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Booking recruitment advertising in the national press is easy. Media owners make it possible to distinguish between different newspapers. They provide a wealth of useful information to help you, the advertiser, make an informed decision.
For example the National Readership Survey (NRS) offers detailed demographic information on a publication’s readership in addition to updating readership numbers every three months. This enables effective targeting of different age groups, geographical areas and even professions. The real strength of NRS is that it is possible to compare publications on any chosen factor, for example the percentage of graduate readers, because the same methodology has been used in assessing each publication.
The Media Monitoring Service (MMS) shows the strengths of different recruitment publications through market share figures. It is very easy to determine which publication is the market leader and therefore offers the best response for a particular vacancy; skills required, salary, geographical region and industry sector can also be accounted for.
Newspapers are also eager to provide prospective advertisers with testimonials; quotes from real recruiters, sharing their experiences of advertising with a particular publication and these can be very useful in offering reassurance to those unsure of which advertising route to take.
Finally, all newspapers have audited circulations. This does not offer any great insights in terms of recruitment advertising, but is a useful guarantee of the number of copies being sold or distributed.
There is a similar wealth of information when it comes to booking recruitment advertisements in trade publications. The only key difference is that due to the smaller circulations of trade magazines, readership information is likely to come from publication’s own readership surveys rather than the NRS. This can make comparisons difficult.
Unfortunately, booking online recruitment advertising is not that easy. Online advertising is supposedly an accountable medium, where the success and failure of sites and of advertising campaigns can be assessed easily through traffic statistics.
There is no online equivalent of the NRS. It is not possible to compare the users of Total Jobs to the users of Monster in the same way that Guardian and Times readers can be compared. The closest the online industry has come to this is through Forrester’s UK Internet User Monitor or Forrester’s recruitment benchmarking project. Panel based methods of audience assessment, such as Net Ratings, Net Value and MMXI, fall short of providing any meaningful results, due to either the exclusion of work based internet users or the inadequate size of user panels.
Additionally, it is very difficult to assess the different areas of strength of different online recruitment sites. Most sites make claims about the number of different jobs they have live at any one time; Monster have 31,000 UK vacancies, StepStone have 22,000 and GoJobSite have 35,000. But how many of these jobs are duplicated? How many are from consultancies trying to attract candidates? There is currently no way to calculate market share amongst job sites and consequently it is very difficult for an advertiser to ascertain where the best response might come from.
Testimonials go some way to filling this gap, however they are still not common enough and often are given by small recruiters, not household brand names that might inspire more confidence.
Online recruitment sites also struggle when it comes to providing audited traffic information. ABC Electronic (ABCE), the internet arm of the print auditor ABC, is the UK’s best-known independent traffic auditor. However, only two online recruitment sites have posted ABCE audits so far this year: GoJobSite with 7.6 million page views in April and Workthing with 3.5 million page views in May. Both sites also give details of unique users and visits made in these months. ABCE audits provide a useful indication of the amount of traffic a site receives and indicate a site’s transparency about providing independent objective information, however they tell advertisers little about a site’s users or the response levels that can be expected from a recruitment advertisement.
Overall, the lack of information provided by job sites puts them at a severe disadvantage compared to print alternatives when it comes to convincing potential advertisers. If this is coupled with doubts regarding confidentiality and technology that many advertisers still retain, then there is no surprise that some recruitment professionals are still reluctant to advertise online.
In order to take the online recruitment industry forward job sites need to start providing more comprehensive data to back up their advertising claims.
Firstly all sites should commit to independent traffic auditing, giving details of page views, unique users and visits. This should be regarded as the bare minimum required in terms of information provision. Even this limited amount of information will help advertisers make more informed decisions about the quality of audiences available, the average visits per user per month can be calculated as can the average number of pages a user views on each visit. If a site is serious about fulfilling the accountable promises of the internet then there is no excuse for not providing this information. However, sites will only provide this information if potential advertisers demand it. Consequently the onus in obtaining this information lies with the entire online recruitment community, we must all demand that online recruitment sites raise their standards and reach this minimum level of information provision.
Once this is done we can move forward and start to bring a consistent audience survey, an online equivalent of NRS for example, and market share information onto the agenda.
The irony is that online recruitment sites have the potential to supply so much more to advertisers than their print alternatives. The number of times a keyword has been searched for can be logged; the number of views and applications each job receives can be monitored as can the click through rates of banners and buttons. Currently these sites are failing to even match print media in terms of useful advertising information and this is inhibiting the growth of the online recruitment industry in the UK.
Tim Elkington, Enhance Media, tim@enhancemedia.co.uk
Enhance Media are an independent training and consultancy company who aim to give recruitment professionals the skills they need to fully harness the power of the internet as a recruitment tool. For more information on Enhance Media see the rest of our site or email info@enhancemedia.co.uk.