The Job Board Retention Playbook: Frameworks for Two-Sided Growth

Most job boards die with impressive traffic numbers. Fifty thousand monthly visitors, near-zero retention, and founders wondering why revenue never materializes.

What actually kills them: chasing traffic while ignoring the metric that determines survival. Operators refresh their analytics dashboards watching visitor counts climb, celebrating every SEO win and social media spike. Meanwhile, their retention rate sits at 2%, and they have no idea because they've never measured it.

Job boards face a retention problem that few operators acknowledge and even fewer understand how to solve. Job seekers search for work once or twice per year. Employers hire from time to time, often with months-long gaps between job openings. Both sides arrive with urgent intent, do what they came for, and disappear. The product works exactly as designed, and the business model collapses because people rarely come back.

As Alex Schultz, Meta's CMO, puts it: "Retention is the single most important thing for growth." Not traffic. Not conversion. Retention.

This guide applies three proven frameworks to the job board retention problem: Reforge's ICED Framework for understanding infrequent products, growth accounting for measuring what actually matters, and NFX's network effects playbook for building defensibility. These aren't academic exercises. They're practical tools that expose why users leave and how to fix it.

If you're tracking job board analytics without separating employer retention from job seeker retention, measuring aggregate "users" instead of cohorts, or celebrating traffic while your renewal rate tanks, this is the playbook you need.

Why job boards are different: the ICED framework

Most SaaS playbooks don't apply to job boards. If you're tracking daily active users or obsessing over traditional cohort retention curves, you're measuring the wrong things.

Job boards operate in what Vivek Kumar calls the "Forgettable Zone": infrequent products that users need rarely, control minimally, and forget between uses. Understanding this changes everything about how you should build and grow your board.

The ICED framework explained

Vivek Kumar, product leader at Circles and product advisor at Atlys, created the ICED framework while at Reforge to help founders diagnose why their retention strategies fail. ICED stands for four dimensions that determine how users engage with products:

1. Infrequency: How often users naturally need your product

2. Control: How much control users have over achieving their desired outcome

3. Engagement: Natural engagement level between transactions

4. Distinctiveness: Brand recall and differentiation when the need arises

Products score high or low on each dimension. The combination determines which retention strategies will work and which will waste resources. High-frequency products with strong control (Slack, Notion) can focus on daily habits. Infrequent products with weak control need entirely different strategies.

Where job boards fall on ICED

Infrequency: Very high. Job seekers search maybe once per year, often less. The average person changes jobs every four years. Even active job seekers complete their search within weeks or months, then disappear. For employers, hiring happens from time to time. They need you when a role opens, then vanish once it's filled.

Control: Very low. You help people connect, but you don't determine outcomes. A job seeker can apply to every relevant posting on your board and still get no offers. That's not your fault, but it feels like failure to them. An employer can post a perfect job description and get zero qualified applicants. You control the platform, not the market dynamics.

Engagement: Very low. Between job searches, users have zero reason to return. You're not Slack or Instagram. There's no daily habit loop. No notifications they care about. The value prop only activates when they need a job or need to hire.

Distinctiveness: Low to medium. Most niche job boards lack strong brand recall. When a developer decides to look for a new role, do they think of your board first? Or do they Google "tech jobs" and click whatever appears?

This combination places job boards squarely in the Forgettable Zone. Kumar even cites Indeed explicitly in his original ICED article as an example of an infrequent-use product that succeeded not through engagement tactics, but through market penetration.

Why this reframes your entire strategy

Understanding your ICED score changes the game. You cannot win through traditional SaaS retention tactics. No amount of email drip campaigns will bring back a user who just accepted a job offer. No gamification feature will make employers check your board daily when they're not hiring.

The strategic implication: for infrequent products, market penetration matters more than retention rate.

Kumar puts it clearly: "The goal shifts from engagement to ensuring you're the first choice when the need arises."

This doesn't mean retention doesn't matter. You still want users to come back on their next job search. But you're optimizing for recall over a multi-year timeframe, not week-over-week stickiness.

Your real retention question isn't "How do I get users to log in tomorrow?" It's "How do I ensure that in 18 months, when they need a job board again, they think of me first?"

This requires different tactics: brand building over engagement loops, market coverage over feature depth, memorable positioning over viral mechanics, network effects over retention gimmicks.

Can you increase frequency? Some platforms do

LinkedIn solved the infrequency problem by becoming more than a job board. The news feed, notifications, company pages, and professional content keep users returning between job searches. When someone finally decides to look for a new role, LinkedIn is already open on their browser.

Some niche boards try similar approaches: company profiles with employee reviews, salary databases, industry news sections, or community forums. These features can shift your ICED score toward higher engagement, but they require significant investment and may dilute your core value proposition.

The honest assessment: most job board operators lack the resources to become LinkedIn. The frequency-increasing features that work (reviews, salaries, community) each require dedicated teams to maintain quality. A half-built salary database or abandoned forum can hurt your brand more than help.

For most niche boards, the better strategy is accepting infrequent use and optimizing for resurrection rather than trying to manufacture daily engagement.

Two sides, two strategies: employer vs. job seeker retention

Almost every job board operator makes the same mistake: they treat retention as a single problem. They look at "user retention" as one metric, build one engagement strategy, and wonder why it doesn't move the needle.

The truth is, you're running two businesses in one. Employers and job seekers have completely different needs, behaviors, and retention drivers. What keeps an employer coming back (qualified applicants arriving quickly) means nothing to a job seeker who's already employed. What keeps a job seeker engaged (weekly job alerts) is irrelevant to an employer who just wants their role filled.

You need two separate retention playbooks.

Employer retention: the hard side that determines your success

In most marketplaces, one side is much harder to acquire and retain. Andrew Chen, general partner at a16z and author of The Cold Start Problem, puts it simply: "In most marketplaces, one side is much harder to acquire and retain. That's your hard side. Solve that first."

For job boards, employers are almost always the hard side. They're harder to acquire, cost more to service, and they churn fast if they don't see immediate value. But they're also the side that determines whether your board lives or dies. No jobs means no job seekers. No revenue means no business.

The benchmark for healthy supply-side retention comes from Andrew Chen's marketplace research at a16z: M12 retention above 30%. That means more than 30% of employers who post a job should still be posting twelve months later. If you're below this, you have a retention crisis.

Key employer retention metrics

Track these four metrics relentlessly:

Renewal rate — Percentage of employers who post again within 90 days. This is your core retention metric. If employers don't post a second time, everything else is noise.

Posting frequency — How often repeat employers post. Monthly posters are far more valuable than annual posters. Track the distribution: how many employers post 1x, 2-5x, 6-12x, or 12+ times per year?

Dashboard engagement — If you offer employer dashboards (applicant tracking, analytics), monitor login frequency. Employers who check their dashboard 3+ times per week are far more likely to renew.

Time-to-first-applicant — The killer metric. How long from job posting to first qualified applicant? For niche boards, target 24-48 hours. If employers wait a week for their first applicant, they're already shopping your competitors.

Employer retention strategies that work

Speed to first applicant is everything. The moment between posting a job and receiving the first applicant is your most vulnerable window. Employers are anxious, skeptical, and ready to try elsewhere. Your entire platform should optimize to shrink this window.

How? Instant notifications to your most active job seekers. Email and push alerts to anyone who's saved a search matching the new role. Automated social sharing to LinkedIn or relevant communities. Some operators even manually notify qualified candidates for the first few postings. It doesn't scale, but it builds trust when you need it most.

Optimize for applicant quality, not quantity. Employers don't want 200 applicants. They want 5-10 qualified ones. If your board sends them 50 unqualified candidates, you've failed, even if your "applications per posting" metric looks great.

This means two things. First, educate job seekers on what makes a strong application (targeted cover letters, relevant experience, portfolio links). Second, consider light screening mechanisms: required questions, skill assessments, or even manual curation for premium tiers.

The best feedback from employers: "I got 8 applicants and 6 were actually qualified." That's a winning ratio.

Make reposting easy. Most churn happens not because employers hate your board, but because reposting is annoying. They have to re-enter job details, re-write descriptions, re-upload logos.

Build a "post again" button that duplicates their last listing with one click. Save their company profile, benefits list, and application questions as templates. If they posted 60 days ago, send a proactive email: "Ready to hire again? Repost your [Role Title] in 30 seconds."

Proactive success reporting. Most employers post a job and forget about your platform until they need to hire again. That's a retention killer. You want them thinking about your value constantly.

Send weekly performance reports: "Your listing was viewed 47 times this week. You have 3 new applicants." Even better, send success stories: "5 employers on our board filled roles this week." Show social proof that your platform works.

Job seeker retention: the easier side, but still critical

Job seekers are more abundant and easier to replace, but you still need them engaged. A job board with no active seekers doesn't fill employer roles, which destroys supply-side retention.

This is where job aggregators become essential for new boards. Backfilling jobs from aggregator feeds gives you content to attract job seekers before you have organic employer supply. The job seeker traffic you build through aggregated listings eventually becomes the audience that makes your board valuable to paying employers.

One caveat: not every niche has abundant job seekers. If you're building a board for specialized roles (underwater welders, rare language translators, niche medical specialties), job seeker acquisition might be your actual hard side. Know your market.

The good news: for most niches, job seeker retention is simpler than employer retention. Most job seekers are passively browsing until they're ready to jump. Your goal isn't daily engagement. It's staying top-of-mind when they decide to move.

Key job seeker retention metrics

Return rate — Percentage of job seekers who visit your board 2+ times. If someone visits once and never returns, they're not retained. They're bounce traffic.

Job alert engagement — Open rates and click-through rates on email alerts. This is your primary re-engagement tool. Healthy boards see 25-40% open rates on job alerts.

Application rate — Percentage of active job seekers who apply to at least one role. If someone visits 10 times but never applies, they're either not qualified or not serious.

Profile completion — If you offer profiles, track completion rates. Job seekers who build profiles (upload resumes, add skills, set preferences) are far more likely to return.

Job seeker retention strategies

Job alerts are your retention engine. Email is the single most effective tool for keeping job seekers engaged. Let them create custom searches (keywords, location, job type) and receive weekly digests of new matches.

Weekly digests outperform daily alerts. Daily emails feel spammy and lead to unsubscribes. Weekly emails feel like a curated service. Test subject lines: "3 new [Job Title] roles in [City]" performs better than "Your weekly job alert."

Saved searches turn browsers into regulars. Let job seekers save searches with one click and return to them easily. "Your saved search for 'remote Python jobs' has 5 new results." This creates a habit loop: visit, browse, save, return.

Career resources create stickiness. This is where most job boards under-invest. Publish content that helps job seekers between job searches: salary guides, resume templates, interview prep, industry news.

This makes your board a career tool, not just a job search tool. Someone who reads your salary guide in January might not apply for a role until June, but they'll remember you.

Respect the lifecycle. Job seekers have a natural retention curve: they're hyper-engaged when actively searching, then they disappear once they land a role. That's normal. Your goal is to re-engage them 12-18 months later when they're ready to move again.

Tag users who land roles and reduce email frequency to monthly career content. Then, 12 months later, increase email frequency: "It's been a year. Ready for your next move?"

The hard side principle: why employers come first

If you have to choose where to invest your retention energy (and early on, you do), focus on employers.

One sticky employer posting monthly creates opportunities for dozens of job seekers. One sticky job seeker applying monthly creates value for at most a few employers.

Great employer retention attracts more employers (social proof: "Everyone in our industry uses this board"). Great job seeker retention doesn't attract employers the same way. They care about applicant quality, not traffic volume.

This doesn't mean ignore job seekers. It means sequence your investments. Build employer retention first, then layer in job seeker retention strategies.

Measuring what matters: Growth accounting for job boards

If you're tracking "active users" as a single number, you're missing the story. Brian Balfour, CEO of Reforge, puts it bluntly: "If you're not measuring new, retained, resurrected, and churned separately, you're flying blind on growth."

Growth accounting gives you X-ray vision into what's actually driving (or killing) your growth. Instead of a vanity metric that goes up or down, you get a breakdown of exactly where users are coming from and going to.

The growth accounting framework

Growth accounting splits your user base into four cohorts each period:

New: First-time users this period

Retained: Users who were active last period and stayed active this period

Churned: Users who were active last period but aren't active this period

Resurrected: Previously churned users who came back this period

Your net growth formula becomes:

Net Growth = New + Resurrected - Churned

This immediately surfaces problems a single "MAU" number hides. You might see total users growing 10% while 40% of last month's users churned, a ticking time bomb masked by new user acquisition.

Job boards need dual growth accounting

You need separate growth accounting for employers and job seekers, because they have completely different engagement patterns and churn behaviors.

Employer-side growth accounting:

• New: Companies posting their first job
• Retained: Companies that posted last month and this month
• Churned: Companies that posted last month but not this month
• Resurrected: Companies that hadn't posted in 60+ days but posted again

Job seeker-side growth accounting:

• New: First-time visitors who applied or registered
• Retained: Users active last month who came back
• Churned: Last month's active users who didn't return
• Resurrected: Users who hadn't been active in 60+ days but returned

Your employer churn might be 15% while job seeker churn hits 60%, and that's fine if you understand the dynamics. Job seekers who land jobs are succeeding, not failing. The metric that matters is whether they resurrect when they need you again.

The three retention curve archetypes

Sequoia Capital identifies three retention curve patterns that predict your business trajectory:

Flattening curve: This is what you want. Churn is high initially as poor-fit users leave, but then it levels off. You've found product-market fit with a core audience that keeps coming back.

Declining curve: The death spiral. Every cohort keeps churning over time, never stabilizing. You're constantly backfilling churned users with new acquisition, pouring water into a leaky bucket.

Smiling curve: The unicorn pattern. Retention actually improves over time as users get more embedded in your product. This is rare but powerful.

Most job boards see declining curves initially because they're measuring the wrong thing. Once you separate "successfully placed users" from "actually churned users," your retention curve often flattens.

Quick ratio: the health check for marketplaces

Growth accounting enables the Quick Ratio, a single metric that predicts marketplace health:

Quick Ratio = (New + Resurrected) / Churned

A ratio above 1.0 means you're growing. Below 1.0 means you're shrinking, even if vanity metrics look fine. For job boards, calculate this separately for each side:

• Employer Quick Ratio: (New companies + Resurrected companies) / Churned companies
• Job seeker Quick Ratio: (New seekers + Resurrected seekers) / Churned seekers

A healthy job board should maintain employer Quick Ratio above 2.0 (harder to acquire, more valuable to retain) and job seeker Quick Ratio above 1.5 (higher natural churn is acceptable).

According to Andrew Chen's marketplace research at a16z, top-quartile marketplaces achieve greater than 50% yearly retention on the supply side. For job boards, this benchmark applies to employers. Companies should be posting jobs with you multiple times per year.

Resurrection: the metric that matters for infrequent products

Here's where job boards break traditional retention thinking: your best users churn.

Job boards face what some call the "Tinder problem." Your product's success causes user departure. A job seeker who lands their dream job through your board is a success story, not a retention failure. They're supposed to leave. Similarly, an employer who fills their role quickly has no immediate reason to return.

The metric that actually matters is whether they resurrect 2-3 years later when they're job hunting again.

This changes everything. Instead of fighting natural churn with engagement tactics, you optimize for memorable success and easy resurrection:

• Email career advice during their "employed" phase (stay top-of-mind without being annoying)
• Make re-activation simple: saved searches, one-click profile updates
• Celebrate their placement and set a reminder to check in later
• Create content valuable even when they're not job hunting

Track resurrection cohorts: what percentage of users who found jobs in 2023 came back in 2025? If that number is above 40%, you've built a brand people remember. If it's below 10%, you were just a transactional tool they forgot.

For employers, resurrection matters differently. A company that posted once and never returned is a failure. But a seasonal employer who posts twice a year like clockwork is a success. That's predictable resurrection, not churn.

Building defensibility: Network effects in job boards

Most job boards never achieve true network effects. They're advertising platforms where employers pay to reach candidates, but there's no compounding value that makes the platform stronger with each new participant.

Understanding the difference between a "marketplace with network effects" and a "classified ads business" is critical to building lasting defensibility.

The network effects flywheel

Real network effects create a cross-side flywheel: more quality employers attract more quality candidates, which attracts more employers. But this flywheel only spins when you cross the liquidity threshold, the point where both sides reliably find what they're looking for.

James Currier from NFX captures this in his network effects bible: "Network effects are the best form of defensibility. But the defensibility of a marketplace comes from its density and liquidity, not just scale."

The key word is density. A job board serving 1,000 DevOps engineers in fintech, with 50 highly relevant employers posting weekly, has stronger network effects than a general board with 10,000 passive users and scattered job listings. The niche board feels "alive" because every visit yields relevant opportunities. The general board feels like searching through noise.

Measuring network effects that matter

a16z's marketplace framework identifies 16 ways to measure network effects. For job boards, four metrics reveal whether you're building real defensibility:

Match rate is your ultimate health metric. What percentage of quality job posts result in hires? What percentage of engaged candidates find roles? If employers consistently hire through your platform, they'll keep posting. If candidates consistently find opportunities, they'll keep checking.

Time to liquidity measures how quickly new participants get value. Can a new employer expect qualified applicants within 48 hours? Can a new candidate find 5-10 relevant jobs immediately? The faster you deliver value, the stronger your atomic network.

Supply utilization rate tracks what percentage of your job posts get meaningful applicant flow. If 80% of listings attract zero applications, you don't have network effects. You have a database.

Multi-tenanting rate is your competitive moat metric (lower is better). When employers post jobs exclusively on your platform instead of cross-posting to Indeed, LinkedIn, and five other boards, you've achieved preference. High multi-tenanting means you're commoditized.

The multi-tenanting challenge

The uncomfortable truth: most job boards face extreme multi-tenanting. Employers hedge their bets by posting everywhere, and candidates browse multiple platforms. You're competing with Indeed, LinkedIn, niche competitors, and company career pages, all at once.

a16z notes that job marketplaces have "inherently low switching costs." Employers can easily post to another platform. Candidates can easily check another board. You can't rely on lock-in.

Instead, you need preference through distinctiveness. This connects back to the ICED framework. When your board provides unique inventory (exclusive remote roles), unique community (a Slack group where employers and candidates interact), or unique curation (only companies with transparent compensation), you create reasons to prefer your platform.

Density beats scale

The practical implication: focus hard on density before breadth. A marketplace with strong network effects in a narrow niche will always beat a thin marketplace trying to serve everyone.

This means making hard choices. If you're building a remote work job board, should you accept any remote role, or focus exclusively on senior engineering roles at Series A-C startups? The broad approach might give you more listings faster, but the narrow approach lets you cross the liquidity threshold in a specific niche, and that's where network effects actually begin.

The NFX framework emphasizes finding your "white-hot center," your densest, most engaged cluster. This might be DevOps engineers in fintech, legal professionals in climate tech, or healthcare workers in telehealth. When you own the densest network in a specific niche, employers return because that's where the candidates are, and candidates return because that's where the best opportunities concentrate.

Once you achieve liquidity in your white-hot center, you can expand adjacently. The remote engineering board can add product management roles, then design roles. But you expand from a position of strength (proven network effects in one area) rather than trying to achieve network effects everywhere at once.

The retention-first growth model

Most job board operators optimize for the wrong metric. They obsess over traffic numbers, SEO rankings, and monthly visitor counts while their businesses slowly bleed revenue through the back door.

The uncomfortable truth: your employer retention rate matters more than how many new employers you sign up.

The compounding math

Let's compare two hypothetical job boards over five years:

Board A follows the conventional playbook. They start with 100 employers, retain 40% year-over-year, and aggressively acquire 50 new employers annually through sales and marketing.

Board B takes a different approach. Same 100 employers to start, but they retain 75% annually and only add 30 new employers per year.

In Year 1, Board A drops to 90 employers while Board B grows to 105. Board A's operators see a smaller base but point to their aggressive acquisition pipeline. Board B's team has fewer new logos but a much healthier existing book.

Fast forward to Year 5. Board A has stabilized at 84 employers. Board B has grown to 116 employers — a 38% advantage. By Year 10, the gap becomes a chasm.

This is the retention multiplier effect. Each percentage point improvement in retention compounds annually. Improving retention from 40% to 50% has the same long-term impact as doubling your new employer acquisition, except retention improvements cost a fraction of what marketing costs.

Why more traffic can actually hurt you

The contrarian take that makes most operators uncomfortable: chasing traffic can destroy your retention rate.

When you optimize purely for traffic volume, you inevitably attract mismatched job seekers. They're from the wrong geography, lack the required skills, or have incompatible experience levels. These visitors apply to jobs anyway because applying is free and effort is low.

Now your employers are drowning in irrelevant applications. A healthcare facility looking for specialized nurses gets hundreds of applications from retail workers. A fintech company seeking senior engineers gets buried under entry-level applications from unrelated fields.

What happens next is predictable. Employers waste hours screening unqualified candidates. They question whether your board actually reaches their target audience. When renewal time comes, they remember the frustration, not your traffic numbers. They don't renew.

This dynamic is especially destructive for niche job boards. Your competitive advantage is supposed to be relevance and quality. When you chase traffic like a generic job board, you undermine the very thing that justifies your monetization.

The traffic-first approach is just hope that more of something will eventually work out. Retention-first means building systems that deliver predictable employer value. It means turning down SEO opportunities that would bring irrelevant traffic. It means optimizing for application quality over application volume.

Implementation: a retention audit framework

Most job board operators track vanity metrics like total users or monthly signups. These numbers feel good but tell you nothing about retention. If you want to improve retention, you need to audit what's actually happening with your two sides.

Use this five-step framework to get started this week.

Step 1 — Segment your metrics

Stop looking at aggregate "user" numbers. Your job board has two completely different customer types with different behaviors, value propositions, and retention patterns.

Create two separate dashboards: one for employers, one for job seekers. Track them independently. An employer who posts once and never returns is a retention failure. A job seeker who finds a job and disappears is a success story.

For employers, track: posting frequency, time between posts, renewal rates, subscription churn, and active job days per month.

For job seekers, track: return visit frequency, application rate per visit, profile update frequency, and engagement with alerts or saved searches.

Step 2 — Build cohort dashboards

Group users by signup month and track their behavior over time. This reveals patterns you can't see in aggregate numbers.

For employers, create monthly cohorts and track what percentage repost jobs at 30, 60, and 90 days. Track renewal rates for subscription models. Most importantly, identify when they churn. Do they disappear after one post? After three months? After their first bad hire?

For job seekers, track how often each monthly cohort returns to your site. Do they come back within a week? A month? Do they apply to jobs or just browse? When do they stop coming back entirely?

The goal is to identify the exact moment users fall off, so you can intervene before it happens.

Step 3 — Identify your "hard side"

For most job boards, employers are the hard side. They're harder to acquire, harder to retain, and they generate revenue.

Ask yourself: which side takes more effort to bring on board? Which side has more alternatives? Which side churns faster? That's your hard side. Focus your retention efforts there first.

Step 4 — Map your ICED profile

Use the ICED framework to understand your retention challenges:

Infrequency: How often do your users naturally need you? Employers might hire quarterly. Job seekers might job hunt every two years.

Control: How much influence do you have over outcomes? Can you guarantee interviews? Hires? Or just visibility?

Engagement: What keeps users coming back between transactions? Email alerts? Saved searches? Community features?

Distinctiveness: Can users tell you apart from competitors? Or are you just another job board?

Rate yourself honestly on each dimension. The lower your scores, the harder retention will be, and the more creative your resurrection strategy needs to be.

Step 5 — Design resurrection triggers

Don't wait for users to remember you exist. Build automated triggers that bring them back when they're likely to need you again.

For job seekers: send targeted job alerts when new roles match their profile. Run annual check-ins asking if they're open to opportunities. Create content that keeps your brand visible even when they're not actively searching.

For employers: reach out when seasonal hiring cycles begin. Remind them when their job postings expire. Send hiring market data that positions you as a resource, not just a vendor.

Platforms like Cavuno provide the foundation for implementing these retention strategies, with built-in support for employer dashboards, job alerts, and the analytics infrastructure you need to measure what matters.

Retention as competitive moat

The job boards that dominate the next decade won't be the ones with the biggest marketing budgets or the flashiest landing pages. They'll be the ones that made retention a strategic priority before their competitors figured out it mattered.

This is your asymmetric advantage. While others chase vanity metrics and traffic spikes, you're building systems that account for infrequent use patterns, measure both sides of your marketplace independently, and create genuine network effects that compound over time.

When an employer posts three times and gets qualified applicants each time, they're not shopping around anymore. When a job seeker lands a great role through your board, you own mindshare for their next move in 18 months.

The operators who win understand something fundamental: retention isn't about keeping people on your site longer. It's about being the obvious choice when they need you again. That means different strategies for different user types, metrics that reflect actual business health rather than engagement theater, and patient investment toward density and defensibility.

Your next move is simple. Run the retention audit this week. Calculate your true repeat rates for employers and job seekers separately. Identify which cohort needs attention first. Then build the feedback loop that makes them want to come back.

For the complete metrics framework to implement these retention strategies, see our job board KPI guide. To understand how retention connects to revenue, explore job board monetization strategies.