You should make sure that, at minimum, your job board software allows you to customize your search landing pages (domain.com/jobs/category), has a blog module, supports the job indexing API from Google, has great page speed (above 80 scores), and ideally has an API.  

Based on my experience, I can recommend Jobiqo * and Jboard **. 

Not having enough capital to cover the first six months.

SEO does not work immediately – it might take months until your job board starts picking up traffic. During this time, unless you are buying traffic, there will be hardly a reason for anyone to post any jobs because you cannot drive applicants. You must meet your operational costs (job board software, marketing, automation) during this time, so having a capital cushion is essential.

You are not promoting your job board.

You must set up all social media and professional network links – Twitter, Facebook, IG, Reddit and Linkedin. Start sharing jobs on these channels. Repost your blog posts. It is a significant first step for promotion. This is also important for backlinks – people underestimate the value of social links. Every shared link gets a little bit of organic traffic. Even 20-30 impressions per post on 5-6 platforms add up.  

Not going to industry-relevant conferences.

Attending industry conferences is necessary for new niche job board founders, especially if this is your first job board. These events offer unique networking opportunities with industry veterans and peers—these connections can be crucial for establishing business relationships and gaining visibility. I am always surprised by how much business is done at one conference. 

As a new founder, it is also a great place to understand how the business works and how the money moves. Additionally, these conferences are hotbeds of innovation, presenting new ideas and approaches that can be integrated into your business.

Three conferences are relevant for job board owners - RecBuzz, TaTech Europe & US and Job Boards Connect. Some of them offer even two slots per year.

You can usually meet me at all three. Also, it is just so much fun to meet people from the industry.

Conclusion

In this guide, I underscored the importance of selecting a well-balanced niche and utilizing SEO strategies for successful job board creation. In the article, I highlighted the necessity of an effective customer acquisition strategy and the careful choice of job board software with essential features. Sufficient initial capital is vital for sustaining the early stages of the business. Additionally, active promotion through social media and attendance at industry conferences are essential for networking and growth. These core strategies provide a solid foundation for launching and maintaining a thriving job board in the competitive digital recruiting industry.

Disclaimer:

*I work as an advisor at Jobiqo and I use Jboard for my personal projects

** This is an affiliate link – I will receive a small commission if you sign up for Jboard via my link. You don't have to do it - you can just visit jboard.com.