Others (such as Totaljobs.com and gojobsite.co.uk) allow any business to post a vacancy online in a matter of minutes.
Extra features, such as a detailed ‘recruitment site’ for your business can cost up to thousands of pounds extra, although these are only really necessary for larger firms with many vacant jobs.
The average cost of placing a single online advert is about £200 for one month, although this can vary significantly depending on the site and the features of the advert (e.g.: size and detail). Placing multiple adverts as a long term registered business will usually be cheaper over time, but is of little benefit to a small business with just one or two vacancies.
Online advertising is generally a lot cheaper than offline, so trying an online ad at some stage is a worthwhile piece of research.
One of the major sites we researched (www.gis-a-job.com) actually offers a free basic listings of jobs, with the option of paying for better placement and features. This is ideally suited to small businesses who wish to advertise a single job for a low cost, although it is worth remembering that the free adverts will (of course) appear below the paid adverts!
How to Advertise Job Vacancies Online
The first part of the advertising process is to ensure that you know what job you are advertising!
Consider the responsibilities and functions that need to be filled, and the skills, qualifications or experience needed for a person to successfully do so.
Write down a job advert and description based upon the requirement information you have. This will then need to be altered and adjusted to match the format or template of each job site.
Tip: Make the job requirements fairly general, as too specific requirements could put off some applicants: but balance that with key, say, five main requirements.
Registration
On job sites where you need to register, advertising a vacancy involves speaking to the job site and arranging either a business setup or account.
These usually involve individual prices based upon the number of adverts and the duration of adverts you wish to place.
This service is aimed more at larger businesses or agencies with larger numbers of vacancies that can use the account setup to make multiple placements quickly.
Online Instant Placement
Many job sites have (or are introducing) an instant online system for advertising vacancies. Instead of registering, you simply fill in the advert details and pay online using a credit card. This saves the need to go through a complex procedure to set up an account.
This is of much more use to small businesses, which may only have one vacancy a year, and will not gain any real benefit from opening up an account designed for multiple adverts.
Once you have decided which site(s) to place your advert on, and followed the appropriate placement procedure, your advert will appear on the site ready to be looked at by potential employees.