Create, Manage, and Work With Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces.
Each week, Steven Rothberg of College Recruiter and Peter Zollman of the AIM Group, along with guests from the world's leading job sites, analyze news about general, niche, and aggregator job board and recruitment marketplace sites.
Struggling to attract enough applicants to your job ads? You may be surprised to hear how a few changes to your job posting ads might make all of the difference in the world.
| E:2Kat Kibben is the Founder and CEO of Three Ears Media, a team of extremely talented copywriters who specialize in writing for recruiting. They've worked in recruiting and HR as writers and understand how hard hiring is. They also know it's difficult because the work involves one of the most unpredictable variables in the world: people.
The one thing you and the employers advertising on your site can control? How you ask. Three Ears Media has mastered the ask - whether it comes in the form of a great job posting, an upgrade to traditional email templates, or team training where we show your team -- or those of your clients -- how to write.
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Steven Rothberg: Welcome to the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast. I’m Steven Rothberg, the founder of College Recruiter, Job search site at College Recruiter. We believe that every student in recent grad deserves a great career.
Peter Zollman: And I’m Peter Zollman, founding Principle of the AIM Group. We are the leading global business intelligence service for marketplaces and classified advertising companies. We consult with recruitment marketplace companies and we publish AIM Group Weekly, Recruitment Intelligence, and a free weekly digest. We also host the annual Rec Buzz conference.
Steven Rothberg: This is the podcast for you to learn more about how to create, manage, and work with general niche and aggregator job boards and recruitment marketplaces. Hey Peter, it is great to be back with you today.
Peter Zollman: It is good to be back with you too. Um, safe travels and all that stuff and it’s nice to be doing the podcast and talking to interesting people. Uh, at least one of the two people on the other end of the microphone is interesting. Sorry, Steven
Steven Rothberg: , right? One, one of one of the other two people in today’s show is interesting and that person isn’t named Steven. That’s, I think that’s what
Peter Zollman: You’re saying. I didn’t say that. I came close, but I didn’t say that. Um,
Steven Rothberg: Hey, I, I, I resemble that remark.
Peter Zollman: Yes, indeed. So, so what’s going on with you guys? Anything new at college Recruiter?
Steven Rothberg: Oh man, This, you know, I think one of my greatest strengths and also greatest weaknesses is that there’s always something new going on. Um, mostly the last few years we’ve been focusing a lot more on, uh, what we call shiny new things internally, rather than externally leveraging, leveraging things that we’ve already built rather than trying to always be looking for things outside and, and doing new things. And, uh, what I’m really excited about cuz it’s, it’s really coming to fruition. We’ve been planning for years to allow employers to advertise their jobs globally. Um, which we started to do a little over a year ago and very quickly ran into an issue when, for the vast majority of employers that advertise using Pay per Click, they wanna pay in their own currencies. You know, go figure, you’re in Europe, you wanna pay in Euros, you’re in the uk, you wanna pay in pound Sterling. And we added that ability earlier this year, and we’re knocking it out of the park and we’re just about to add three more currencies. So we’ll be up to, I think seven or eight with, uh, by later this year. So that’s pretty cool. What, uh, what’s, what’s AIM group up to?
Peter Zollman: I counted up once, not too long ago, and we have people in something like 34 countries now, 32 countries, and we pay in nine or 10 or 11 currencies and we have to use five different payment systems. American Express basic, you know, basic bank deposits, uh, Western Union for our guy in Nigeria. Boy that I get grilled before Western Union would let me send money to Nigeria, which is a very, very good thing. I mean, they, they grilled me six ways from sunrise before they would let me send money to our guy in Nigeria. Um, and, you know, has he done the work for you already? Do you know who he is? Et cetera, et cetera. Very good for them anyway. Um,
Steven Rothberg: So how come your payments to me haven’t been coming through? Because I don’t remember any money coming from you to me.
Peter Zollman: You know, we’ve, we overpay you, um, Oh, oh, we’re, we are very happy. You’re a paying client of AIM Group recruitment intelligence, and I will leave it at that coming up in AIM group Recruitment Intelligence in the next few weeks. By the way, we’ve got a two part series. One is a global look at teacher shortages, which seems a, an important topic for the first week, second week’s, third weeks of September. And, um, then separately we’re doing a, a report on transitioning teachers and a couple of women who run a website for people who are teachers who wish to transition out of the education world. And actually I got that tip from you posting on LinkedIn about a couple of months ago. And I’ve spoken to them, they don’t have a job board, which I think is a failing on their part, but it’s not my place to tell them that. And so those are two, two articles that seem very timely for the beginning ish of school year. And, um, if I’m lucky and our new recruitment writer works out, um, I will stop writing recruitment articles fairly soon, which is good for me because I was kicked upstairs a long time ago and, you know, don’t like to have to spend my time doing that stuff when I could be doing things like administration and signing agreements and chasing paperwork and all those important stuff. All that important stuff that I have to do.
Steven Rothberg: Well, we all rise to our own levels of incompetencies.
Peter Zollman: And I have listen to that level of incompetence. Don’t go. Speaking of Do Not Go, speaking of Cat will be very offended.
Steven Rothberg: Speaking of competencies, not incompetencies. Today’s guest is Cat Given CEO and founder of Three Ears Media, an expert on how employers should write their job posting ads. A ridiculously dynamic speaker and the only person I know who dreamed of taking a year to travel around United States in a van and actually doing it. Kat, welcome to the Inside Job boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast.
Kat Kibben: Thanks for having me. See Peter, in my world writing blogs all day is the good part. It’s the sitting down and reading agreements that I will very, very actively find someone else to do.
Peter Zollman: Well, I’ve tried to do that. Um, but I’ve been a writer since long before you were born. And frankly, I am not disappointed that I don’t have to write regularly anymore. You know, I can do it, I can bang it out. Um, I know how, but, um, I, I don’t want that to be my regular job. I frankly, I don’t want the paperwork and the signing contract and that stuff to be my regular job, either , but unfortunately as the, um, nominal founding principle of the company, that’s what I gotta do. So, um, tell us about job listings. What do people do wrong? And then you can get to what do people do, right? And third, but later we’ll ask you how can a job board or recruitment marketplace manage their customers to give you, give them appropriate job listings first, what do people do wrong in job listings? What do they do? Right?
Kat Kibben: Yeah. So that was something that I figured out pretty early because I am a marketer in the world of recruiting. And so I had these ideas about demand generation and I applied them to job postings and I made a lot of assumptions, but the only thing that came true was that everybody was making the same mistakes. I think when we talk about jobs, we assume that a good job posting, it’ll be drastically different if I’m writing a CTO versus a customer service representative. And, and that’s not the thing. Doing a great job posting is actually very consistent across every industry. So as far as the mistakes, the first thing I saw is that job postings are way too long. I’m talking like dictation 2000 words, 3000 words, 80 bullets. I’ve seen it. I’m not making that up. Right. Um, and the second issue is that they were way too long and they were way too creative.
Kat Kibben: So people really like, when they don’t know what they’re doing or they don’t know what they’re writing about, what they do is they fall into the buzzword trap. So we’re looking for highly collaborative team players to join our group of rock stars to accelerate our startup to the next level. And I can make up a sentence like that on the spot and I could do a bullion search right now and find you 10, I’m not kidding, right? 10,000,001. I know exactly. I say 10 because I’ve never been proven wrong on 10. Like if I go into the thousands, I think something bad might happen. And the last bit is that because we are not informed, because we have not talked to managers, we’re guessing. And when we’re guessing that opens the gap for biases to fall in. It opens the gap for basically for us to create something that’s not actually impactful in the outcome we want, which is hiring right person,
Peter Zollman: What’s right and what should people be doing.
Kat Kibben: Yeah. So I don’t see a lot of, Right. I have a lot of work to do still. I, I try every day . Um, but I wanna see a job postings that are about 250 words because that matches the average person’s attention span. I wanna see posts that begin with hiring manager intake that actually start with the truth. We talk about bias all the time. We talk about DEI and equity and inclusion, but we often don’t go back to the roots. One of the roots of that is how you ask how you speak to people and not making shit up is the number one way to remove bias from your job postings. I know. Crazy. And I think the last piece about a good job posting is that we’re actually describing everyday activities, not qualifications and requirements. I literally want you to describe something to a level of clarity that I could walk down the street right now in any community hand that posting to someone and say, Do you wanna do this? And they’d probably say, hell no. But they could at least tell me in their own words what that person does every day.
Peter Zollman: Hmm. The good news is, as a consultant, you really don’t want everybody to get everything figured out, , because then you gotta find a real job. You know? So I learned that my life, I learned that when we started, when we started, when we started consulting. But so you don’t want everybody to figure everything out.
Kat Kibben: I would at least like to see a lot of movement because truly people joke with me like, Why do you write job postings? You know, you’re a great writer. Go write blogs. Do this, be an employer brand expert. And I have no interest in that work. And the reason is because I care about the person on the other side. Mm. I remember what it feels like to be a job seeker, to open up the internet, type in a word and hit enter. But we don’t talk enough about the psychology that has to be happening in your life for you to be brave enough to type in that word in the first place. Because what you are admitting, the confession you are making is that something is wrong in your life and you’re willing to change everything to make it better. Mm. Right. If you are looking for a job that is you literally raising your hand and saying, I’ll change everything. I’ll change how much money I’ll make, I’ll change where I live, I’ll change where I go every day. I’ll change who I talk to every day. I’ll change the computer, my fingers touch to not do this shit anymore. And that is not a small thing psychologically or in practice and I care about them.
Steven Rothberg: Wow. I’ve never heard it described that way. Um, but I, I just, I, I love it because it is, you know, most of us work eight ish hours a day, five ish days a week. It’s half of the time when we’re awake if we get enough sleep and . It’s something that most of us, I think just sort of don’t take seriously enough how, how important it is. And, and, and like you say, changing jobs is hard. I remember one job I had where I, when I was quitting, cuz I was just getting to the next point in my life and I literally went into my boss’s office and told ’em I was leaving and I cried because I loved that job so much and I loved working for him so much and I couldn’t continue. Yeah. Cuz I was just on the next point. So point well taken. So one of the things cat that have seen you write about, um, in advising employers for how they should be writing their job posting ads is the all prevalent, required years of experience. And you tend to, and maybe always do, but the, the writings that I’ve seen come from you almost all, I think all of the ones I’ve seen basically say Stop that. Stop that, stop that. Um, why?
Kat Kibben: Yeah, because years of experience qual quantifies time, it’ll tell you how long something was done, but it does not qualify people. Mm. Now let’s say all three of us were CEOs for five years. I think we all have been CEOs for five years, Right? Would we assume that every single one of us did the exact same thing every single day? Or that we’ve had the same experiences in the last five years? Hell no. Ask a room full of recruiters that ask a room full of marketers that I can’t name an industry where if you do something for five years outside of highly regulated right? You’re nurses, I can assume that a nurse in a but there’s always nuance. The other element, the other side of years of experience that we don’t talk about enough is that it’s ageist. When you say one year of experience, what you’re expecting is someone young. When you say 15 years of experience, you’re expecting someone older. It does not qualify the people. It tells you a directional of their age. And that should not be why we’re hiring people. What I wanna see, it goes back to that comment I made earlier about what a good posting is. It’s everyday activities. What have you done that prepares you to be successful on day one? I want the answer to that question there. Over a year of experience, anytime
Peter Zollman: I presume that means in 10 seconds or less that you’re also opposed to college graduate required.
Kat Kibben: I am. Mm-hmm. . And, but the reason behind that, both of these are research. So the background here, I’m not just making this up, is not my preference. I did a 100 year research study of job postings to understand social trends and how we saw changes in job postings in those time periods. It’s fascinating work college degrees. You don’t actually see a prevalence of college degree requirements until the sixties. What was happening in the world in the sixties as a civil rights movement mm-hmm. . And what we were doing specifically, you see that lift in the southeast. And the reason we see that is because people were trying to create a four year gap between black people, between people of color and jobs. And I always wanna make that very, very explicit because when we look at the roots, we have to look at the requirement.
Kat Kibben: That’s the element I need people to ask. Did you learn something that would prepare you today? Cause the tradition, if you are doing job postings, the way they’ve always been done, I should make it very, very clear to you that job postings were used to keep people out, not bring them in. That’s how they’ve been used forever. We need to make a change. And that change will fundamentally change your outcomes. If you wanna tell ’em you care about DEI and you care about belonging and inclusion, you have to change how you ask because that is the first step.
Peter Zollman: Sounds fair. So I’m a job board. I’m, I’m a recruitment marketplace. How do I tell my advertisers, my customers, You’re doing this wrong. Do it. Right. Here’s how and here’s why other than hiring cat kibin. Of course.
Kat Kibben: Yeah. Um, you know, I think when you get the call from someone saying, we don’t get any qualified applicants, no one’s applying to my job, We need to look at the content because the infrastructure works. You know that. Right? And if you know your infrastructure works, we have to go to the next step. And, and this is how I, I’ve worked at job boards, I worked at Monster, I [email protected], which is ultimately a job board and it’s infrastructure. I understand this dynamic as someone speaking to a customer. That is the first thing I say is, we know the infrastructure works. We’ve tested, I applied to your job. Right? I know it got there. Now we need to look at the dynamics. And so I, to automate that experience, I would love to just see better prompts, Right? Don’t just say job title. Tell somebody how to find a job title. Don’t just say description. Give them some guidance questions you might ask yourself. That’s how I’m training teams around the world. Because right now, I, it’s interesting Now I’m not just training recruiters, I’m training hiring managers how to do this. Because if they don’t know why they don’t do better. And this applies to your, your customers as well.
Steven Rothberg: Very cool. And I can speak on behalf of job boards, including college job boards. First of all, the, the, the reference to the college degree. Um, here, here, uh, a absolutely. I I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen the four year degree required to sell cars. Right. You know, you have a high school degree, you’ve been the top car salesperson for 25 years. Don’t tell me you’re not qualified, Right? Don’t tell me that somebody who has 12 years of military service can’t run an accounting department. Don’t tell me that. And some employers will just say, Oh, well it’s a mark of, you know, that they have good perseverance, blah, blah, blah. Don’t tell me that somebody with 12 years of military service doesn’t have perseverance. Um, so the, the posting issue with, with job boards, one thing I would, that I would add, you know, when you’re talking about sort of the dynamics and, and maybe this is a conversation I wanna get your feedback on this cat be before we leave off, is when you’re working with employers and you, you and others at, at three years are working with employers and they say, Well, you know, this job board doesn’t work.
Steven Rothberg: This job board doesn’t work, this job board doesn’t work. Do you have conversations with them around, you know, have you gone to the job board and said, is it just our postings for that occupational field in that geographic niche? Because one thing that we will sometimes have a conversation with, with employers is, is, you know, other employers with postings similar to yours for roles similar to yours in geographic locations similar to yours, are receiving a lot of high quality applications. You aren’t. So what’s different is that a conversation that your clients are, are willing to have? Cause I’ll tell you, it’s hard for us to have that.
Kat Kibben: It is a very hard conversation. And the framework that I like to do is actually from a presentation that I give and it’s called no one’s applying. Now what? And I just created it this year because I’m gesturing broadly to the world obvious reasons. Right? We all have said that. And so what we do is treat it almost like an audit. Okay? Step one, if no one’s applying, and I’ll tell you what the first step is, it’s not a secret. The first step is to look at the job title because job title is how people find jobs, right? Mm-hmm. , it’s one of the key indicators in most job boards. And actually connecting search to outcome mm-hmm. . And if they don’t type in your job title and no one finds it, it does not matter what the rest of your job posting says. It does not matter where you put it. It does not matter what region. It does not matter what salary you label on it. Right. And we work through it that way. And I find that comparison creates competition where optimization and steps that can take that can be very quick and easy help people get to the change a little bit faster.
Steven Rothberg: Yeah. It, it’s, it’s the tree falling in the forest, um, situation. Peter, any last words,
Peter Zollman: Uh, before we do that? Yeah. I want to ask about traveling around the, uh, the states in the van. There you go. Because I’m a member of the 50 state club and I was thinking today or last night that I’ve been to all 50 states. Yeah. Twice except for four of them. So the question for you is how do you work traveling around the country in a van? And what has been the most joyous experience or location that you’ve done traveling this crazy, beautiful, exciting, screwed up messy country?
Steven Rothberg: .
Kat Kibben: You know, it’s funny you say that because when you were talking about years of experience earlier, Steven, I was thinking the, my favorite thing to do while I’m traveling is to find weird mishaps in the community and be like, this is what happens when you ask for 10 years of experience instead of Right. And so one of my favorites was I wa I was in Idaho Falls and I’m walking down, they have a really great trail system there. And I was walking down these neighborhood trails and I looked down this grassy knoll and literally whoever set up their sprinkler system didn’t actually know what they were doing because you could see the waves in it where the water was not hitting. Like literally it was like someone had drawn just don’t water this, we’re gonna make our own zigzag. And I tweeted, uh, you know, this is what happens when you ask for three years of landscaping experience instead of has set up a sprinkler system before in their life. . Like, and that’s the cool part about being in the world, is that I get to meet people and see what work is really like, you know, in my career I’ve always worked in the world of hr, I’ve always been in talent. I’ve been in a company, the h HR technology company or recruiting group or something related to this industry. I’m about to age myself since 2007. All right. So but you were only time
Steven Rothberg: At, you were only only three when you started. Yeah,
Kat Kibben: And for a long time I wrote about trends and I’m, I made it up truly. Like I don’t, I, I had research but I didn’t get it. And right now, every single day or every other day as I’m traveling, I get to be in it and it fuels the work. Peter. It, it makes the work real. It means that when I’m talking about how no one can find a utility, uh, forester in Idaho, it’s because I saw the billboard. Mm. I saw the now hiring signs on every single business in a community and it brings this lens to the work. And you know, on the, the practical side of it, there’s a good balance. I do a lot of training, but I also do a lot of traveling. And so I get to go to Airbnbs and shower and use indoor plumbing and all of that regularly. But I also spend a lot of time in national parks and hiking and being outside and just frankly experiencing the world of work or more specifically just the world. And of course everyone talks about work because that is our world.
Steven Rothberg: When I grow up, I wanna be Cat
Kat Kibben: .
Peter Zollman: Steven, you Steven, you will never grow up before the pandemic. Last time I saw you in person, cat, you had at least one cat. I presume you’re not traveling with a cat in the van No. Other than yourself.
Kat Kibben: Yes. Yes. I am the only animal , no. Um, my dogs are a little too bougie and spoiled to be part of Van Life and so they are with their other parent living very, very happily in a house with air conditioning and a very nice yard. And I visit them about every six weeks, which makes me kind of a crazy person. But it’s totally worth it. I mean, I’m going back to Colorado and to speaking of, I wanted tell you my favorite place. Um, the place that’s probably surprised me the most, the most beautiful place I’ve been is Montana by a mile. I don’t think a lot of people have gone there. I broadly I get the impression, but if you have ever seen pictures of Alaska and told yourself, I gotta go, I think Montana is a very close second if not a, an option if you don’t like traveling over water.
Peter Zollman: There you go. , we could go on for another 25 minutes, but we bumping into the clock. So the question for you is if people want to get in touch with you and ideally spend money with you, um, how do you want them to find you?
Kat Kibben: I have the benefit of being the only Katrina KBB in the world. So if you spell my name right, you will find me. And if you spell my name wrong, you will find a priest for the Navy and you’ll know you’re in a very wrong place. The haircut alone should give you a quick distinguishing factor. You’ll know it’s not me.
Peter Zollman: So they look for Katrina, k a t r i n a, Kibin, K I B B E n. Um, you want to give an email address or just find you on at your website?
Kat Kibben: Yeah. You know, if you wanna follow the van life, use the spelling that Peter just gave you and type that into Instagram and you can see all the pretty pictures. Um, and for email and talking business, it’s just [email protected].
Peter Zollman: And that’s spelled out three t h r e e or? Yep.
Kat Kibben: Uh, three, the numbers spelled out ears like the one on your head and media. I think everybody knows how to spell that one,
Peter Zollman: We hope. Fair enough. . Well, this has been fun. I would love to go on for 20 minutes more about the travels and that sort of thing, but I’ll look up Katrina Kibin on Instagram and I’ll learn more about your, uh, travels and travails.
Steven Rothberg: Absolutely.
Peter Zollman: Thanks very much for joining us and we will bump into you soon, I hope.
Steven Rothberg: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Ka.
Peter Zollman: Inside job boards and recruitment marketplaces is a co-production of Evergreen Podcasts College Recruiter and the AIM Group.
Steven Rothberg: Please subscribe for free on your favorite app, review it five stars are always nice, and recommend it to a couple of people you know who wanna learn more about job boards and recruitment marketplaces.
Peter Zollman: Special thanks to our producer and engineer, Ian Douglas. I’m your host Peters Oman of the AIM Group, the leading global consultancy in the field of marketplaces and classified advertising. Find out more about our reports on recruitment marketplaces, job boards and classifieds, including our new recruitment marketplaces annual at aim group.com/reports.
Steven Rothberg: I’m your host, Stephen Rothberg of job search site college recruiter. Each year we help more than 12 million candidates find great new jobs. Our customers are primarily Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, and other employers who hire at scale and advertise their jobs with us. You can reach me at [email protected]. Cheers.
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