Does recruitment advertising need to change to stay relevant in today's age of AI?

Sep 12, 2024

4 min read

By Richard Collins, Co-Founder of C Squared

12 September 2024

Job boards continue to be the easiest, fastest and lowest-cost way of generating applications to jobs. Not only that, but the jobseekers are actively in the market looking, so they generate great conversion rates.

However, based on the latest financial results and layoffs, it's hard to argue against the fact that the recruitment advertising industry is having a tough time right now.

And whilst there have been economic headwinds, we are not in a recession, there are skill shortages, interest rates are dropping etc, so surely the industry should be doing better than it is.

This kind of begs the question, is there a deeper problem?

If you talk to TA practitioners and hiring managers, you hear the same story of being overwhelmed with too many, usually unsuitable, applications.

Whether this is driven by out-of-location applicants, easy apply or jobseekers adopting AI, will be argued over (I suspect a combination of all 3), but the fact remains that recruiters have far too many of them and most of them are really not suitable at all.

The problem that we have as an industry is that we are rewarded for more (whilst blindingly obvious for performance-based advertising, this even applies to duration ads), creating a gap between what clients want - which is better applicants, and what we are paid for, more applicants.

So the age-old Quantity vs Quality...

As an industry, we can either solve this problem ourselves or wait in the hope that employers will solve this for us. The problem with the former is how, and with the latter, we have no control of the outcome.

My personal issue with waiting is one of how long it might take - and what is left by the time that it is, as A) it will rely on ATS’ coming up with a solution or B) assessment/screening tech being sold across every employer. Neither are fast and we are not exactly in an industry that is known for its fast pace of change.

Perhaps more importantly, if we leave it to others we may end up with something that is not in our industry’s best interest of being adopted. For example the current trend of developing sourcing bots to avoid advertising - which will work….until they don’t (a bit like LinkedIn messages or email, or even phone calls!)

If we do nothing, then advertising spend will gradually dry up due to advertisers continuing to get too many unsuitable applicants, with basic economics telling us prices will drop further.

So how do we avoid this, well we simply take ownership of the problem and build a solution that delivers what clients want - more qualified applicants, that at the same time makes the industry more revenue, by adding value and getting advertisers closer to the hire.

The idea of qualified applicants is hardly new and is one of the few things that most of the industry actually agrees on, but it is not easy to achieve for several reasons.

What is qualified, who decides
How much do you charge for it
Who builds the technology

Indeed and LinkedIn already have (or are working on) solutions that do this, but what about the rest of the industry who don’t have massive in-house resources and development teams, how will those other job boards compete in this new age.

Well, guess what, this is exactly what we have built with C Squared Technology.

I would like to claim foresight and genius, but the reality was pure luck played a bigger part. We were developing a skills-sourcing product that required screening and verification, along came AI, jobseekers adopted it, applications went through the roof, and we needed a new plan, turns out what we had already built could really help, so we built it up from there.

In short, we have built the technology infrastructure using our verification and screening products, which sits between programmatics (and Agency Ad management software) and job boards that acts as a quality layer.

By doing this we can move screening to the top of the funnel and into the application process, allowing the industry to own its quality, rather than being the supplier of a product which still has to be sorted through and ultimately 99% of it rejected at the employer end.

The technology we have built allows advertisers to create campaigns and group jobs together, detailing any prerequisites that are required for a job, from simple IP location screening to full identity verification and skills/qualification checks.

The system calculates the cost of a “qualified” applicant depending on the verifications and screening required, using an algorithm derived from what your programmatic technology has told us is the base CPA or CPC.

We then distribute them using our ETFs (Exchange Traded Feeds) to job boards and publisher partners, who have relevant audiences, and who are rewarded with higher payouts for supplying qualified applicants.

This means that advertisers can get straight to the qualified applicants, (they can also see all the unqualified ones should they desire), spending less time sifting through unsuitable responses.

No AI is used in the screening process - so no legal issues.

The jobseekers can own their personal data - so privacy and security are good too.

High-quality Job boards get rewarded more for higher-quality products, as they should.

Ad agencies, programmatics and Ad management software all have happier clients who spend more money.

Everyone shares the same goals, and the gap is now bridged. Recruitment advertising evolves and welcomes the next generation. Everyone's a winner.

But I accept that change is hard. I remember when I first started in internet recruitment advertising in 1995, working with publishers who couldn't figure out how to transition from paper classifieds to digital. But those that did were handsomely rewarded, those that didn’t are no longer with us.

Whilst clearly as an industry we have a problem right now, by putting in the right infrastructure to move us closer to the hire, shifting from quantity to quality and moving up the value chain, we can build a successful industry for the future.

If you are a job board, Ad agency, or Programmatic and want to find out more about partnering with us, then please go to www.CSquaredTechnology.com

Or email us a message