A RAPIDLY EVOLVING ENVIRONMENTA growing proportion of employers are using the online medium to recruit personnel.
Around two-thirds of employers use some form of e-recruitment.
This is reflected in the amount spent on e-recruitment display advertising which has risen strongly in recent years.
In 2006, Key Note estimates that online recruitment display advertising will be worth £560m, compared with £315m in 2005.
Growth in 2006 is expected to slow compared with 2005, as the Internet market generally matures and as employment prospects in 2006 worsen compared with those in 2005.The number of Internet jobseekers continues to grow and will approach 9.5 million at the start of 2007.
Based on annual averages, the number of Internet jobseekers is estimated to have increased between 2001 and 2006 by 266.7%.
In 2006, Key Note expects jobsites to receive visits from 23.9 million unique visitors on average per month.
(Note: this is not the same as number of online jobseekers, as one jobseeker might visit more than one site.) Key Note estimates that 26.5% of those using the Internet to look for work will eventually find a job via the Internet.
This implies that around 2.3 million jobseekers will have found work via the Internet in 2006.
Most applicants make their application by either filling in an application form online or by e-mailing a curriculum vitae (CV) to a potential employer.
Key Note estimates that in 2005, 4.3 million jobseekers applied for a job via an electronic means, while 1 million used offline means to apply.THE THREE ESThe `electronic' in e-recruitment has an impact on the recruitment process at the following stages:
• E1 — attracting applications
• E2 — managing applications
• E3 — selecting the candidates.Traditionally, recruiters were concerned with attracting a field of candidates offering the right mix of skills, experience and characteristics.
However, today an increasing emphasis is being placed on managing and selecting applications: the recruiter's focus is shifting from E1 to E2 and E3.Usage of e-recruitment technologies has increased strongly in the past 3 years (since 2003), especially for technologies such as e-mail and online applications.
For a majority of employers, e-recruitment is providing a positive contribution to their human resource (HR) activities.
Not only can online recruitment methods generate large numbers of applicants, which can be filtered using online tools, but they also make it easy to measure the return on investment (ROI) of using various sites or various advertisements, improving the effectiveness of the recruitment process for firms.THE INTERNET'S LIMITATIONSCurrently, the Internet's ability to generate applications (i.e.
E1) is not matched by its ability to filter out unsuitable applications (E2) or aid selecting the appropriate candidate (E3), so it is not yet fulfilling its true potential.
Jobsites and e-recruitment software providers have yet to provide the tools to automate the management and selection of candidates in the same way that they have for attracting candidates.
For example, while the Internet in principal should free up time for HR staff to engage in more value-added activities other than, say, sifting through applications, as yet this is not happening — much offline and manual work is still involved.Moreover, Internet jobsites have traditionally attracted a very specific type of jobseeker, i.e.
adults who are:
• typically under the age of 35
• affluent (ABC1)
• highly educated, normally to degree level
• resident in London and the South East of England.Traditional biases in terms of the online users of jobsites (male jobseekers) have now been eradicated, and the Internet is proving more effective at attracting jobseekers from all sectors of the workforce, from school leavers and graduates, through to manual workers and career professionals.
However, it is still true that the biases by age, affluence and education remain strongly ingrained.
The Internet is not yet a fully effective medium for targeting older, non-professional workers.Moreover, in excess of 90% of jobsite users also use offline methods to find a job, indicating that online methods are seen as only one aspect of a much wider job-search strategy undertaken by jobseekers.
ONLINE AND OFFLINE INTEGRATION Despite the growth of the Internet, the traditional medium of the press is still widely used by recruiters and jobseekers.
The press, in terms of job advertisements, has traditionally segmented into the specialist trade press and the generalist, mainly broadsheet or local press.
A similar model has developed in the online world, with the specialist jobsite looking to meet the needs of employers looking for specific skills or working in specific industry sectors and the generalist site looking to meet the needs of employers searching for a wide variety of skills, across industry sectors, i.e.:
• Generalist job boards — offer jobs across a wide range of industry sectors/skills.
They tend to have strong brand awareness and are most successful at filling jobs with transferable skills.
• Specialist/vertical/niche jobs boards — offer jobs in a particular industry sector or particular skill.
The largest tend to have a loyal base of users and are popular with employers targeting specific skills.The online and offline world work in tandem, each undertaking a specific role in the recruitment process.
Today, recruitment media can be divided into the following segments:
• Media designed to advertise jobs and raise interest — i.e.
below-the-line activities.
This role is fulfilled by the online jobsites.
Employers find that the commercial jobsites is useful for two reasons: market coverage and targeting the active jobseeker.
• Media designed to build an employer's brand and promote working for a specific company — i.e.
above-the-line activities.
This role is fulfilled by offline media (e.g.
press) and corporate websites.
Employers find that these media are useful for targeting the more passive jobseeker.
As may be expected in this environment, the major players on the Internet include a large number of offline media companies.
The top ranks of the jobsites market are dominated by three types of company:
• pureplay Internet companies, e.g.
Monster, topjobs.co.uk Ltd, Jobserve Ltd
• recruitment agencies that have developed their own online jobsites, e.g.
Reed Executive PLC
• media companies that have developed or acquired websites/portals based on their print job advertisements from both newspapers and specialist magazines, e.g.
Reed Elsevier, Trinity Mirror The largest site owner by unique visitors in 2005 was Reed Elsevier, principally via Total Jobs Group, which owns the following sites: Totajobs.com, CWJobs.co.uk, Caterer.com, Catererglobal.com, Hotelscareeers.com, Retailchoice.co.uk and Salestarget.co.uk.
Other key sites/owners are Trinity Mirror, Fish4 Trading (part owned by four major regional newspaper groups, including Trinity Mirror), Associated Newspapers and Monster Worldwide.SQUARING THE CIRCLEJobsites are used by site users for two clear purposes:
• to find jobs (the main motivation) — which requires a narrow focus on specific skills or industry sectors
• to obtain career-related information/advice (which may not be directly related to changing/finding a job) — which requires a broader focus, with sites offering careers advice and management services, for example.Jobsites are increasingly trying to square the circle of offering both a broader and yet more focused service to their jobseekers and recruiters.
With recruiters faced with candidate overload and jobseekers faced with job overload, both recruiters and jobsite users want a service more tailored to their specific requirements, either by skills or industry sector.
At the same time, sites are seeking to widen their range of services offering more career management at the jobseeker end of market and more e-human resources (eHR) services at the corporate-client end of the market.
FUTURE GROWTHIn the next 5 years (2011), the e-recruitment market will grow in scale and importance.
Key trends will include:
• the development of more advanced tools such as sifting, matching, handling management and application service provider type products that sit on a client's own website
• a growing use of social networking technologies to reach candidates, especially the passive jobseeker
• stronger growth in the specialist sector of the market — there will be only limited opportunities to launch into the generalist online recruitment market in the next 5 years
• more consolidation and a shakeout of the smaller players and start-ups that fail to provide a quality value service for either employers or jobseekers, or that do not invest sufficiently in their business.In addition, there will be continued integration of offline and online recruitment, both within recruitment companies and between online jobsites and offline recruitment companies.
This will still mean that the traditional boundaries that existed between print media owners, job boards, recruitment advertising agencies, recruitment consultancies and technology companies will be eroded.
A new breed of `super suppliers' will develop, capable of offering employers a range of online and offline resourcing.