This post by Tetiana Gorbunova, Chief Sales Officer at Jooble, is part of our blog series, “The One Thing Job Boards Should Change Right Now”.
If I could persuade every job board leader to change just one thing over the next 12 months, it would be this:
Stop building your platform around job titles. Start building it around skills.
For decades, job boards have organised the labour market around job titles. That worked when titles were relatively standardised.
Today, they aren’t.
One employer is hiring a Marketing Manager. Another is looking for a Growth Lead. A startup posts a “Marketing Rockstar”, while an enterprise advertises a “Demand Generation Manager”. They may all be looking for almost exactly the same capabilities.
At the same time, two companies using the exact same title can expect completely different skills and responsibilities.
The market has built an ecosystem that matches words instead of people.
The result? Candidates miss relevant opportunities because they don’t search using the “right” title. Employers miss qualified talent because great candidates don’t use the “right” keywords.
AI gives our industry the opportunity to finally move beyond that.
Instead of matching titles, we should be matching skills, experience, and transferable capabilities. A candidate who has never held a particular title may still be the strongest fit for the role.
This isn’t just about improving search results. It’s about fundamentally improving how people and jobs find each other.
The job boards that embrace skills-first matching will help employers discover talent they would otherwise overlook, help candidates uncover opportunities they would never have found, and create a much better hiring experience for both sides.
I believe that’s one of the biggest opportunities our industry has over the next decade.