ACBA launches new career website
June 17, 2011
By Susan Jacobs Jablow
The Allegheny County Bar Association is launching a new career services section on the ACBA website, to be powered by JobTarget, a Connecticut-based company. The new service will become available this summer and will continue the association’s history of providing connections between job seekers and employers.
“For years we have provided a career services website,” said David Blaner, ACBA Executive Director. The existing page on the ACBA website caters both to applicants and employers and provides a variety of job listings and links to other job sites. Blaner also meets regularly with lawyers who are seeking jobs or career advice, and job listings are included in the Pittsburgh Legal Journal, which is published by the ACBA.
However, with limited staff time to devote to developing the website, the ACBA does not have the capacity to provide the scope of job listings and other perks offered by JobTarget, such as resume-writing advice and career counseling.
With a network of some 1,100 niche job boards nationally, including about a dozen created for bar associations, JobTarget provides access to a much larger pool of job listings than the ACBA could create on its own. The service also pulls job listings from online job aggregators, making them available to users in one place.
But the service does more than collect job listings and applicants. It helps narrow the field of applicants so employers know their ads are seen by their target audience.
“It’s not just about getting people to respond to your ads,” said Tristan Jordan, vice president of marketing and partner relations for JobTarget.
When a person applies for a job online at a public site, his/her application may be one of thousands seen by a potential employer. For their part, employers are often deluged with responses to job listings, making it difficult and very time-consuming to sort through resumes to find the most qualified applicants.
Instead of posting or searching for jobs on public websites, such as Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com, niche job sites help job seekers focus only on the jobs that match their interests and narrow down the candidate pool for employers.
“It provides access to a much more targeted audience,” said Jordan. “It ensures that the jobs are exposed to highly qualified applicants, rather than just the general public.”
Blaner first learned about JobTarget about a year ago, when the Ohio State Bar Association began using the service. The career services page that JobTarget created for the Ohio Bar matches other pages on the organization’s website and is well liked by users, both job seekers and employers.
“They spoke positively about it,” said Blaner.
After observing the success the service had in Ohio and also with the New York State Bar Association, Blaner decided the ACBA should use it as well. The ACBA’s new job search page will match the style of other pages on the ACBA website, even though it will be maintained by JobTarget.
Through JobTarget, the ACBA will receive some revenue for each ad listed on the site, and will also generate traffic to the ACBA website. The service is provided free to job seekers and is open to anyone, not just ACBA members, and is designed to increase traffic to other sections of the ACBA site and to ultimately boost membership.
The ACBA’s existing career services pages receives some 25,000 hits per month, said Blaner, making it one of the most popular pages on the website. The enhanced page is likely to receive even more traffic.
Additionally, the revenue that comes in from employers posting ads is projected to total between $8,000 to $10,000 annually.
Since the service will be part of the ACBA website, a trusted site that is free to users, it will appeal not only to those who need jobs, but those who are already employed, but want to find out about new opportunities.
“A lot of the best candidates are passive job seekers,” said Jordan. “They are the holy grail to employers.”
While such candidates might not perform a wide-scale job search, they might follow a lead they found while perusing the ACBA website.
Employers can also search resumes through JobTarget, to find candidates who match their criteria, even if they have not applied directly to the company. The employers can see the applicants’ past experience, but job seekers’ names are kept anonymous, until they consent to reveal their names to the employer.
Blaner said the new service will be great for job seekers, employers, and the ACBA.
“People are looking for work. They need tools that will help them,” he said. “This is a good initiative for the ACBA.”
The Allegheny County Bar Association is launching a new career services section on the ACBA website, to be powered by JobTarget, a Connecticut-based company. The new service will become available this summer and will continue the association’s history of providing connections between job seekers and employers.
“For years we have provided a career services website,” said David Blaner, ACBA Executive Director. The existing page on the ACBA website caters both to applicants and employers and provides a variety of job listings and links to other job sites. Blaner also meets regularly with lawyers who are seeking jobs or career advice, and job listings are included in the Pittsburgh Legal Journal, which is published by the ACBA.
However, with limited staff time to devote to developing the website, the ACBA does not have the capacity to provide the scope of job listings and other perks offered by JobTarget, such as resume-writing advice and career counseling.
With a network of some 1,100 niche job boards nationally, including about a dozen created for bar associations, JobTarget provides access to a much larger pool of job listings than the ACBA could create on its own. The service also pulls job listings from online job aggregators, making them available to users in one place.
But the service does more than collect job listings and applicants. It helps narrow the field of applicants so employers know their ads are seen by their target audience.
“It’s not just about getting people to respond to your ads,” said Tristan Jordan, vice president of marketing and partner relations for JobTarget.
When a person applies for a job online at a public site, his/her application may be one of thousands seen by a potential employer. For their part, employers are often deluged with responses to job listings, making it difficult and very time-consuming to sort through resumes to find the most qualified applicants.
Instead of posting or searching for jobs on public websites, such as Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com, niche job sites help job seekers focus only on the jobs that match their interests and narrow down the candidate pool for employers.
“It provides access to a much more targeted audience,” said Jordan. “It ensures that the jobs are exposed to highly qualified applicants, rather than just the general public.”
Blaner first learned about JobTarget about a year ago, when the Ohio State Bar Association began using the service. The career services page that JobTarget created for the Ohio Bar matches other pages on the organization’s website and is well liked by users, both job seekers and employers.
“They spoke positively about it,” said Blaner.
After observing the success the service had in Ohio and also with the New York State Bar Association, Blaner decided the ACBA should use it as well. The ACBA’s new job search page will match the style of other pages on the ACBA website, even though it will be maintained by JobTarget.
Through JobTarget, the ACBA will receive some revenue for each ad listed on the site, and will also generate traffic to the ACBA website. The service is provided free to job seekers and is open to anyone, not just ACBA members, and is designed to increase traffic to other sections of the ACBA site and to ultimately boost membership.
The ACBA’s existing career services pages receives some 25,000 hits per month, said Blaner, making it one of the most popular pages on the website. The enhanced page is likely to receive even more traffic.
Additionally, the revenue that comes in from employers posting ads is projected to total between $8,000 to $10,000 annually.
Since the service will be part of the ACBA website, a trusted site that is free to users, it will appeal not only to those who need jobs, but those who are already employed, but want to find out about new opportunities.
“A lot of the best candidates are passive job seekers,” said Jordan. “They are the holy grail to employers.”
While such candidates might not perform a wide-scale job search, they might follow a lead they found while perusing the ACBA website.
Employers can also search resumes through JobTarget, to find candidates who match their criteria, even if they have not applied directly to the company. The employers can see the applicants’ past experience, but job seekers’ names are kept anonymous, until they consent to reveal their names to the employer.
Blaner said the new service will be great for job seekers, employers, and the ACBA.
“People are looking for work. They need tools that will help them,” he said. “This is a good initiative for the ACBA.”
