Internet job advertising has now grown to the point where no employer can afford to ignore it as a major means of attracting new staff. But what tactics should HR professionals adopt to make sure they’re getting the best value from their online investment? Angus Kidman reports
Internet job advertising has now grown to the point where no employer can afford to ignore it as a major means of attracting new staff. But what tactics should HR professionals adopt to make sure they’re getting the best value from their online investment? Angus Kidman reports
While Internet job boards were little more than a novelty mostly used by IT geeks when they first began appearing a decade ago, they have quickly evolved into essential tools in every jobseeker and recruiter’s arsenal. While we haven’t reached the point where online ads have supplanted their general and specialist print counterparts, they are certainly a resource that no HR department can afford to ignore – and a potent source of revenue for the companies that manage them.
Total online advertising in 2003 topped $236 million, according to the Audit Bureau of Verification Services, with job ads accounting for a healthy percentage of that total. According to the bureau, recruitment remains the single biggest area of expenditure for classified advertisements, which accounts for 37 per cent of overall revenue.
Similar trends have been seen overseas. A UK survey conducted by the Daily Telegraph found that the number of employers using online job boards has risen by more than a third in 2004. And revenues for the three largest job boards in the US rose by 38 per cent year-on-year in the most recent quarter, according to a study by Corzen. Job boards overall grew revenues by 27 per cent, compared to just four per cent for newspapers.
As online recruitment has evolved, it has also become suitable for a wider range of roles. Stephen Cartwright from recruitment agency Chandler Macleod Group notes that internet sites have moved from primarily specialising in executive and specialist recruitment to broader-based roles.
While many internet categories have ended up dominated by US-based properties with global reach, job seeking for the most part has remained a regional affair. Seek, founded in November 1997 and more recently attracting a substantial investment from Kerry Packer’s PBL, remains the dominant online board in Australia. Seek estimates it attracts 10 per cent of the Australian workforce each month.
CareerOne and Mycareer duke it out in a tight battle for second place. (Telstra’s plans to develop a range of search and advertising products around its Sensis directory brand represent a potential wildcard threat, although its main classified activity, the Trading Post group of publications, has no strength in the traditional employment market.)
Careerone, which is affiliated with News Limited’s newspapers, and Mycareer.com.au, which is part of the Fairfax group, both emphasise their connections with existing print-based recruitment systems. While appearing in both print and online carries a premium, it also offers a wider audience reach, especially in specialist fields. (For instance, advertisements for media positions often appear in the specialist media section in the Thursday edition of News’The Australian.)
Another attraction of the newspaper sites is their feature articles for prospective job seekers, which draw on the resources of their respective publishing groups, according to recruitment firm Careers Connections’ Paul Van Derleeden.
“The thing I like about CareerOne is that we get the online unit in terms of advertising but we also get the bricks and mortar of a news organisation behind it – we get the best of both worlds,” he says.
As well as the major sites, companies can also utilise advertisements in specialist trade publications particular to their field. Another often-ignored option is advertisements on your own corporate website. However, whichever avenue you choose, there are a number of guidelines, which can assist you in getting better value from online recruitment.
Improving online recruitment spend
Write with the medium in mind. In general, online sites charge per ad rather than on the traditional print measure of length, so you don’t need to make your recruitment pitch unbearably terse simply to save a few dollars. Describe the job appealingly and emphasise its potential. With that said, remember, if your ad sounds waffly, the next potential employer is only a click away.
Similarly, most sites will offer you the option of fancier design (often mimicking print design), potentially allowing your ad to stand out from the crowd. Remember that these often take longer to load, which can be the kiss of death for candidates trying to isolate which jobs are worth applying for from a large potential pool.
Offer the right incentives. As with any recruitment task, offering appealing incentives is essential for attracting the right candidates. While remuneration undoubtedly plays a role, it isn’t the only factor. A survey earlier this year by Seek and Cavill & Co found that an employer’s reputation was the top area of concern, cited by 96 per cent of respondents, ahead of salary on 94 per cent and job security and location (90 per cent each).
Utilise your target site’s structure. On most recruitment sites, candidates can specify a variety of fields to refine their search, including location, industry, job title and salary. Make sure you’ve specified as many as possible to maximise the chance of your vacancy being viewed. If the site routinely returns the first line of your ad as part of its search results, make sure that first line makes people want to read on.
“If the job seeker has to sort through fewer inappropriate jobs, then they will make fewer inappropriate applications, ultimately resolving one of the biggest challenges of the industry for client, recruiter and candidates alike,” Fairfax Digital COO Mike Game points out on the Mycareer website.
Understand your target site’s strengths. Different sites often offer better work in different industries, so ask for information on how well they perform in your particular area of specialisation. For instance, CareerOne’s top-ranked categories are administration, hospitality and tourism, retail, IT and health.
Local knowledge is crucial. As noted earlier, recruitment advertising is still a largely regional and national affair. The one arguable exception is candidates seeking to relocate overseas, but that pool of workers is likely to take the trouble to identify the dominant players in their target market rather than relying on Australian services. If you want to attract overseas candidates, you’ll need to advertise overseas as well.
Purchase the appropriate package. All recruitment sites offer discounts for regular advertisers. If you have a constant need to recruit online, investigate one of these to ease the strain on your hiring budgets.
Work with an agency if appropriate. Many recruitment agencies list vacancies on their own sites as well as major job boards. While these won’t attract the traffic volumes of generalist sites, they may prove popular with workers already in a specific field and looking for a change.
Don’t neglect your own resources. While mass-market job boards can be seductive, simply placing ads on your own company website can be a useful means of attracting applications from both within and outside of the business. In the UK Telegraph study cited earlier, corporate websites were utilised by 42 per cent of the businesses surveyed, while just 25 per cent made use of larger job boards. Even if you don’t advertise jobs on your site, employment candidates will inevitably visit your site to gain an initial impression of the company. Make sure it’s a positive one.
Make use of recruitment boards’ other resources. Job boards generally offer a range of resources beyond simply placing an advertisement online. Searching through resumés already posted on the site will help you to identify candidates who are suitable even if they haven’t applied directly. Many sites also offer pre-qualification services and other resources which can help you process large numbers of applications during busy hiring periods.
Meet the internal challenge. Even if you don’t utilise recruitment sites for your business, it’s important to recognise that they will regularly be visited by your existing employees. For instance, the 2002 Web@Work survey found that 75 per cent of IT staff regularly visited recruitment sites. Don’t get so caught up in new hires that you neglect existing staff.
Analyse your results. Most job boards offer detailed metrics on who has viewed and responded to advertisements, but these are only useful if they’re integrated into a broader analytic program to check the effectiveness of your overall approach to hiring.
The evidence suggests that many HR departments are weak in this area. A survey early this year by the US Society for Human Resource Management found that just 9 per cent of companies had identified measurement and metrics as an area for investment. Interestingly, the same survey found that those departments which were most involved in measurement were the most likely to have full strategic involvement in their company, rather than being treated as an ancillary function. As the society’s president Susan Meisinger pointed out: “HR professionals must be able to quantify their contributions if they are going to assist in setting the strategic direction of the business.”
