Job Bank in the driving seat

Job Bank are leading the way in supporting individuals who want to become a home-based recruiter, inspired by an innovative platform where recruiters and employers connect to find talent.

Blackburn based Job Bank is a cloud computing company that enables individuals to become a home-based recruiter, building and transforming their business by finding talent for employers. Job Bank connect employers with a trusted network of trained recruiters with scope to focus and broaden their candidate search and find talent within the employer’s recruitment budget quickly and conveniently.

Expanding the world of a home-based recruitment business

Fear, uncertainty, and self-doubt are all raw feelings people experience when they consider the idea of starting their own business. It's scary, there’s no doubt about that. There are disadvantages of running a self-start-up, mainly the lack of knowhow, which can prove time consuming and costly. According to Tide Bank, the average start-up spend in Year 1 is £23,756. On the other hand, franchises decrease the risk of failure with tried and tested models, but have limitations in relation to location, marketing, and even products.  They can also prove to be expensive, as they are often tied in with long term contracts. Finally, Multi-Level Marketing Schemes initially are more affordable but unsustainable, as they have a high rate of failure due to the shift in focus from selling a product, to recruiting new people.

Job Bank are purposefully proving a model, which is rewarding, flexible and affordable, with no long-term contracts. We provide a productive platform where individuals can develop their own recruitment business with a website, recruitment CRM, virtual classroom, online learning, messenger, and ongoing mentoring. More importantly, the platform offers contracted job leads from employers which are automated and advertised on each recruiter’s website and CRM, providing an opportunity to learn and earn from day 1. The recruitment CRM includes an Applicant Tracking System which identifies further guidance and support on each job advert from the employer, in order to find the right candidate.

Job Bank has had key feature successes within the platform such as the Leads Centre and Messenger and maintains a strong focus in actively listening to our recruiters and experts within the recruitment industry. We are constantly reviewing and evolving our services, in accordance with feedback and needs, ensuring our recruiters and employers receive a stellar service.  Job Bank present an affordable and unique opportunity in a £35 billion market for individuals to find out if being a recruitment consultant is for them. The way we work in the UK is evolving and more people have second jobs or “side hustles” than ever before. As we move away from the traditional 9 to 5, the side hustle has gotten more attention. 64% of the UK workforce want to set up a business. 83% of 18 – 24-year-olds dream of self-employment. 25% of UK adults have a second income. Finally, new research from Simply Business reveals that over one third of people in the UK now run their own side hustle, with some savvy entrepreneurs expecting to make over £5,000 a year in additional income. Job Bank has a mission to provide a rewarding, flexible and economic business opportunity within recruitment, inspired by an innovative platform to upskill recruitment entrepreneurs.

Boosting how recruiters and employers connect to find talent

Recruitment can be a strenuous task for employers, particularly when it comes to the time and money that is invested. It is not limited to filling a position, it is also about finding the right person, someone who fits the organisational culture, and who is also prepared to grow with the business. Staffing costs will be one of the largest overheads for many companies that employ staff, and it is fair to say that talent is the driver to how a company performs and grows. Therefore, gaining the right talent to assist with growth is critical. 

The 2 common approaches by employers to recruit staff are hiring recruitment agencies and advertising on job boards. As a recent study highlights, the fees paid to a traditional recruitment agency such as Hays and Robert Walters, are typically a percentage of an annual salary. On average, that percentage could be anywhere between 20% - 30% depending on the level of complexity of the hire, volume, and relationship with the agency. Recruitment agencies can be expensive; however, these costs are mitigated by the high costs of advertising, marketing, and headhunting, which can be in the hundreds of thousands for a mid-sized recruitment agency, which is why most businesses choose to post their jobs on job boards to fill open positions.

Initially, job boards such as Indeed, Reed and CV Library seem less expensive, even though candidates searching for jobs might not have to pay to be members, a company must pay to post jobs online, whether that be a onetime or a recurring fee if a job advert is listed, and/or access to a CV database. This process can become extremely expensive and time consuming.

Now, if you were to look at which sourcing channel is giving you the most applicants, you could proudly point and say, “job boards are doing a great job!”  In a market where simply finding people to apply for roles is a challenge, getting plenty of applications can seem like a hopeful sign. While this can be useful, it often means sifting through piles of CVs from candidates to pre-screen those who are unsuitable, making it a time-consuming exercise. In addition, there is no guarantee that the ideal candidate will be found. More applicants do not equal better quality hires. 60% of all applications come in through job boards. That’s a big number, by far the biggest source of applicant traffic, so why do only 20% - 25% of successful hires come from job boards? It’s because job boards do not have access to those candidates that are employed, but might be open to something new, known as passive candidates. Passive candidates make up over 79% of UK working professionals, who utilise social media platforms such as Linkedin, which have become a powerful tool in recent years in the Recruitment Industry.

LinkedIn is a professional database of 27 million users in the UK which is 41% of the UK population, and a larger database than any job board out there! We need to communicate with passive candidates which a "human" recruitment consultant can do so much more easily than a job board "bot". Active candidates certainly make an employer’s life easier as they do a lot of their work for them. Unfortunately, the reality is that often the best employee is already employed. Sourcing passive candidates is more of a challenge, but the process is vital in today’s competitive job market. Although recruitment agencies do have access to job boards, the biggest value a recruitment agency can offer is to communicate with both employers and candidates. They find out what jobs are available and have the skillset to access active and passive candidates to find the best person possible to fill them. Furthermore, they provide support to the candidates as well as the clients.

Job Bank occupy an enviable position, sitting in between a traditional recruitment agency and a job board. We maintain a focus with employers - whatever the objectives, and whatever the budget, our recruiters will find a way for employers to harness the power of our platform in a cost-effective way. Our home-based recruiters are trained to have the skillset to find active and passive talent and make it affordable, minimising the recruiter cost to market, advertise and headhunt. We currently work with hundreds of employers from small – medium businesses such as Zenith Lawyers and Curtis Law Solicitors, to large enterprises such as O2, and have become an established and crucial recruitment platform.  

With currently over 1 million jobs advertised in the UK, employers have spent over £35 billion on recruitment fees in the last year. Job Bank have a mission to make recruitment more affordable for employers.

Job Bank are continually investing, developing, scaling, and finding solutions in the home-based business market and the recruitment industry. Many of the recruiters and employers that joined the Job Bank platform at its inception in 2017, still work with us today. This is testament not only to the effectiveness of Job Bank, but the long-term partnerships we build with recruiters and employers throughout the United Kingdom. Job Bank focus on meaningful innovation, and are only getting comfortable in the driving seat. They are motivated to drive forward and continue to provide what is missing in the home-based business market and the recruitment industry within the United Kingdom with a long-term vision to scale to the United States.