Better use of job boards

Greg Wyatt • March 5, 2024

Job boards are often the first port of call when new to a job search.

It’s a natural inclination that they are where vacancies are to be found, quickly followed by disappointment, anxiety and frustration when you get close to 0% hit rate.

And not even a single reply!

But, let’s take a step back, look at the overall picture, and make a plan.

In this article we’ll look at:

A background on job boards
Job board priorities and what these mean for you
Better use of job boards
How to optimise for CV databases

Yes this is long, but it is jam-packed with insight on the recruitment industry, why we are the way we are, and how you can take the right steps forward.

1 / A background on job boards

There are many job boards in the UK who sell their systems to employers and recruitment agencies.

You may be familiar with

Indeed
Reed
CV Library
Jobsite / Totaljobs (the same company, owned by Stepstone)
Monster (used to be decent many years ago)
LinkedIn (yes it is a job board, disguised by being a social media platform)

Aside from generic job boards, there are also many sites specialist to your niche.

Job boards broadly sell two things to their clients - advertising and access to their CV database.

LinkedIn differs in how it is wrapped up with content and networking, but it too has a form of CV database in how we can use the Recruiter Licence to search profiles (you can even make do without).

There are also aggregator websites, which scrape (automatically copy) content from one job board to their own or a 3rd party. You can often tell because when you click apply it takes you to another job board (rather than properly start an application).

Indeed and LinkedIn also act as aggregators and can lead to no end of confusion on whether adverts are still live, or if they were filled in 2022, when adverts are scraped across multiple boards.

True story - CV Library once set up an affiliate arrangement with a recruitment agency that scraped their ads. If you googled Bircham Wyatt Recruitment (that’s me) you’d see that agency list my ads - it looked like I worked for them.

CV Library was good enough to put a stop to this when I unleashed my outrage on LinkedIn (made a post about it and got some influencers involved).

The job board market in the UK is a hot mess.

2/ Job board priorities and what that means for you

Job boards want to sell their services and make money, which is of course entirely sensible.

To support their argument they use all sorts of metrics, such as the number of CVs on their database and the number of applications made (by job or month).

It’s to their advantage that adverts receive as many applications as possible, so their advice on improving advert performance is geared around this. Rather than around suitable candidates.

Indeed, the most effective job adverts have fewer applications and a higher number of suitable candidates - that’s what I aim for in mine.

To maximise the number of applications they do things like scraping, aggregation and affiliate arrangements.

They also offer services like automatic relisting, whereby an advert is (for example) reposted as New once a week throughout the term of the listing (could be up to 6 weeks by default, or longer by choice).

These are sold as benefits to employers, which might help when there are limited candidates, but likely hinders when there are too many candidates for jobs.

They also make it as Easy(Apply) as possible for you to apply to these jobs, so that you can be an additional metric.

As Goodhart says “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

The consequence for you as an applicant is twofold.

You are encouraged to be one of the numbers of applicants to purposefully generic adverts you are not the most suitable for.

When you are the most suitable, you are in competition both with people from the line above, and people who are wholly unsuitable (some of whom follow the guru’s advice to ‘shoot your shot’).

We’ll come back to this notion above in the next section.

I should point out I don’t think job boards do this cynically, I think they do this because they think high numbers are best.

It’s also a problem for recruiters who may find it impossible to deal with this volume, unless through automation or by finding ways to manually eliminate applications at scale.

Job boards, employers, agencies and candidates are all wrapped up in this cycle of speed and volume. Most everyone but the job seeker thinks it’s the best way to recruit - it is not.

Though it might be the best way to make money.

And yes jobseekers are accountable too, but only because of how they have been trained to apply.

What do I mean by reducing applications at scale?

Well, as I said to one person today, I’ve heard recruiters rejecting everyone after the 40th applicant, no matter how good they might be, because they have enough for an interview shortlist.

That’s rare, but it’s one of many examples of how shortcuts might be taken to contend with an impossible task. I’m not excusing it - these are companies who signal loudly about candidate experience and the importance of diversity.

Don’t blame recruiters.

Don’t blame employers.

Blame the system we are all part of.

And if you ever find yourself a hiring authority - be the change you hope for now.

3/ Better use of job boards

Let’s go back to that point about applications.

In the current market, it’s not uncommon to see 100 to 4000 applications per vacancy. That’s wild!

Not all job boards show this metric, although LinkedIn does (in a broken sort of way - often they’ll register clicks falsely as applications. This can be when an ATS is involved and is referred to as attrition if full applications are not completed.)

However, rarely are those applications actually candidates (people who can do and should want to do the job).

For a typical job-description templated advert you can expect 90 to 99% of applicants to be wholly unsuitable. I don’t have specific evidence of this, only anecdotes in talking to many recruiters.

Even in my adverts, which I take great care to write, at best I’d expect 40% of applicants to be candidates.

What do I mean by wholly unsuitable?

People who require work permits when a role doesn’t sponsor them.

People who don’t meet the minimum requirements set out in an advert.

People who are clearly unsuitable for this role.

So when you see a number, don’t be disheartened by the number alone.

As a jobseeker, your minimum requirement to apply for a job should be that you can logically prove to yourself, based on the evidence provided (which might be generic twaddle) that you are suitable.

If you can’t, you shouldn’t apply.

You’ll go from an approximately 0% hit rate to… well about the same, but with less time and bother.

This also means avoiding step-down jobs unless you can show how and why being overqualified is a good thing, as well as how and why you are interested beyond wanting a job.

It’s not pleasant having to write this, but the simple truth is, through a transactional application, you will seldom be considered if there are ‘core-fit’ applicants available.

The same goes for transferrable skills.

Unless you can show how your skills apply, how can skilled recruiters see your candidacy?

If not them; how about the less effective recruiters?

If you see adverts you aren’t sure about, by all means apply.

But treat them as transactionally as they are written. Fire, schedule one followup, then forget.

Save your time, energy and focus for non-transactional adverts - the ones that show you how great you are for them, the ones that sing.

These are rare, but we’ve written them carefully with you in mind.

The care taken to write them means we want you to apply because you are an ideal candidate who helps us see your suitability.

Your hit rate will be far higher.

Sadly it will still be close to zero if you are in a specialism for which there are many great candidates and few vacancies. I’ve seen this recently with talent acquisition, HR and marketing.

The state of the market is out of our control.

At least job boards aren't the be all and end all.

When your skills apply, provide evidence.

This is the main case in which tailoring CVs is effective.

If an advert uses synonyms for your skills, and they are proveably the same, use their language. An HR Manager can be a Head of People if the duties are the same.

This post on LinkedIn may help with searchesl

Show common process, common lifecycles, common context (company size, trajectory, culture) - show how you meet their requirement.

These principles allow a human reader to see your candidacy, and allow you to ‘beat the ATS’. Any choice or tool to eliminate you afterwards is a human decision.

Always show how you meet the essential requirements, and the desirable ones too if you can. A perhaps obvious point the majority of applications neglect.

… tips and bits

Finding vacancies is as important as applying for them. Collect those synonyms you’ve been tailoring your CV with and use these in your searches.

If you find an obscure term which represents what you can do, why not search solely on that term?

You might find a horribly written advert whose only correct word is that term.

It’s a trick we use to find candidates too - occasionally I might search on something like ‘egnieer’ because typos don’t make a bad candidate.

Location is a key search criterion.

Most people search from their home address. How about running tight searches where you are prepared to work - e.g. 1 mile from CB4 0WZ (where I worked many moons ago)?

Lastly, try not to let a ‘bad recruitment’ process get in the way of what might be good enough employment. Many of us know not what we do.

Competitive salary. Cover letter. All these unsavoury things - I know great companies who ask for the same.

4/ How to optimise for CV databases

When you apply to a vacancy on a new job board, invariably they will have a CV database tethered to your application.

Maybe it will be hidden in their terms and conditions.

A CV database is an opportunity for you to be found.

Sometimes this will be for vacancies that are never advertised, such as an example I wrote about today.

You have an opportunity to leverage your use of CV databases to improve the amount of inbound enquiries you receive.

Log all the job boards you’ve applied for
Make a list of all that have CV databases, including login in details
Ensure your CV is up-to-date containing the key words for the job you are most suitable for (skills, job titles, memberships, frameworks, tools, processes, everything)
And that your contact details are correct.
Check all the details on your account. Salary details, location, preferences should all be current.
Register your postcode for where you want to be found. If you plan to move to Scunthorpe in April, that should be your current location. It’s where we will look for you.
Update your CV and profiles once a week. It’s a chore but won’t take long. If you are active in the past week, this will show up in recruiter searches. Particularly if, for example in the post I shared above, I only look at active CVs from the past 14 days. This is a mega-hack no one talks about (it’s not a hack, there are no hacks, just bloody hard work, it is true though).

That’s it! I’m sure I’ve forgotten a bunch of stuff that should be included. But this has taken me two hours to write on a Tuesday night. I’ll correct any errors when I can.

DM me on LinkedIn with any questions, or email me at greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk with any questions. I’ll reply when I can and, if appropriate will update this article.

Thank you and good luck.

Greg

p.s. don’t forget to check out my recruitment newsletter, if you recruit at any point or know someone who wants to break the transactional mould - gregwyatt.substack.com.

< Older Post

Newer Post >

Jump the shark. A Recruitment AiDE, pt 13

By Greg Wyatt • January 29, 2026

May 2023 You’ve heard the phrase, I take it – “jump the shark”? It’s the moment when one surprising or absurd experience can indicate a rapid descent into rubbishness and obscurity. When it’s time to get off the bus. Typically in media. Jumping the Shark comes from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz does a water ski jump over a shark. 👈 Aaaaay. 👉 A sign creators have run out of ideas, or can’t be bothered to come up with fresh ones. In movies, sequelitis is a good example of this – an unnecessary sequel done to make some cash, in the hope the audience doesn’t care about its quality. Sometimes they become dead horses to flog, such as the missteps that are any Terminator film after 2. It’s an issue that can lead to consumers abandoning what they were doing, with such a precipitous drop in engagement that the thing itself is then cancelled. Partly because of breaking trust in what was expected to happen next. And because it’s a sign that the disbelief that was temporarily suspended has come crashing down. If you don’t believe that your current poor experience will lead to further, better experiences, why would you bother? Once you’ve had your fingers burnt, how hard is it to find that trust in similar experiences? It doesn’t have to be a single vein of experience for all to be affected. Watch one dodgy superhero movie and how does it whet your appetite for the next? You didn’t see The Eternals? Lucky you. Or how about that time we had really bad service at Café Rouge, a sign of new management that didn’t care, and we never went again? Just me? Did they sauter par-dessus le requin? Here’s the rub – it matters less that these experiences have jumped the shark. It matters more what the experience means for expectation. So it is in candidate experience. It’s not just the experience you provide that tempers expectations – it’s the cumulated experience of other processes that creates an assumption of what might be expected of yours. If you’re starting from a low trust point, what will it take for your process to ‘jump the shark’ and lose, not just an engaged audience, but those brilliant candidates that might only have considered talking to you if their experience hadn’t been off-putting? Not fair, is it, that the experience provided by other poor recruitment processes might affect what people expect of yours? Their experiences aren’t in your control, the experience you provide is. Of my 700 or so calls with exec job seekers, since The Pandemic: Lockdown Pt 1, many described the candidate experience touchpoints that led to them deciding not to proceed with an application. These were calls that were purely about job search strategy, and not people I could place. However, one benefit for me is that they are the Gemba , and I get to hear their direct experiences outside of my recruitment processes. Experiences such as - ‘£Competitive salary’ in an advert or DM, which they know full well means a lowball offer every time, because it happened to them once or twice, or perhaps it was just a LinkedIn post they read. Maybe it isn’t your problem at all, maybe your £competitive is upper 1% - how does their experience inform their assumptions? Or when adverts lend ambiguity to generic words, what meaning do they find, no matter how far from the truth? How the arrogance of a one-sided interview process affects their interest. The apparent narcissism in many outreaches in recruitment (unamazing, isn’t it, that bad outreach can close doors, rather than open them). Those ATS ‘duplicate your CV’ data entry beasts? Fool me once… Instances that are the catalysts for them withdrawing. I’d find myself telling them to look past these experiences, because a poor process can hide a good job. It’s a common theme in my jobseeker posts, such as a recent one offering a counterpoint to the virality that is “COVER LETTERS DON’T M4TT£R agree?” Experiences that may not be meant by the employer, or even thought of as necessarily bad, yet are drivers for decisions and behaviour. I can only appeal to these job seekers through my posts and calls. What about those other jobseekers who I’m not aware of, who’ve only experienced nonsense advice? What about those people who aren’t jobseekers? What about those people who think they love their roles? What about all those great candidates who won’t put up with bad experiences? The more sceptical they are, and the further they are from the need for a new role, the less bullshit they’ll put up with. What happens when an otherwise acceptable process presents something unpalatable? Might this jumping the shark mean they go no further? Every time the experience you provide doesn’t put their needs front and centre or if it’s correlated to their bad experiences…. these can prevent otherwise willing candidates from progressing with your process, whether that’s an advert they don’t apply to, a job they don’t start, or everything in between. Decisions that may stem from false assumptions of what a bad experience will mean. Instead, look to these ‘bad experience’ touchpoints as opportunities to do better: instead of £competitive, either state a salary or a legitimate reason why you can’t disclose salary (e.g. “see below” if limited by a job board field and “we negotiate a fair salary based on the contribution of the successful candidate, and don’t want to limit compensation by a band”) instead of a 1-way interrogation… an interview instead of radio silence when there’s no news - an update to say there’s no update, and ‘How are things with you by the way?’ instead of Apply Now via our Applicant Torture Sadistificator, ‘drop me a line if you have any questions’ or ‘don’t worry if you don’t have an updated CV - we’ll sort that later’. Opportunity from adversity. And why you can look at bad experiences other processes provide as a chance to do better. With the benefit that, if you eliminate poor experience, you'll lose fewer candidates unnecessarily, including those ideal ones you never knew about. Bad experiences are the yin to good experience’s yang and both are key parts of the E that is Experience in the AIDE framework. The good is for next time. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg

How To Network For A Job - Jobseeker Basics XIV

By Greg Wyatt • January 26, 2026

The following is Chapter 42 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . In a sense it's a microcosm of how any commercial activity can see a better return - which is to put the needs of the person you are appealing to above your own. It feels counterintuitive, especially when you have a burning need, but you can see the problem of NOT doing this simply by looking at 99% of job adverts: We are. We need. We want. What you'll do for us. What you might get in return. Capped off by the classic "don't call us, we'll call you." If you didn't need a job, how would you respond to that kind of advert? In the same vein, if you want networking to pay off, how will your contact's life improve by your contact? What's in it for them? 42 - How to network for a job Who are the two types of people you remember at networking events? For me two types stand out. One will be the instant pitch networker. This might work if you happen to be in need right now of what they have to offer or if mutual selling is your goal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this but it’s a selling activity pretending to be networking. If you want to sell, go and overtly sell rather than disguise it with subterfuge. Lest we mark your face and avoid you where possible in future. The second is the one who gets to know you, shows interest and tries to add to your experience. You share ideas, and there’s no push to buy something. They believe that through building the relationship when you have a problem they can solve, you’ll think to go to them. It’s a relationship built on reciprocity. One where if you always build something together there is reason to keep in touch. And where the outcome is what you need if the right elements come together: right person, right time, right message, right place, right offering, right price. Job search networking is no different. The purpose of networking in a job search is to build a network where you are seen as a go-to solution should a suitable problem come up. In this case the problem you solve is a vacancy. Either because your active network is recruiting, or because they advocate for you when someone they know is recruiting. It is always a two-way conversation you both benefit from. Knowledge sharing, sounding board, see how you’re doing - because of what the relationship brings to you both. It is not contacting someone only to ask for a job or a recommendation. A one-way conversation that relies on lucky timing. That second approach can be effective as a type of direct sales rather than networking. If you get it wrong it may even work against you. How would you feel if someone asked to network with you, when it became clear they want you to do something for them? You might get lucky and network with someone who is recruiting now - more likely is that you nurture that relationship over time. If your goal is only to ask for help each networking opportunity will have a low chance of success. While if your goal is to nurture a relationship that may produce a lead, you’ll only have constructive outcomes. This makes it sensible to start by building a network with people that already know you: Former direct colleagues and company colleagues Industry leaders and peers Recruiters you have employed or applied through Don’t forget the friends you aren’t in regular touch with - there is no shame in being out of work and it would be a shame if they didn’t think of you when aware of a suitable opening. These people are a priority because they know you, your capability and your approach and trust has already been built. Whereas networking with people you don't know requires helping them come to know and trust you. Networking with people you know is the most overlooked tactic by the exec job seekers I talk to (followed by personal branding). These are the same people who see the hidden jobs market as where their next role is, yet overlook what’s in front of them. If you are looking for a new role on the quiet - networking is a go-to approach that invites proactive contact to you. Networking with people who know people you know, then people in a similar domain, then people outside of this domain - these are in decreasing order of priority. Let's not forget the other type of networking. Talking to fellow job seekers is a great way to share your pain, take a load off your shoulders, bounce ideas off each other, and hold each other accountable. LinkedIn is the perfect platform to find the right people if you haven't kept in touch directly. Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a conduit to conversation. It isn’t the conversation itself. Speaking in real life is where networking shines because while you might build a facsimile of a relationship in text, it's no replacement for a fluid conversation. Whether by phone and video calls, real life meetups, business events, seminars, conferences, expos, or in my case - on dog walks and waiting outside of the school gates. Both these last two have led to friends and business for me though the latter hasn’t been available since 2021. Networking isn’t 'What can I get out of it?' Instead, ‘What’s in it for them?’ The difference is the same as those ransom list job adverts compared to the rare one that speaks to you personally. How can you build on this relationship by keeping in touch? Networking is systematic, periodic and iterative: Map out your real life career network. Revisit anyone you’ve ever worked with and where Find them on LinkedIn Get in touch ‘I was thinking about our time at xxx. Perhaps we could reconnect - would be great to catch up’ If they don’t reply, because life can be busy, diarise a follow up What could be of interest to them? A LinkedIn post might be a reason to catch up When you look up your contact’s profile look at the companies they’ve worked at. They worked there for a reason, which may be because of a common capability to you Research these companies. Are there people in relevant roles worth introducing yourself to? Maybe the company looks a fit with your aspirations - worth getting in touch with someone who may be a hiring manager or relevant recruiter? Maybe they aren’t recruiting now. Someone to keep in touch with because of mutual interests. Click on Job on their company page, then "I'm interested" - this helps for many reasons, including flagging your interest as a potential employee Keep iterating your network and find new companies as you look at new contacts. This is one way we map the market in recruitment to headhunt candidates - you can mirror this with your networking The more proactive networking you build into your job search, the luckier you might get. While you might need to nurture a sizeable network and there are no guarantees, think about the other virtues of networking - how does that compare to endless unreplied applications? I often hear from job seekers who found their next role through networking. This includes those who got the job because of their network even though hundreds of applicants were vying for it. While this may be unfair on the applicants sometimes you can make unfair work for you. It can be effective at any level.