Especially for the taxonomy “Occupational Fields”, it is important to be clear how flat or extensive your vocabulary should be.
The decisive difference is the following: Using the extensive taxonomy, you can classify job postings more precisely. You can create a job search landing page per job title and applicants will receive more detailed search suggestions. Please note that the more extensive the taxonomy is, the more time employers will need to post a job in self-service and the more difficult it can be for applicants to pick the right filters for their job search. Also considering SEO and UX impacts, this could lead to too many landing pages with little or no results.
However, if you serve a niche market the variety of different jobs on your job board will most likely be smaller compared to generalists. The occupational fields in a certain market (e.g. law job boards) is already quite limited which is why it may be better to choose a flat hierarchy.
If you decide to use a more extensive taxonomy, we recommend working with parent and child terms so that the results list does not become too long and easier to choose from, for both employers and applicants.
Best practice for existing job boards:
- Analyse your existing jobs: Map your existing jobs to the occupational fields to get an overview of the most used occupations.
- Analyse your current taxonomy or search terms: Use Google Analytics or other tracking tools to get an overview of the most relevant keywords. Ask yourself: “What are my users searching for?”
- Include synonyms - at least for well-performing terms.
Best practice for new job boards:
- Think about your target market and target user: what are your users most likely to search for? Do some research on other job boards and do a keyword analysis.
- Include synonyms - at least for well-performing terms.
See also: Why should I add synonyms to taxonomy terms?