Better use of job boards

Greg Wyatt • March 5, 2024

Job boards are often the first port of call when new to a job search.

It’s a natural inclination that they are where vacancies are to be found, quickly followed by disappointment, anxiety and frustration when you get close to 0% hit rate.

And not even a single reply!

But, let’s take a step back, look at the overall picture, and make a plan.

In this article we’ll look at:

  1. A background on job boards

  2. Job board priorities and what these mean for you

  3. Better use of job boards

  4. How to optimise for CV databases

Yes this is long, but it is jam-packed with insight on the recruitment industry, why we are the way we are, and how you can take the right steps forward.

1 / A background on job boards

There are many job boards in the UK who sell their systems to employers and recruitment agencies.

You may be familiar with

  • Indeed

  • Reed

  • CV Library

  • Jobsite / Totaljobs (the same company, owned by Stepstone)

  • Monster (used to be decent many years ago)

  • LinkedIn (yes it is a job board, disguised by being a social media platform)

Aside from generic job boards, there are also many sites specialist to your niche.

Job boards broadly sell two things to their clients - advertising and access to their CV database.

LinkedIn differs in how it is wrapped up with content and networking, but it too has a form of CV database in how we can use the Recruiter Licence to search profiles (you can even make do without).

There are also aggregator websites, which scrape (automatically copy) content from one job board to their own or a 3rd party. You can often tell because when you click apply it takes you to another job board (rather than properly start an application).

Indeed and LinkedIn also act as aggregators and can lead to no end of confusion on whether adverts are still live, or if they were filled in 2022, when adverts are scraped across multiple boards.

True story - CV Library once set up an affiliate arrangement with a recruitment agency that scraped their ads. If you googled Bircham Wyatt Recruitment (that’s me) you’d see that agency list my ads - it looked like I worked for them.

CV Library was good enough to put a stop to this when I unleashed my outrage on LinkedIn (made a post about it and got some influencers involved).

The job board market in the UK is a hot mess.

2/ Job board priorities and what that means for you

Job boards want to sell their services and make money, which is of course entirely sensible.

To support their argument they use all sorts of metrics, such as the number of CVs on their database and the number of applications made (by job or month).

It’s to their advantage that adverts receive as many applications as possible, so their advice on improving advert performance is geared around this. Rather than around suitable candidates.

Indeed, the most effective job adverts have fewer applications and a higher number of suitable candidates - that’s what I aim for in mine.

To maximise the number of applications they do things like scraping, aggregation and affiliate arrangements.

They also offer services like automatic relisting, whereby an advert is (for example) reposted as New once a week throughout the term of the listing (could be up to 6 weeks by default, or longer by choice).

These are sold as benefits to employers, which might help when there are limited candidates, but likely hinders when there are too many candidates for jobs.

They also make it as Easy(Apply) as possible for you to apply to these jobs, so that you can be an additional metric.

As Goodhart says “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.

The consequence for you as an applicant is twofold.

You are encouraged to be one of the numbers of applicants to purposefully generic adverts you are not the most suitable for.

When you are the most suitable, you are in competition both with people from the line above, and people who are wholly unsuitable (some of whom follow the guru’s advice to ‘shoot your shot’).

We’ll come back to this notion above in the next section.

I should point out I don’t think job boards do this cynically, I think they do this because they think high numbers are best.

It’s also a problem for recruiters who may find it impossible to deal with this volume, unless through automation or by finding ways to manually eliminate applications at scale.

Job boards, employers, agencies and candidates are all wrapped up in this cycle of speed and volume. Most everyone but the job seeker thinks it’s the best way to recruit - it is not.

Though it might be the best way to make money.

And yes jobseekers are accountable too, but only because of how they have been trained to apply.

What do I mean by reducing applications at scale?

Well, as I said to one person today, I’ve heard recruiters rejecting everyone after the 40th applicant, no matter how good they might be, because they have enough for an interview shortlist.

That’s rare, but it’s one of many examples of how shortcuts might be taken to contend with an impossible task. I’m not excusing it - these are companies who signal loudly about candidate experience and the importance of diversity.

Don’t blame recruiters.

Don’t blame employers.

Blame the system we are all part of.

And if you ever find yourself a hiring authority - be the change you hope for now.

3/ Better use of job boards

Let’s go back to that point about applications.

In the current market, it’s not uncommon to see 100 to 4000 applications per vacancy. That’s wild!

Not all job boards show this metric, although LinkedIn does (in a broken sort of way - often they’ll register clicks falsely as applications. This can be when an ATS is involved and is referred to as attrition if full applications are not completed.)

However, rarely are those applications actually candidates (people who can do and should want to do the job).

For a typical job-description templated advert you can expect 90 to 99% of applicants to be wholly unsuitable. I don’t have specific evidence of this, only anecdotes in talking to many recruiters.

Even in my adverts, which I take great care to write, at best I’d expect 40% of applicants to be candidates.

What do I mean by wholly unsuitable?

People who require work permits when a role doesn’t sponsor them.

People who don’t meet the minimum requirements set out in an advert.

People who are clearly unsuitable for this role.

So when you see a number, don’t be disheartened by the number alone.

As a jobseeker, your minimum requirement to apply for a job should be that you can logically prove to yourself, based on the evidence provided (which might be generic twaddle) that you are suitable.

If you can’t, you shouldn’t apply.

You’ll go from an approximately 0% hit rate to… well about the same, but with less time and bother.

This also means avoiding step-down jobs unless you can show how and why being overqualified is a good thing, as well as how and why you are interested beyond wanting a job.

It’s not pleasant having to write this, but the simple truth is, through a transactional application, you will seldom be considered if there are ‘core-fit’ applicants available.

The same goes for transferrable skills.

Unless you can show how your skills apply, how can skilled recruiters see your candidacy?

If not them; how about the less effective recruiters?

If you see adverts you aren’t sure about, by all means apply.

But treat them as transactionally as they are written. Fire, schedule one followup, then forget.

Save your time, energy and focus for non-transactional adverts - the ones that show you how great you are for them, the ones that sing.

These are rare, but we’ve written them carefully with you in mind.

The care taken to write them means we want you to apply because you are an ideal candidate who helps us see your suitability.

Your hit rate will be far higher.

Sadly it will still be close to zero if you are in a specialism for which there are many great candidates and few vacancies. I’ve seen this recently with talent acquisition, HR and marketing.

The state of the market is out of our control.

At least job boards aren't the be all and end all.

When your skills apply, provide evidence.

This is the main case in which tailoring CVs is effective.

If an advert uses synonyms for your skills, and they are proveably the same, use their language. An HR Manager can be a Head of People if the duties are the same.

This post on LinkedIn may help with searchesl

Show common process, common lifecycles, common context (company size, trajectory, culture) - show how you meet their requirement.

These principles allow a human reader to see your candidacy, and allow you to ‘beat the ATS’. Any choice or tool to eliminate you afterwards is a human decision.

Always show how you meet the essential requirements, and the desirable ones too if you can. A perhaps obvious point the majority of applications neglect.

… tips and bits

Finding vacancies is as important as applying for them. Collect those synonyms you’ve been tailoring your CV with and use these in your searches.

If you find an obscure term which represents what you can do, why not search solely on that term?

You might find a horribly written advert whose only correct word is that term.

It’s a trick we use to find candidates too - occasionally I might search on something like ‘egnieer’ because typos don’t make a bad candidate.

Location is a key search criterion.

Most people search from their home address. How about running tight searches where you are prepared to work - e.g. 1 mile from CB4 0WZ (where I worked many moons ago)?

Lastly, try not to let a ‘bad recruitment’ process get in the way of what might be good enough employment. Many of us know not what we do.

Competitive salary. Cover letter. All these unsavoury things - I know great companies who ask for the same.

4/ How to optimise for CV databases

When you apply to a vacancy on a new job board, invariably they will have a CV database tethered to your application.

Maybe it will be hidden in their terms and conditions.

A CV database is an opportunity for you to be found.

Sometimes this will be for vacancies that are never advertised, such as an example I wrote about today.

You have an opportunity to leverage your use of CV databases to improve the amount of inbound enquiries you receive.

  1. Log all the job boards you’ve applied for

  2. Make a list of all that have CV databases, including login in details

  3. Ensure your CV is up-to-date containing the key words for the job you are most suitable for (skills, job titles, memberships, frameworks, tools, processes, everything)

  4. And that your contact details are correct.

  5. Check all the details on your account. Salary details, location, preferences should all be current.

  6. Register your postcode for where you want to be found. If you plan to move to Scunthorpe in April, that should be your current location. It’s where we will look for you.

  7. Update your CV and profiles once a week. It’s a chore but won’t take long. If you are active in the past week, this will show up in recruiter searches. Particularly if, for example in the post I shared above, I only look at active CVs from the past 14 days. This is a mega-hack no one talks about (it’s not a hack, there are no hacks, just bloody hard work, it is true though).

That’s it! I’m sure I’ve forgotten a bunch of stuff that should be included. But this has taken me two hours to write on a Tuesday night. I’ll correct any errors when I can.

DM me on LinkedIn with any questions, or email me at greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk with any questions. I’ll reply when I can and, if appropriate will update this article.

Thank you and good luck.

Greg

p.s. don’t forget to check out my recruitment newsletter, if you recruit at any point or know someone who wants to break the transactional mould - gregwyatt.substack.com.

Introduction to personal branding

By Greg Wyatt • March 30, 2026
What follows is Chapter 39 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's 10 months old, so surely the algorithm has moved on right? Indeed, my own content performance has tanked if you compare 2026 to 2025. Around 12 million views of my content last year, while if I extrapolate my year to date performance, it looks like a little shy of 640,000 views. My LinkedIn feed is quieter, yet real life relevant conversations go from strength to strength, many of which stem from my content. Look, I don't love the term, but I am a fan of putting your message out there, across multiple means, so that your most relevant audience might become aware of you. And perhaps your relevant audience is an audience of one, a person who can put you nearer that job. Which is the only algorithm you need. This is a three part series, with part 2 on " Content strategy and philosophy " and part 3 on " A flair post ". Click on the links for the unedited versions on Substack. 39 - Introduction to personal branding Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a free marketing platform, where you can build a reputation through the words of your posts, comments and messages. Personal branding is a viable tactic as part of a multi-channel approach to your job search and it can bring opportunities to you. I'll start off by saying I'm not a fan of the term personal branding. It can lead to make-work which can even get in the way of what you should be doing. Writing and using content to create experiences that support a job search is a great idea and calling it personal branding - as a discrete activity - isn’t a bad thing. I expect there are many mediums through which you can build a personal brand. I'll focus on LinkedIn because of how entrenched it is in other job search activities. What a personal brand is For businesspeople the idea is that by building awareness of your personality, lifestyle and what you're promoting, you also build trust. So that when people are ready to buy, they'll buy your products. The brand might be personal. The goal is sales. When you see personal branding on LinkedIn it’s often a business that promotes their services through the account of the author. ‘Here’s my puppy, buy my stuff.’ Take note that the target audience for these advice posts is the businesspeople above. And these posts often seek to part them from their money. Your goals are similar. If there’s a commercial outcome you want, it’s likely a single job, not a throughput of leads. You’ll also see that controversial content gets huge engagement and can also repel readers. If you need a job, what’s the danger of writing overly spicy content? Could a reader make a decision against you based on your words? How much you need any job should inform the experience you want to create for your readers. How it sits in your wider job search Publishing content is about raising awareness and starting conversations with the right people. This can be your profile, written posts, newsletters, (bestselling) career breakdown kits, videos, you name it - anything you can become known for. In many ways the hierarchy of relationships your content appeals to is the same as with networking. Content can be publishing posts, commenting on the posts of others, sending direct messages. I’d argue even your applications and interviews are part of your personal brand. I think of LinkedIn posts like a plumber’s van driving around town. Most of the time you’ll disregard the van unless it cuts you up with noxious fumes. When you have a leaky pipe, you’ll surely take note of their number. It can support an application if a hiring manager decides to surreptitiously stalk your profile. And it can work against you if it suggests problem behaviour. A good balance for content is the poster in my daughters’ primary school from a few years back: THINK. Is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? Achieve those five points and content will rarely work against your job search. Content should be consistent with your wider activity. Which means that everything people (potential employers) experience of you is a complementary and non-contradictory message. Content that contradicts your CV or cover letter may lead to red flags, whether that’s fair or not. Content should be intentional. HOW TO GO viral, and why you shouldn’t Anyone who writes content will enjoy the sweet, sweet flow of dopamine when you see reactions and comments trickle in. Such as that first flair post announcing you are available to help your next employer with examples of your achievements and what you are looking for. Do that and you’ll get loads of engagement. Why haven’t you done it yet? Tag me in and I’ll support you. Or you can do what most people do and say, ‘I’m sorry to announce I’ve lost my job, please help’ and that will get loads too. Because it is relevant and relatable to fellow job seekers, recruiters and sympathisers. Then you feel the soul-crushing defeat of a well-thought-out post, highlighting a problem in your industry, with tumbleweed to follow. Both types of content have a place. That tumbleweed post is relevant and relatable to a niche audience. I try to take a land and expand approach to content - job seeker advice, recruitment advice and stories, ponderings and satire, which I use to tackle topics from different directions. Over the past three years I’ve had between 3m to 11m views of my posts and I’ve gained a bit of business through them too. What I don’t do is try to go viral anymore. Because when I have gone viral with a few 1m impression posts, it’s taken weeks to extricate myself from them and there hasn’t been real benefit. I find my tumbleweed posts start better conversations from lurkers - those that never engage publicly. I promised you I’d show you how to go viral. Here you go. Relevance + relatability + readability + entitlement. Maybe add a selfie. If that seems too simple, search for this sentence on LinkedIn: “An employee asked me if he can WORK from HOME permanently.” You’ll need to use the double speech mark to search on the phrase, and rank by Posts. ‘Does it really work?’ asked Charles. I told him to try it as an experiment. He rarely got more than a few hundred impressions per post. 170,000 impressions, 2,000 reactions. Pretty viral for a first timer. It is the wrong path. What do these posts actually say? Who are they aimed at? And if they don’t appeal to people who can help you reach your objective, what’s the point? 

Nothing but the truth. Innovation from Iteration, pt 4

By Greg Wyatt • March 26, 2026
I was tempted to use another Tom Cruise AI image for this article, but his hands ended up looking like feet, which wasn't a true representation of him. Probably not fair to use AI in this way either, stealing copyrighted material without permission. And so I use this AI 'stock image' instead, which is probably also highly unethical, but feels more suitable and sufficient . Anyway here's an article about why the same principles are crucial for good recruitment: ‘True and Fair’ is an accountancy concept that lies at the heart of reporting, and can be applied effectively in recruitment. Its meaning is that any financial statement made about a company should accurately and completely represent its financial position and performance. The role of auditing is to confirm that documentation meets this definition. Do so and everyone knows what they are dealing with. HMRC, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees – useful, and in many cases necessary, to have access to a true and fair view of a company’s accounts. Can something be true and not fair? In 2001, Enron went bust, a huge scandal with real-life repercussions that led to new legislation in the US. Their accounts were true, in that they conformed with the required laws and standards. However they had an incredibly complex reporting structure which made it impossible to see the overwhelming debt they had. Poof! Bye-bye a $100bn company when this all came out in the wash. How about fair but not true? This can happen if a situation is described which gives a fair picture but lacks accuracy. An example here could be the UK politician who HMRC deemed behaved fairly but made errors in his tax reporting. Only a few million quid plus penalty. What types of recruitment documentation does this apply to? Three key ones that spring to mind (although there’s no reason it can’t be applied everywhere): The job description. The job advertisement. The CV. If these three documents were always a true and fair representation of either a job or a candidate, you’d interview and hire better candidates who stick around longer. With the caveat that these documents should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’, if you remember last week's edition. Documents are the first step in a recruitment process, relating to a decision to apply and the decision to interview. Is it not the case, that the second most common complaint in recruitment is “not what we expected”? Therefore, if we nipped this complaint in the bud, with true and fair documentation, wouldn’t life be better for everyone in the recruitment process? What does true and fair mean in recruitment documentation? I think it has to cover three points. 1/ factually correct 2/ shows context suitably 3/ describes sufficiently An immediate objection might be that job descriptions are always true and fair, but I’d argue this is actually rarely the case. If you recruit for a new role, do you audit your job description against the current context? If you have a generic job family description does it show the specific day-to-day duties of a role? Have things changed in the current role that makes it different to the last time you recruited? A common scenario in recruitment is that Greg resigns, and the hiring manager says “we’d love someone just like Greg”. Yet if Greg resigned, wouldn’t someone just like Greg be at risk of resigning for the same reasons in future? Would now-Greg have applied for the same role that then-Greg applied for? Which definition of Greg is the true and fair one you’d hire? It feels strange writing my name like this. There are lots of different situations in which a job description that was true and fair a few years ago is no longer so. The only way to ensure it is true and fair, is to audit documentation prior to going live. You may think a fully representative and accurate contextual analysis is too time-consuming for most vacancies, especially where it doesn’t actually matter if there is some inaccuracy. “Oh yeah, that’s not relevant anymore”. But if you have a key hire that can make a difference in your business, ‘true and fair’ should be the starting point, each and every time. If you have a systematic process that finds truth and fairness, you’ll see the benefit of applying the same across any vacancy – for the reason that the time invested at the outset is offset by interviewing fewer unsuitable candidates and wasting less time and resources overall. And what should be the more important reason of better recruitment outcomes. For any project I take on, this is the first step – getting the documentation in order. Get it right and everything flows from there. It’s a key reason behind my nearly 100% fill rate. It’s also one of the reasons my average tenure is over 4 years for key hires. These achievements don’t come down to chance. They come from my process. If you've forgotten why suitability and sufficiency is the other pillar, here's an example that isn't suitable: Nineteen experiential bullet points might be true and fair but will also encourage ideal candidates to run away screaming. See you next time. Regards, Greg p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services: - commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies) - manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client. This can be a large as end-to-end delivery of a programme of vacancies, or as small as writing one job advert for a key hire- recruitment strategy setting - outplacement support