Can you feel it in the air? Like the shift from summer to autumn, things in the talent acquisition industry are growing a bit crisper and more sharply focused. There’s a job posting revolution that’s gaining momentum. It started subtle, but more and more recruiters and HR professionals are jumping on board every day. And you can be part of it sooner instead of later.

Reinventions happen out of necessity. Sometimes only part of an industry evolves and sometimes there’s a broad and sweeping change. The programmatic job posting revolution settles nicely somewhere in between. Job ads still matter, of course, and there is no replacing talent acquisition professionals. But the processes to get from job vacancy to new hire are streamlined like never before.

Programmatic Job Ad Placement Grew From a Definite Need

The last really big thing in talent acquisition was the advent of the job board. But even the simplest home technology has changed in myriad ways since then. When consumers grow accustomed to new tech, they naturally expect to enjoy its benefits in other areas.

Where customers go, sales people tend to follow. And customers go everywhere. Your candidates are your customers. And like it or not, it’s up to you to sell the right customers on the jobs that you have to offer. The problem now is finding and reaching them. There’s plenty of data to potentially help, but there aren’t plenty of simple ways to interpret and use it.

Enter programmatic job postings. Programmatic means your job ad spend is based on parameters that you set and it happens automatically. It’s a concept whose time has arrived.

Job candidate expectations, whether expressed or not, have partly led to this new talent revolution. For example, people from all industries and all walks of life are always plugged in. They carry smartphones instead of sitting in front of a desktop for an hour or two. And they use those devices to access things such as social media, email, and job boards. If you want to reach them, you have to adapt. Programmatic facilitates this change.

This New Technology is Already Working

Programmatic advertising already works. Thousands of recruiters are reaping bigger rewards more efficiently than before. Using the old CPC model, ERE Media says only about 6 percent of ads get about half the clicks.

That leaves a disproportionate amount of job ads across a campaign with little or no attention. It also creates a wasteful pocket of ad spend applied to jobs that already get plenty of it. Programmatic lets you change your course and divert more of the budget to overlooked ads. And with RealMatch, you can do that on the fly. There’s no need to ride out a campaign and try again later.

ERE also says programmatic can save on cost per hire by about 30 percent. But they’re quick to add that this technology “requires sharp, savvy pilots.” Or, some programmatic ad recruitment platforms allow for an automated experience that make it easy for the end user.

How easy can it be? It’s automatic. You can join the programmatic job advertising early adopters now instead of waiting for a windfall to hit your budget because you don’t need an in-house data analyst. Platforms like RealMatch make programmatic attainable for businesses large and small.

Programmatic is Anything But a Gimmick

A bonafide revolution requires staying power. It has to deliver the goods. You need to reach a significantly wider range of job candidates and each ad has to work for that market. It can’t cost a fortune, and it should make your life easier, not harder. You can check all of those requirements off your list.

Using predictive analytics, your job ads have a major leg up. You can more accurately determine the correct bid to start and have a better idea of what each ad’s performance will be prior to spending. To sweeten the pot, real-time tracking can send up a distress call if performance doesn’t match your expectations.

So you know reasonably well going in what to expect. That leaves less room for job placement mistakes. And if the unexpected happens, you aren’t trapped; you can adjust for any number of variables and ultimately get better results for a smaller portion of your budget.

The fact that programmatic spending is multiplying every year speaks volumes about the talent industry’s results and confidence in what the future holds. In just four years, about 80 percent of recruitment ad spend will flow through programmatic channels.

The next revolution in job posting technology is here and it works. You can target a specific audience, reach a certain demographic, isolate for a geographical location and accurately predict how well your campaign will perform. Perhaps even more important, programmatic lets you find who you need where they live.

Predictive analytics and programmatic job postings bring more reliable results with a lot less work. Each of the big three indicators of effective talent acquisition come together when you join the revolution: cost, quality and time. That’s the difference you can expect with this next, new big thing.