OK, so it is not the most festive of message, but it is one which could save you a shed load of money.  That is because we’ve just done a survey which shows that 95% of job boards are planning to implement above inflation rises during 2015.

We spoke to 40 job boards and 38 were planning rises above the rate of inflation.  The average rise is a whopping 7%.  The highest price rise being implemented was an eye watering 20% and the lowest a more palatable 2%.

Job boards have many of the recruiters I speak to by the corporate short and curlies.  Over the last 18 months the industry has shifted from a client led to candidate led market (on the whole) and understandably both generalist and niche job boards think they can put up their prices by a large amount. At the same time many recruiters are over-reliant on job boards.

Firstly I would suggest you look at your candidate attraction plan and you do that pretty quickly.  Job boards are definitely part of a solution but they are not THE solution.  There are so many different things you can do to drive unique candidates to your business – do that and you will save money and impact the sales figures – hero status will then be assured!

However even if you have done this, you will still need to use a job board.  Therefore I would recommend signing your 2015 job board contracts now if they expire in the first 6 months of the year.  Some people may think that it is too early, but in my experience you can lock in the 2014 rate (whether that is ratecard or the discounted rate you pay) for next year.  In fact in some negotiations I have done recently, I managed to get a bigger discount than the agency was currently enjoying.  Why? Well which sales person that you know will turn down guaranteed income now, especially when December is so slow?

Of course if you are going to advance purchase I would only suggest you do this if you have full ROI data to inform your job board strategy.  If not, then you’d be best off sucking up the price increases to get full data as in my experience you will save so much more (about 30% more!).

So whilst Good King Wenceslas didn’t traditionally look out at the feast of job boards, it’s probably wise if you do and protect your budget from inflation busting rises.