The largest ever online recruitment survey shows the number of people exclusively using the internet to look for a job has doubled since 2007.
The annual National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS), published today, surveyed over 50,000 online job seekers between September and December 2008. The results show that 1 in 7 online job seekers now use only the internet to look for jobs – a figure up from 1 in 11 a year ago and more than doubling the figure of 1 in 16 in 2007.
In addition, the NORAS results show that the internet continues to be an effective medium for job seekers, with one in four online job seekers having obtained a job that they searched for, found and applied to online.
Giles Guest, managing director of Enhance Media – the online recruitment research and strategy company that produces NORAS commented – “NORAS 2009 shows that the internet is becoming an increasingly important and dominant channel in recruitment. The year on year results also show that the downturn is accelerating the move towards online hiring as companies look to save costs wherever possible during the recruitment cycle.”
The survey – now in its eighth year – also reveals that online job seekers are increasingly turning to new technologies to look for jobs, with one in ten saying that they have used a smart phone or blackberry to look for a job. Guest commented “Job seekers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and using all the online tools available to them to find new roles.”
Online job seekers were also found to be willing to improve their skills and qualifications in order to get the right job, with 78% saying they would be prepared to take a course or qualification to further their career.
The NORAS 2009 results are available to download free at www.noras.co.uk. An interactive tool is also available free and combines NORAS audience data with independent ABCe audited web site traffic figures to enable recruiters to compare job sites and choose the right job board for their recruitment needs. Use ‘journalist’ as your user name and ‘journalist’ as your password.
The 31 sites participating in NORAS 2009 are:
| Brand Republic Jobs | Jobs.telegraph.co.uk |
| CIMA MY JOBS | LondonCareers.net |
| Employment4Students | Law Society Gazette |
| eFinancialCareers.com | Public Jobs Direct |
| Eteach.com | PlanetRecruit |
| exec-appointments.com | Prospects.ac.uk |
| executivesontheweb.com | s1jobs |
| fish4Jobs | SecsintheCity.com |
| Grapevine Jobs | The Career Engineer |
| Grocer Jobs | tesjobs |
| Guardian Jobs | The Jobs Mine |
| Gumtree | Times Online – Jobs |
| GAAPweb | Third Sector Jobs |
| jobs.ac.uk | Totally Legal |
| Just Engineers | Workcircle |
| Jobsgopublic |
Note to editors:
The main findings of the NORAS results are featured in the NORAS 2009 Highlights booklet and can be accessed online by logging into http://www.noras.co.uk/members/norasinteractive/search.php – please use ‘journalist’ as your password and ‘journalist’ as your password.
The National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS) is the UK’s leading source of independent and objective information on the audiences of online recruitment sites. NORAS is also the UK’s largest piece of online recruitment research.
Established in 2001, Enhance Media is the UK’s leading online recruitment communications consultancy. It provides research, strategy, training and advertising services to recruitment professionals to enable them to recruit more efficiently and cost effectively through the use of technology and online media.
ABC ELECTRONIC was established in 1996 as the industry owned, tri-partite, not for profit organisation, which works on behalf of advertisers, media buyers and media owners to provide third party independent verification and certification for data related to electronic media (Internet, Email, SMS, Interactive TV, WAP, PDA and Streaming audio and video) in the UK and Ireland. (www.abce.org.uk)
NORAS is supported by:
The Internet Advertising Bureau: www.iabuk.net
The Association of Online Publishers: www.ukaop.org.uk
The Association of Graduate Recruiters: www.agr.org.uk
Contacts:
Giles Guest, Enhance Media Limited, 01483 719 020 and 07973 641 747