Who Should You Trust?

Even though my blog post picture is smiling, I am not in a good mood today. One, I have recently returned from vacation, and two, there are changes brewing in our industry that are troubling. As a result, there will be nothing funny in today’s post. No witty puns or clever references to early 90’s movies, just an honest heads up about an aggressive push to change the current practice of recruiting in 2025.

The job boards want your data, and they have been collaborating with the Applicant Tracking Systems behind your back to get it. They say sharing this data will enhance the candidate’s experience and will provide better matched applicants to paying customers, but there are several areas of discussion that should be considered.

Privacy and Consent Issues:
Job seekers may not be explicitly informed that their personal data, including application details and progress (e.g., “interviewed,” “rejected,” or “hired”), is shared with the job board. While many job board’s Terms of Service state that job seekers agree to data processing for job matching, candidates might not anticipate their data being shared back with the job board from an employer’s ATS, potentially without clear, specific consent.

Personally Identifiable Information (PII):
Although some integrations claim to anonymize data by sharing only timestamps, application IDs, and statuses, there’s a distinct risk that aggregated data could still be linked to individuals, especially if combined with other datasets. This poses concerns for the applicant, but more importantly, also for the employer who could fall victim to candidate remarketing by the job boards.

Security Risks:
Job board’s Privacy Policies often indicate that data may be shared with third parties for improving services or matching candidates. Without transparent oversight, there’s a concern that data could be used for purposes beyond the original intent, such as marketing or profiling, which candidates may not have agreed to.

Remarketing Threat:
There is an undeniable threat that job boards armed with candidate status data will remarket to those hires generated by their board and churn your happily employed people. They will know who you hired, into what role, and when you did it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that job boards will step up their highly tailored messaging to capitalize on the insights gleaned from the shared data.

Employer Pressure and Dependency:
You can expect to be pressured into sharing candidate data to access benefits like improved candidate matching, higher job visibility, and access to simplified application processes, creating dependency on the job board’s ecosystem, reducing employer autonomy while increasing advertising costs.

These concerns highlight the need for further discussion, and I assure you; if you ask the job boards for their recommendation, you will not get the full picture. Contact us today at Buyer Advertising to learn more about our recruitment consulting services to help you navigate this latest push for data that could pull you down a slippery slope.

Joel Glick
President
Buyer Advertising

Buyer provides custom talent solutions that deliver the right candidates to you. We cultivate unique Employer Brands and our industry leading search engine optimized hiring platform, Buyer Talent Engine, empowers recruiters with a smarter way to attract, engage, analyze, and track candidates through the entire hiring process – backed by a team of industry leaders with a passion for customer service.