When deciding where to post a job ad, some customers are surprised to hear that we share their job ads with other top job boards. It seems counterintuitive that one of the best job sites—iHire—would want to post our customers’ job ads on other sites.

Doesn’t it send traffic away from iHire? (nope) Could it dilute the impact of the job posting on iHire? (never) Does iHire also get jobs from these other sites? (sometimes) Those are just a few of the questions we get on a regular basis about downposting (that’s what we call it).

It may seem complicated, but the concept is pretty simple and it comes down to one central idea: the more qualified candidates we can drive to our customers’ job ads, the better.

The (not-so) Secret World of Sharing Ads on Top Job Boards

Sharing job postings with partners is a common practice among the best job sites—many top job boards pay others to drive further traffic to their ads. This is done on a pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) basis, which means that they pay these sites a certain amount of money for each visitor (or click) the downposting site delivers.

Depending upon the type of agreement a set of partners may have with one another, a job seeker’s journey could change slightly. Here’s how it works with iHire:

• An employer posts their open position with iHire, enabling them to use iHire’s tools and resources to manage their applications.
• iHire shares the job with one of our partners.
• A job seeker on the partner site sees the job and clicks to apply.
• This job seeker is redirected to iHire to complete the application process.
• The employer who advertised their job on iHire gets a qualified candidate (and the partner site gets a little PPC/CPC money from iHire).

Sharing is Caring (for Our Customers)

iHire shares job ads from our site with a few select partners because it enables us to expand the volume of traffic we can deliver for our customers (and therefore the amount of qualified applicants we can send to their job ad). However, our downposting efforts provide another benefit for the employers who use iHire: time and cost savings. Businesses and recruiters who choose to post jobs with iHire don’t have to spend additional time and resources posting jobs on a bunch of other job boards. We do it for them.

How Does it Work?

The downposting process is quite simple. Say Job Board A wants to share a set of job ads with Job Board B. Job Board A simply creates an XML job feed to send to Job Board B. This is a quick and easy way to update a lot of information (in this instance, job postings) automatically. Another option—depending upon the relationship between Job Board A and Job Board B—would be for Job Board A to supply Job Board B with the URL for their job ads page and allow Job Board B to programmatically capture job postings for publication (this is called scraping).

Does it Cost Extra?

iHire does not charge extra to “boost” the traffic a job posting receives by sharing it with our partners. This has always been included in the set price we charge customers to advertise their openings.

Some top job boards charge extra to guarantee that a customer’s job will attract a certain amount of clicks. This is an example of a business passing an expense onto its customers—more than likely they are paying a higher PPC/CPC cost for a high-profile spot on their partner’s site (or they have a completely separate agreement related to sharing traffic) and they have simply added that amount to their customer’s bill.

Deciding where to post a job ad doesn’t have to be difficult. iHire is dedicated to matching employers with top-notch talent. It doesn’t matter if you need to fill five open positions or 500—we have the right recruiting solution for you. Post your job today and find out why your perfect hire is on iHire!