Webinar: Why a job board is essential for your Economic Development Organization's success

Ted Dacko

Hello everyone and welcome to our webinar, 'Why A Job Board Is Essential For Your Economic Development Organization'. My name is Ted Dacko and I'll serve as your host today, and I'm joined by Mike Kling who's the co-founder of TrueJob. Hello Mike.

Michael Kling

Hello.

Ted Dacko

And Phil Santer who's SVP of Ann Arbor SPARK.

Phil Santer

Hi.

Ted Dacko

Hello Phil. Before we get started, a couple of housekeeping issues for all of you. All of you are in listen only mode. If you have a question, please type that question into the dialogue box and we're going to try to get to the questions at the end. You should be able to find your question dialogue box either at the top or at the bottom of your screen. Slides will be sent to all participants, and a recorded version of the webinar will be available by probably Monday of next week in case you want to share it. We are going to be doing some polling questions as part of the webinar, and we would greatly appreciate your participation in those polling questions. And then if you are interested in anything that you hear today, we would be happy to follow up with you.

So the next part we want to talk about is if you're having any trouble, any technical difficulties, try moving your mouse to the top of the bottom of the screen and that should give you the zoom menu. Zoom is a product we're using today for the webinar. Check your volume and headphone connection if you can't hear us very, very well. Any other technical problems, please call us if you need to. So here is our agenda for today. I'd like to introduce our guest speaker and then we're going to do an introduction to TrueJob, who TrueJob is. We'll talk a little bit about the goals of economic development organization and why a job board is important to EDOs. We'll talk about key criteria for a job board for economic development organizations as well as metrics that need to be measured by that job board. We'll provide you a simple example just to give you a feel for what that might look like. We'll talk about the benefits and then we're going to do a question and answer with Phil Santer who we introduced earlier, who is Vice President of Ann Arbor SPARK.

We will then take your questions that you've asked during the webinar and provide some next steps. So let's begin with our first speaker, I'd like to introduce Mike Kling. Mike is the co-founder of TrueJob. He was trained at MIT and is responsible for product development and customer support at TrueJob. He's committed to and passionate about matching the right companies with the right candidates. Mike, welcome to the webinar.

Michael Kling

Thanks Ted.

Ted Dacko

I would like to start Mike, if you could, by telling us a little bit about TrueJob, what it is, and what is this company?

Michael Kling

Yeah sure, so TrueJob was founded in 2015, and we exist to help EDOs do a better job of serving their local clients and businesses. And specifically to help them with this challenge of talent acquisition. And the way that we do this is using a cloud based job board software that we've developed, and it integrates into your existing website, and that software helps make connections between employers and job seekers.

Ted Dacko

So this is very, very different than standard job boards that you would see out there, because it has appeal specifically to economic development organizations and it provides a connection and meets the needs of all three constituents, and we'll talk about those a little bit more, right? Okay. So what are the goals of EDOs Mike and specifically how that relates to job boards?

Michael Kling

Sure, so before we go further, I'll give just a little bit of background on EDOs. Obviously this is going to be review for most of you here today, because you work with an EDO, but at least this gives us something we can all start with on the same page. So EDOs, they serve business and people that are part of your community, and that community might be all different sizes. So some EDOs exist at the the town level or the county level, and others serve larger regions. Maybe a combination of counties, or maybe at the state level. Also, EDOs get funding from different sources. So I know some of you here today are maybe part of your local government. Maybe you get public funding in that way. Other EDOs get public funding in the form of grants and some have corporate sponsors, and so get funding from a combination of sources. But kind of the over arching goal of all EDOs is this idea of supporting businesses and promoting job growth to create a thriving community.

So I'll break that down a little bit. Here on the left are a couple of specific goals that EDOs might have. So this could include retaining existing businesses and attracting new businesses to their community. Then on the right are a couple of the tools that EDOs might use to help achieve those goals. So maybe you do some of these but not all of these, but it include different incentives, help with site selection, financing, maybe education for first time business owners, and sourcing talent for these companies.

Ted Dacko

Okay so Mike, why a job board?

Michael Kling

Well before I get to that, I'll just point out a couple of other points on this slide. Other goals of EDOs can include understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the region that you're serving. Also promoting the community that you're serving, the quality of life available there. So this ties into again, why a job board makes sense. Maybe different data that you collect can help with achieve of these goals. Whether it's about the work force, or about the region in general. Maybe you have different events that you have, or different marketing outreach efforts. So it should be pretty clear how a job board connects specifically with talent sourcing and with collecting workforce data. But as we're going to see as we go through this, a job board really can help with all of these goals, and we'll see how it sort of touches on everything.

Ted Dacko

Okay. So why a job board?

Michael Kling

Yes. So, you know all EDOs, they're interested in improving the perception of their brand. So a better brand for your EDO is going to mean that you're going to have an easier time attracting new businesses to your community and serving those existing businesses that are already in your community. Also a better brand is going to be correlated with your ability to retain and attract funding. Again whether that's public or private funding. And part of your approach to improving that brand might include increasing your web traffic. You know more visitors to your website is going to mean more awareness of and use of the services that you provide.

Ted Dacko

Now do you think there are any differences in terms of size of economic development organizations, or is this a universal need across all sizes and geographies?

Michael Kling

I would definitely say this is a need across all sizes.

Ted Dacko

It certainly must be a need across all geographies because we have registrations from Maine to Hawaii for this webinar. So for those of you in Hawaii, aloha. Okay, let's start with a survey question if we might. Does your economic development organization website currently have a job board? And if you have career resources but no job board, answer no. So please if we can have your attention, and participate in this survey for us. A couple of more minutes, a couple of responses coming in. And we'll stop the survey, go ahead Mike.

So most are saying no, they don't.

Michael Kling

Yeah and that's about what we'd expect based on the research that we've done. We don't see a lot of EDOs that are taking advantage of this opportunity right now.

Ted Dacko

We'll find out a little bit later that our guest speaker did have a job board and decided to change it. So we'll actually be covering that issue as well for those of you who have answered you already have one. All right, so what are the problems?

Michael Kling

Okay. So yeah what is the problem that a job board is really trying to solve? So we talked about EDOs a little bit already. Your organizations maybe have limited funding and limited resources for new projects, but at the same time there's employers in your community that have open positions. They're trying to find qualified workers to fill those positions. Then there are job seekers. So individuals maybe in your community already, or outside of your community that are out there. They're looking for job opportunities. And a job board is really an opportunity for you to be the connection between those two groups. So you as an EDO, you already know about your region, you know about the companies in your region. And that just means you're really well positioned again to take advantage of this opportunity with a job board.

Ted Dacko

Okay. Now there are job boards out there, so what's the problem with the ones that are out there, the big ones like Monster and Indeed, and folks like that?

Michael Kling

Yeah, so right. What is wrong with these sites? Whether it's Indeed or Monster. Some of your local employers are probably using some of these resources right now. What we've seen is, when we've looked at a lot of economic development organization websites, maybe you have some resources on there. Maybe you even have links on your website to some of these larger job boards. So take a step back if you're doing that and think about that. You have a company that came to your website, they were interested enough to look for more resources, and then you sent them away. You lost that engagement that you had with them, and you lost any opportunity for your brand, your organization, to get credit for being part of that process. So that's one problem.

Another problem is that sites like Monster, sites like Indeed, they don't know your region the way that you do. So a site like Indeed cares a lot more about having a lot of jobs, a large quantity of jobs as opposed to the quality of those job postings. These sites are generic across regions, across industries. And ideally, if you had a job board you could control then you could highlight key industries, key types of positions that are available in your community, and you could do that using curation. That means choosing specifically the companies and jobs that are going to appear on a job board.

Ted Dacko

So if an economic development organization was for instance trying to promote technology in their region, they could focus on technology companies and high tech, high level jobs as opposed to secretarial positions or something like that?

Michael Kling

Exactly.

And then finally, again, if you have maybe links on your website to some of these other job boards, when people leave your site, you're not only losing that engagement with those employers, you're also losing valuable information and data. You're losing metrics so that you can see, who are the new employers in my community? What jobs are they posting? How are hiring trends changing over time? This is really important data that you can use to show the benefits that your organization are providing to your community. And we'll talk more about metrics later as well.

Ted Dacko

Okay. So all these folks that are on the phone today, how do they know that they're a candidate for a job board?

Michael Kling

Yeah, so we've listed a few questions here that you could ask yourself about your organization, so I'll just run through those. Think to yourself, could I be providing more support to my local customers and clients? Do I want to attract more talent to my region? Are you concerned about losing public or private funding? Could your website be improved and would more traffic to your website be helpful? And finally, are you interested in promoting the kinds of jobs that your local businesses are recruiting for?

Ted Dacko

Okay, so Mike, what criteria should folks be looking for? What are the key features and functions that are needed to solve the problems that you talked about?

Michael Kling

Sure, so first, you should make sure whatever solution you choose for a job board is a hosted solution. So what do I mean by that? Well, you want something where there's no software for you to install or maintain yourself. And secondly you need to find a solution that's designed with the needs of economic development organizations specifically in mind. So now we're going to kind of break down what some key criteria for EDOs are.

So first branding, we've talked about this a little bit already, but you want credit for what's happening on your job board. Whatever job board you choose needs to integrate seamlessly with your website and any sort of email communications that are maybe happening with employers, with job seekers, that are interacting with your job board, they need to have your logo, your brand so that again, people associate the success they’re having on the job board with you.

Next is curation, which we also touched on a little bit already. But this just means that you need the ability to choose what jobs and which companies are appearing on your job board. And Ted mentioned SPARK already, who we'll hear more from in a little bit. But SPARK was interested in promoting tech jobs, high level positions what they call knowledge worker jobs, and using curation they can do that. They can filter the postings specifically to show that.

Okay, easy to use and maintain. So adding a job board to your website, you don't want that to create more work for you. So right now again, Ann Arbor SPARK, the administrative assistant to the president manages the entire job posting, job board process. So that means logging in, looking at the new jobs that have been posted, the new companies that have signed up, managing those approvals and looking at analytics, that whole process takes just minutes a week. So it's not a big time commitment.

And another separate point on this, say your organization wants to recruit more tech workers, more high level positions to your community. Well, your job board, it better be up to modern tech standards, it better look good. If it looks terrible then these workers are going to come to your website, they're going to look at it and they're going to leave. And your going to be missing out on that great opportunity.

Ted Dacko

And they're going to hurt your branding.

Michael Kling

Exactly.

Okay, next point here is Pandora-like matching. Now if you've ever used the website Pandora, this is a music website. You listen to songs, and as you do you can like or dislike those songs and then you'll get recommendations for songs over time that the site thinks you might be interested in. Now ideally, a job board could do something similar for job seekers. So job seekers come, they look at postings, like or dislike the postings that they are interested in, maybe even like or dislike words or phrases in the job description that they're interested or not interested in, and over time get recommendations of positions that are more relevant to them. So this is a benefit for the job seeker, they get more relevant positions, and it’s also a benefit for the employer, because they get information about these likes and dislikes that can help them improve their postings and attract better, more qualified candidates over time. And I'll just emphasize again, this is not a common feature that you're going to find on a lot of job boards, but this is something that we've seen is important at TrueJob and something that we've built into our platform.

Okay, next, automated job scraping. Now imagine you're launching your job board. Imagine that first day when you go live with your new job board on your website. So what is it going to look like if no employers have signed up already and haven't posted any jobs yet? It's just going to be empty, and that's not a great way to attract job seekers, attract employers to post there if it doesn't look like anything's happening. So it's so important that you do have some way of pulling in job postings from your community when you launch. That doesn't mean pulling in low quality postings from sites like Monster and Indeed.

Again we saw how important this was at TrueJob, so we have built some technology that actually goes directly to company websites and pulls in job postings from those sites so that when you launch a new job board you have some high quality postings there from the start.

All right, next, automated member support. So I sort of touched on this before, but we don't want adding a job board to your website to create more work for you. So you don't want to start getting calls from employers or job seekers saying, "Hey, how do I do this on the job board?" Or, "How do I post something?" So it's important that whatever solution you choose has some assets available, whether that be videos, whether it be written documentation, that you can point people towards as a reference so that they can solve whatever challenges they're having.

Ted Dacko

So if you have for instance 100 or 200 employers in your area, you don't want to start taking calls from all these organizations, you want to just be able to direct them to a series of resources that allow them to answer their own questions and be self sufficient? Is that what I'm hearing?

Michael Kling

Yeah, exactly.

Ted Dacko

Okay great, thank you.

Michael Kling

Yeah. That's something that again, we saw that was important at TrueJob so it's something that we provide.

All right, next, applicant tracking system. If you're a community that works with some smaller companies, this can be really important. These are companies that maybe don't have an HR department already. Maybe they don't have a good way of managing their hiring process yet. So if you have an applicant tracking system that's built into a job board, that means that those small companies can accept candidates right there on the job board, and have a good way of managing their hiring process. This is just another benefit that you can provide to those small companies.

And finally, analytics. So analytics and data are essential for you if you're going to know how you’re doing with your job board. Are you being successful? Are people actually interacting with jobs, applying to jobs? Again it's so important, and it's data that you can use to show the value of your organization to the community. And we haven't seen a lot of job board that do a good job of tracking all these important analytics. And so it's something we spend a lot of time thinking about at TrueJob because we know how important it is, specifically for EDOs.

Ted Dacko

Okay, speaking of metrics, let's talk about that. But before we do, Mike, I think I seem to remember that you folks have a complete book of reports and analytics. So if people on the phone are interested and they would like to see a complete list of analytics that are provided or that can be provided in the job board, you could actually send that to them, is that correct?

Michael Kling

That's right, that's something we have.

Ted Dacko

So let's talk about the most important metrics that you've seen that EDOs are interested in for their job board.

Michael Kling

Sure. So, yeah before I go into the specifics, again take a little step back and ask yourself, what are metrics useful for? Well, we've already mentioned that the data that you get from your job board can be useful to demonstrate the value that you're providing. Whether that's to your community or to your funders and sponsors. But also specific metrics can be used to answer particular questions that you might have about your community. So with each of the metrics that I'll show here on the slide, we have some associated questions that those metrics can be used to answer. So most of these metrics are pretty straightforward.

First, employer sign ups. This is kind of the first thing that you might want to know. Which companies are signing up using the job board? How can I get in touch with them?

Next, job postings. So how many jobs are being posted to the job board? How is that changing over time? Which companies are posting the most jobs, or which regions in my community have the most job postings?

Next, job views. So now we're getting into metrics that start to measure interaction with your job board. So which jobs are people most interested in in looking at, or least interested in? And again, how that changes over time. Which companies or locations have the most job views?

The next sort of step in engagement, you care not only about how often people are looking at these jobs, but are they interested enough to actually click on these jobs? And so we measure apply clicks, we think that's a key metric.

All right next, job applications. So I mentioned before, for some jobs clicking apply might link you to an external website, but for smaller companies, maybe they accept applications right on the job board. And if they do, then it would be great to be able to see which companies, which jobs are getting the most applications submitted to them.

Next, filled jobs, so something we do at TrueJob is after job postings expire, we follow up with those companies and those job postings and ask them, "Hey, were you able to fill that position?" And that information can be really valuable to you to show that end to end process from how many people were posting and how many jobs were ultimately filled.

And finally job seeker contact information. Something that we built into TrueJob is at different points in the process we collect job seeker contact info, whether that's for example, when they choose to apply to a job, and we make that available to you so that you can help grow your contact database, and whether if you're using that for your newsletter or for other marketing materials, it can be useful for you.

Ted Dacko

Okay, second survey question. And what we did, is we eliminated the metrics as the key criteria, because if we put which are the most important criteria for you, probably 99 to 100% of you would have said metrics are the most important. So consider this the second most important criteria with metrics being the first. So which of these criteria would you find important in a job board. So let's go ahead and open the poll and see what people say about that. Okay we'll about give it another three seconds, three or four seconds. I see some submissions still coming in. We'll wait one more second. And let's close the poll. Okay. So what's number one there Mike?

Michael Kling

All right, so the top choice easy to use and maintain.

Ted Dacko

Yeah well, these folks to not have a lot of people resources, so that's not surprising right?

Michael Kling

Yeah. And it looks like all the other choices are pretty even, but all of those again are important.

Ted Dacko

Yeah, absolutely. Okay thank you folks for doing that. So Mike, can you give us an example of a quick peek at what a job board might look like on an economic development organization's site?

Michael Kling

Sure. So as I go through this, just keep in mind we'll be showing you the job board from these three perspectives which we've mentioned already. That's the perspective of the job seeker, the employer and you, the economic development organization. So I'll switch over to a browser now. Okay.

All right, so what you're looking at here is a mock up of an economic development organization website. So your website might look something like this. Maybe you have some data about your community on here, maybe you have some news or other links. And what we've done is, at the top we've added a tab for jobs. So if I click on that okay, so what you see here is a job board with a couple of sample job postings that's been integrated directly into this website. It has all the data information that a job seeker might need. So this is how a job seeker would see the job board when they come to your website. Different positions, where they're located, which companies they are, a place where they can search. And at TrueJob this option to interact with those job postings, to like and dislike them, which will help improve recommendations for that job seeker over time. Okay so that's the job seeker perspective.

Now let's talk about the employer a little bit. So when an employer signs up with TrueJob, what happens is they get access to an employer dashboard. And when they log into that, I'll show it right here, they have the ability to create new job postings. So that's a very simple process, they have a form that looks something like this, add a job title, add a job description, information about how to apply, where the job's located. Now once that job posting gets saved then it gets submitted over to an administrator at your organization, the EDO. So what does that look like?

Well here's the EDO dashboard. So what you see here is a list of employers that have signed up, and you have options here to look at these employers, get more information about them, choose which ones you'd like to approve or reject from posting on your job board. The same thing is true for job postings. So you can see a bunch of job postings that have been submitted here and you again have the option to choose which ones you'd like to approve or reject, and perform that process of curation that we talked about.

And finally, perhaps the most important section here is the analytics. So if you look across the top here, you can see all these different key analytics and metrics that we've been talking about already. So how many employers have signed up for my job board? How many jobs have been posted? We have job views, apply clicks, job applications and jobs that have been marked filled by employers. Now for all of these metrics, we have the option for you to change the time period that you're looking at, and you can also choose to export them to CSV if you want to share them, or look at them in Excel or some or some other program.

Ted Dacko

Okay. So now that we've seen an example, give us a summary of the benefits that you've experienced with your experience with economic development organizations.

Michael Kling

Sure. So if you think back to our earlier slide with the three constituents. We had the EDO, we had the employer, and we had the job seeker. And a job board is really going to be a win for all three of those. So for job seekers, they get access to this high quality list of positions that are available in your community. For employers, they're getting new candidates applying to their jobs, easier time filling those positions and you get to be the organization that's making those connections. As you do so, you're going to be helping to improve your brand. Okay, so that's one benefit.

Another key benefit is increased web traffic. So I'll mention again Ann Arbor SPARK. Right now, Ann Arbor SPARK gets 50% of their web traffic going to their job board. This is a huge amount. Let me just, I'll just say that again. Half of Ann Arbor SPARK's web traffic right now goes to their job board. So just think about what a big draw this is. Think about how much that would benefit you having more visitors coming to your site and learning about your organization.

Now as people come, as job seekers come, as companies come and sign up, you're helping to build better relationships with your local businesses. And also as you do this, as people come as businesses use it, as the job seekers use it, you're also collecting these key analytics and metrics. And those are metrics that you can use again to demonstrate the value of your organization to your community, and also to learn about your community so that you can do a better job of recruiting talent into your region in the future.

And the final benefit that kind of brings everything together here, whether it's a better brand that you have, more web traffic, the analytics that you're collecting, all of this is going to help you attract more funding or retain your existing funding. Whether it's public funding, whether it's private funding.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. That brings us to our next section and our next speaker, Phil Santer. Phil, again, welcome.

Phil Santer

Thank you.

Michael Kling

Want to do our ...

Ted Dacko

Oh, the survey question. I'm sorry, I missed one, all right.

Michael Kling

No worries.

Ted Dacko

Which of these benefits are you most interested in? Sorry about that folks, and you could read the list there. So Mike let's open up the survey. And again, we greatly appreciate your participation in this. So results are still coming in. Okay, let's close this up, and what's number one?

Michael Kling

All right, top answer. Recruiting talent into your region.

Ted Dacko

Followed right behind by ...

Michael Kling

Assisting businesses with a major challenge.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. Thank you folks. All right, Phil. Welcome.

Phil Santer

Thank you.

Ted Dacko

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule. Tell me a little bit about Ann Arbor SPARK for those who might be outside of the state of Michigan.

Phil Santer

Sure, and hello to everyone on the webinar. Yes, SPARK is a public-private organization we started about 12 years ago. We are what I would say is a true public-private organization. If you look at our funding sources we're about 50/50 between our private sector investors and our public investors. And we are responsible for a host of different roles within the organization. We're somewhat unique in that we have a really important focus and strong focus on our entrepreneurship and our sort of start-up development. And then we also have a really strong, sort of a more traditional economic development function which is actually what my team works on. And what's unique I think about the organization is that from the start, we really had a focus, really since the beginning, on sort of talent and talent development, talent acquisitions, talent recruitment. That's been a big, sort of underlying component of our organization for many years.

Ted Dacko

And technology, or, not technology, or?

Phil Santer

Yeah the key areas that we focus on, at least from a vertical industry standpoint have been technology both on the software, and I guess however you want to define technology, it's pretty broad in my opinion. We have an R&D aspect of this, we have an engineering focus, we have life science focus. And actually I mean to the perspective you've mentioned that we had an existing job board really since the start of the organization.

It was really because of a little bit of a crisis that occurred within the life science area. So this is going all the way back to 2007, before I actually joined the organization. But at that point in time Pfizer was the largest private employer in the Ann Arbor region. And they announced in January that year that they were going to close shop. So you had literally thousands of people that were going to be put out of work, and these were really important drivers for the community. I mean these were very active parts of the community.

So it was a pretty – it was a crisis at the time really. And a host of different things occurred during that period of time. One of those things that was determined was that there needed to be a centralized place for people to know about knowledge worker positions that were available within the Ann Arbor area as people were trying to get reconnected into different opportunities that occurred right about that time.

So this system was developed as part of SPARK's functionality, and we were just a young organization at that point, very new. And this was kind of built into the overall website itself. So it kind of emerged as it went. But what occurred from that point of time is that it was built from the ground up in '07. And over time, like Mike said, it has been a huge driver for our website, but it hadn't seen the investment that it needed to in terms of being redeveloped, and technology changes over time. And we were basically left behind in terms of the aesthetic, in terms of the different features, in terms of the different qualities that we needed from a job board.

And to your point Ted, it was I think affecting the brand awareness for the organization. Because we were trying to support growing technology companies of which there are several within the Ann Arbor area. And if we weren't able to match what their expectations were, they weren't going to use us. In fact there were some major employers that were growing that weren't utilizing it. So it created kind of an important point for us to deal with to reconsider, "Hey we've got this function, we know it's really important, and we're not seeing the engagement that we need to have. What are our options?"

Ted Dacko

So you had a build vs buy situation.

Phil Santer

Yes.

Ted Dacko

Because you were committed to having one, it was a question of how you were going to support that function.

Phil Santer

Exactly.

Ted Dacko

Okay. And we'll ask about why TrueJob in just a second. I have a question before that. Mike talked about the fact that 50% of your traffic to your website comes from the job board. Is your marketing function measured on website traffic? Is this important to them?

Phil Santer

Absolutely. Our marketing team, they measure a number of different things, and that's obviously changed from their metrics over time, but a key part of that is website traffic which we've just seen significantly grow over time. And obviously there's different areas that are changing and growing, but we obviously see no huge increase in marketing across everywhere including EDOs. But yeah absolutely they track and are measured based on web traffic.

Ted Dacko

So what I hear you saying at least from your perspective, and I don't want to put words in your mouth or in the mouth of the people on the phone, but you seem to be implying that a job board is a key requirement for an economic development organization and it's a mission critical kind of a thing for an EDO.

Phil Santer

I mean it has been for us. And I think it's one of these areas as I look across the industry and I think about it from the different categories of folks that are engaged in workforce development and that's a traditional function trying to connect the dots there. Then increasingly as everyone has low unemployment rates and talent attraction, talent development, talent acquisition, it's so critical to success of the business community. I've seen it become a really critical point as a tactical and impactful tool that you can have as an EDO, to be able to demonstrate value to your employers, to your stakeholders, and it's actionable, right, so when we think about what our areas that we want to invest our time or resources in, we want something that is going to be impactful, but is also actionable. And in my mind it's a clear opportunity for that, it definitely covers both of those bases.

Ted Dacko

Now you hinted at this before, I just want to explore this a little bit more. There are actually two parts of Spark, one for the larger organizations and one for the smaller. Are you seeing an impact in both of those areas, for the small companies as well as some of your bigger corporate customers?

Phil Santer

Yeah, so the job board has traditionally been a place where you have a centralized place for the range of organizations. So we have very small companies that are posting positions, and then we have the largest employer in the region which is the University of Michigan also posting. So we needed a solution, and need a solution that is going to be able to cover the entire gamut.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. I think I heard Mike hint about the fact that your primary, your maintenance, the person who runs the job board in your organization is the administrative assistant to the CEO of the EDO, is that correct?

Phil Santer

Correct.

Ted Dacko

I mean did she have specific computer skills, or are her skills just standard skills that you would expect from any knowledge worker?

Phil Santer

She's a great asset and knows the organization well, and her function has really just been over time to have that. So it's not been a whole lot of - not much training really involved in all that aspect.

Ted Dacko

You didn't need an IT department to put this in or to maintain it.

Phil Santer

Absolutely not. No. And I want to point out that, because I think and Mike mentioned this earlier, but the curation I think is really important on this. And it was important for us. One of the areas that we've seen, and I'm sure if you guys are talking with employers or people who are job seekers that use things like Indeed, there's a lot of noise in the system is how I would put it. So there's frankly a lot of junk that's out there. And one of the areas that we know and that we developed I think with the fact that we have this job board, is that we want that to be a place where you have curated quality jobs, and you need someone that in our perspective, you have to have a little bit of a gatekeeper to be able to say, "Yes this is in our region," or, "Yes, this is a job where we know that we're going to be able to get some quality folks out." And so that was a really critical part of our process as well.

Ted Dacko

All right. So maybe you think you've answered at least part of this question, but I'll ask it. So why TrueJob? Why did you use TrueJob as opposed to something else or build it yourself?

Phil Santer

Yeah so when we looked at what really our options were, to your point, I think we decided that we probably weren't - we didn't want to build our own. We thought that that would have been too costly, too long, just maintaining it over time, we already had that experience, we had sort of built our own right? We wanted a different solution. And we wanted something that was already thinking about these different things for us in terms of being able to sort of easily scrape the jobs, making it easier for employers to add their positions was really important and critical, making sure that the user experience from the job seeker side was in line with their expectations was really important. And then also providing us with the curation element with the ability for it to be embedded to our website. I mean there were just a number of things that were really critical for us, and it just made sense to partner with TrueJob on that.

Ted Dacko

Okay. So you made this decision, how long did it take to get it up and running and become live?

Phil Santer

It was, from an implementation and if anyone on the phone has gone through an implementation of a technology product or really anything, you know how those things can be a struggle over time. It literally was one of the easiest implementations that we've had over time. We basically just sat down and we were really developing up how this was going to go. We'd never really seeded out sort of a part of our website in this way. And it was just really straightforward to be able to go through. And really within a matter of I guess it was not even months really, to be able to get it implemented, and it was really quick.

Ted Dacko

Mike, do you remember how long it took?

Michael Kling

Probably weeks.

Phil Santer

Yeah, probably weeks.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. How did you promote this? How did you get your corporate customers and job seekers into the process?

Phil Santer

So we had done a couple of things. And especially as were implementing this through. We had actually set up a series with the help of TrueJob to do some focus groups for the employers so that we had feedback in terms of, "Hey this is what we’re planning on doing." So we brought in the highest users or the most frequent users of our current job portal, and said, "Yep, we understand you guys, there's some changes that we need to have here. Here's a solution that we're thinking about." And then they gave us feedback as we were going through that process. And then we just have a really - our marketing department is really strong and engaged, especially on the social media side. We've done things like job of the day, where we were sort of highlighting different positions.

We have a talent newsletter that has thousands of people that are raising their hands saying they're interested in working in the community and we'll kind of build out that messaging over time. And so it's just been a critical part of the organization to be able to have those things in place, and also to be able to develop that out as a tool that our business community can tap into. So when we have an expansion and retraction in place, you can say, "And by the way, you can apply for jobs at this central place here." So that's a really critical element of that.

And then we've also used it when we're doing other programming aspects. And what mean by that is, so in Ann Arbor we do a couple different events each year. They're focused on the technology community. Just before Thanksgiving and I think this happens in other places, but we did something called Tech Homecoming where you just invite people and they're coming back into the region for the holidays, and say, "Hey why don't you consider a career in technology," or what have you. And it's great to be able to have a centralized place where you can ask everyone to be able to put their jobs that they have.

And so when they come back into town you're like, "Yep, here's all the things that are going on. Here's one centralized place of technology jobs that are available in Ann Arbor." And you could do the same thing for manufacturing day, or for other programming that you guys might have in your own community. So we think that's really important.

Ted Dacko

I think I remember that you announced this also at your annual meeting.

Phil Santer

Yeah. And I guess I'll speak a little bit maybe from the fund raising element on that. Because I think it's really important that we pay attention to it. I think just, and this is my perspective from the overall economic development industry. You have to be able to pay attention to this right now, otherwise you're not going to continue to be relevant in terms of what the needs of the business community are right now. And it's great to be able to have a tactical tool from a fund raising element. I don't know everyone that's on the phone right now, but I just got back from economics, or economics, or whatever was going on this week in New Orleans, and the conversation was coming up about fundraising.

Kate McEnroe who is a site selector and consultant that some of you may know, was talking about what the changes are from a fundraising aspect from an EDO perspective. And she was saying, "You're going to have to be able to demonstrate very tactical and almost granular level things that are going to be able to provide value to your funders." And I think the job board is a critical part of that. Because you can actually say, "Hey, why don't you come in and fund us to be able to help or do this or brand our job board," or what have you. And ourselves, we have examples of that where we were going through some fundraising with some of our private sector funders, and there was one in particular that wanted to fund our job board. And that was a critical part of our investment process. And they're an important stakeholder in all of this.

Ted Dacko

Wow, that's outstanding. So Mike talked about metrics. What metrics drives, has the most interest to you?

Phil Santer

Yeah, metrics are really, really important. The ones that I think are most critical from my perspective, and I'm thinking about who the different stakeholders are that we want to get this back to. Geographic focus is really critical. So if we're going - because we're a regional organization, we cover two counties in Michigan, it's great to be able to demonstrate or provide metrics to a local community in terms of the different employers that are utilizing the job portal, or job board. So that's a really critical element is the geographic focus.

The other one is to the business themselves. To be able to say, "Here's how many people are looking at your posting, here's how it compares to some of the other postings that we've got. Here are the people that have clicked apply on that." Because then you can actually demonstrate some particular impact that their posting might be having through our job board. So I think those are a couple critical ones.

Ted Dacko

And I think I heard you mention at one point in time, even down to the community level, how many jobs in a given community within a county.

Phil Santer

Yeah, absolutely. Exactly.

Ted Dacko

Yeah, okay. Very good. And your CEO is on board with this?

Phil Santer

Yeah, completely. I think the entire organization recognizes how important it is to be able to talk about not only the talent you have in your region, but also to be able to say, "Hey, here's different things that you can tap into as well." So just another example of that, so obviously University of Michigan is a major employer in our area. And they have, like many other major universities have, a dual career office where they're working with the spouses or partners of people that they are recruiting into their organization. And we're a critical partner of this, and really the job board has become a critical part of that as well. Because then you can provide to the spouse or partner of the folks that they're attracting, here's all the other things, and really also helped to make the sell for folks when they're considering coming into an area, that they're not going to get beached in a particular position.

When the technology community in Ann Arbor was growing, there was I think an initial concern that you were only going to come for one job and then what were you going to do after that? And now it's a great demonstration point to say, "Not only, yeah come for this job, but then you also have a career long availability of options," and the job portal, the job board, is a place to be able to demonstrate that.

Ted Dacko

So how does this fit in with your workforce development system or does it?

Phil Santer

So for us, I mentioned that it's a curated aspect and this has been traditionally focused on kind of the knowledge level worker. And at least in our system, I guess more traditionally on the workforce development side, those have been entry level jobs or what have you. And so we think it's really complementary to that, where you could have a range of different options and you know exactly where to point people to through the system.

Ted Dacko

Well Phil, thank you very much. All EDOs say that talent is critical to their organization but they really don't know what to do about it. It sounds like you've done something about it.

Phil Santer

We are trying.

Ted Dacko

Okay, very good. So Mike, what kind of questions have we gotten from the audience in the last couple of minutes before we wrap up?

Michael Kling

Let's see here. It looks like some people are interested in a question about pricing.

Ted Dacko

Yeah, you're always going to get the question. So is it free?

Michael Kling

No. Not free. But let me talk about pricing a little bit. So right now at TrueJob, I'll just explain how it works. We have an implementation fee and a subscription fee that are part of our pricing. So implementation is a one time fee that's paid initially. And what that covers is branding a job board, implementation to your website, pre-populating that job board with some quality postings from your community, helping you with a promotional plan, whatever might make sense for your organization, and doing some training with your employees to make sure that they are up to speed and know how it's going to work from day one. And that ranges in cost from about $850 dollars to about $1800 dollars.

And then we have an annual subscription fee which covers hosting, it covers back ups for your system, any upgrades or new features that are added, and support. That's support for your organization, and support for the employers and job seekers that are using it. And right now that ranges from about $425 a month to $925 a month, and that's charged annually. So between about $5000 and $11,000 a year.

Ted Dacko

How many upgrades have you had to the software in the last year do you think?

Michael Kling

I mean we've been making continuous upgrades to the system, so we're always rolling out new features.

Phil Santer

Can I just say as a user, I mean I would say a lot. And that's a critical piece for us too, is that it's great when the TrueJob folks are reaching out, talking about different improvements and changes that have been made. And that's really helpful for us as we kind of want on our side to be able to share that with job seekers or businesses that are working on things.

Ted Dacko

Very good. And it probably is also interesting that because you're focused on EDOs, the features and functions that you're adding are directly relevant to the customer base because you're not trying to apply this across a broad range of industries.

Michael Kling

Exactly.

Ted Dacko

All right. The next question I think Phil already answered, and I think you talked about it a little bit as well. How long does it take? If somebody were to say, "I want to get started." How long is it going to take them to get up and running?

Michael Kling

Yeah, so the implementation process, it's not a long process. Implementing on your website, it can take just a couple of days, it's very simple to just add the job board. We would usually do some kind of a soft launch where we have it go live before doing a larger promotional campaign. So maybe we'd do that for a week or two before launching, again, a larger promotional campaign to support the job board, which we would work with you on to make sure -

Phil Santer

And let me just add to that piece. I think from our implementation of it, it was probably far longer of us making the decision on what to do in terms of the build versus buy and sort of how this would all go. Since it was kind of a brand new decision for us. So we took far longer in terms of our organizational decision making than it ever was in terms of the technology implementation.

Ted Dacko

And Mike, do you have a formal promotional plan that you could recommend to EDOs if they wanted one?

Michael Kling

Yeah I do. I actually have a slide here I can just pull up quickly. This shows some of the approaches that we use in our promotional campaign recommendations that we make for you.

Ted Dacko

Okay. Are there any other questions, I know we're running out of time, but any other critical questions that you want to get to now? I know that people have asked questions, we can follow up with them individually.

Michael Kling

Yeah a couple of questions here, I'll see if I can mention a couple of these. One person was interested in knowing if you can have a job board marketed specifically to say a military community with a pool of maybe military spouses that are looking for employment. And I think this kind of circles back to what Phil said before, some of the work that they've done with the dual career program at the University of Michigan. Again, if you're using a system where you can curate positions and choose what's going to appear there, then you have an opportunity to highlight things that are specifically going to make sense for whatever your audience is. Whether that's the military community or some other type of community that you're working with.

Ted Dacko

Okay. Other questions?

Michael Kling

Let's see, I think we've touched on a few of these. Again, we'll certainly follow up with anyone whose question we were not able to get to.

Ted Dacko

All right. Well in the interest of time we only have a couple of minutes left. Let's talk about next steps, so if you'll back up two.

Michael Kling

Yeah, I'll go back to that. Here we are.

Ted Dacko

Okay, so if you're interested, please visit our website www.truejob.com , there is a white paper on the needs of economic development organizations that you could look at. There is a case study on SPARK where you'll be able to read about some of the things that Phil talked about today. A recorded version of this webinar will be available to you by Monday. And if you are interested in learning more about how this could work with you, please contact us. There is a free consultation that we could provide on how we would handle an implementation for your specific needs. So with that, first of all, Phil, thank you again for your participation.

Phil Santer

Thanks for having me.

Ted Dacko

And Mike, thank you for the very enlightening content that you provided today. And with that folks, we wish you a pleasant afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Goodbye for now.