Career Centers: Beyond Job Postings

Online career centers for associations are a valuable resource that supports members by connecting them with employers looking to hire highly qualified candidates. However, your job board can go beyond job postings and offer other member benefits to help members advance in their careers.

Your career center is a great platform to use to inform your members of industry updates and offer other career advancement resources. When your job board functions as an extension of your association’s website, it becomes more than just a website to look for jobs - it becomes a hub for valuable industry and career information your members need.

Here are a few ways your career center can go beyond job postings and provide additional support for members' career journeys.

Resume Resources

Since your members are looking for career opportunities, it’s important to offer resume resources that can help them make a good first impression and move into the interview process. Writing a resume takes a lot of time and effort, especially for specific industries that require special qualifications.

There are many different approaches to offering resume resources for your members. One example is hosting a resume critique session, either 1-on-1 or in a group setting, that dissects a members resume and helps improve the content, format and design to make it more attractive to employers. Another example is offering resume writing resources like courses or example resumes from past members that have been successful.  

Once your members resumes are ready to go, they can upload their resume to their job seeker profile and make them public for potential employers to search and reach out if the candidate is qualified. You can also drive new member revenue by adding this benefit to your career center since it’s a desired resource for job seekers.

Career Paths

Your members want to advance in their careers but trying to map out their own growth can be difficult and time consuming - especially when there are several paths they can follow. Career Paths, a product unique to Web Scribble, provides data and information specific to each career path that could be taken. Your members gain access to salary data aggregated from multiple sources to give them the best information possible, job descriptions, required education and qualifications through each stage of growth and much more.

It’s a great product that supplements your career center and takes the stress off members' shoulders when planning their futures. Career Paths also benefits your association by integrating with other association technology products like your association management software, learning management software or events planning software to help improve engagement and non-dues revenue.

Career Fairs

Networking is a huge part of finding a job, so hosting live or virtual events for your members to attend is another way your career center goes beyond job postings. On-site career fairs in conjunction with your annual event is a great way to add more career enrichment opportunities to your event. However, if you are unable to host a live event, you can turn it into a virtual one. Virtual events allow you to reach members who can’t attend the physical event and broaden your scope of attendees to bring in more revenue. Since virtual events are cheaper than live events, you have the opportunity to provide more throughout the year as well.

To supplement the career fair, you can consider distributing a career center focused recruitment guide to your attendees with job advertisements from employers looking to hire your members. This is a great opportunity to provide an added member benefit and generate non-dues revenue from selling advertising space.

Industry Information

No matter what industry you serve, it is always important to share industry trends and updates with your members. Sending out an email newsletter is a popular choice, but showcasing that information on your career center site is a more effective way to communicate that information. Your members can’t delete that information from their screen or forget about it since it will always be directly on the site. There are different options on how to display the information like a career center landing page, a dedicated information page, or banner images with clickable links.

Providing information on your career center also drives more traffic to your site since that’s where the valuable information is kept. This can be used as a marketing tool for prospective new members as well.

There are many ways a career center can be more than just a place for members to search for jobs. There is plenty of opportunity to expand the depth of your career center resources to become a trusted, well-known site for industry and career advancement information.