Home : Newsletters : 2001 : October
An economic downturn
There has been much recent speculation about economic conditions and the effect that an economic downturn might have on the online recruitment industry.
British Airways have announced that 7,000 staff are to be made redundant, including 3,000 marketing and administration personnel in addition to pilots, cabin crew, engineers and ground staff. Under such conditions Human Resources departments devote considerable resources to constructing comprehensive outplacement packages including counselling, CV construction advice and guidance on finding a new job.
Online recruitment training and outplacement packages
Online recruitment has clear advantages for those employees that have been made redundant and are now looking for a new job. For example a candidate using the internet can discover and apply for new positions more regularly than a candidate who waits for the weekly publication of a newspaper or trade magazine. However, despite the fact that a significant proportion of the UK population use the internet to look for jobs, there are valuable lessons that HR departments can pass on to employees regarding using the internet to look for jobs.
If used effectively then the search engine on a job board can return a small number of highly relevant vacancies and greatly increase the efficiency of job hunting. On the other hand a search engine that is used badly can return hundreds of vacancies, many of them irrelevant, and be very discouraging to the job seeker.
Job seekers that are able to register CV’s with sites and set up job email alerts will also have a considerable advantage. The effective use of these services will enable job seekers to be contacted directly by employers and have jobs directly emailed to their PC’s, again removing much of the stress from the job seeking process.
In light of these advantages many HR departments are including online recruitment training in their outplacement services in order to give ex-employees a head start. In response to several enquiries Enhance Media have launched an online recruitment training programme designed to be integrated into an organisation’s outplacement package. The new training programme can be delivered to groups or to individuals depending on the organisations requirements and can also be tailored to meet the specific recruitment conditions in different industry sectors. For more information, please email outplacement@enhancemedia.co.uk
The fundamental advantages of online recruitment
The advantages that online recruitment offers are also highly relevant for HR departments during an economic downturn. Some organisations may choose to freeze headcount during a downturn and not engage in any recruitment activity. However, those that are still recruiting will need to do so as cheaply and quickly as possible. It is here that the fundamental advantages of online recruitment become apparent.
HR departments under pressure to cut recruitment budgets can make significant savings by using online recruitment techniques instead of using more traditional methods. Additionally a recruitment professional who is prepared to take responsibility for remotely uploading vacancies to a job board can save a huge amount of time when compared to others who wait to prepare copy for a press advertisement or to brief a recruitment consultant.
The outlook for the online recruitment industry
Any recession could prove to be a doubled edged sword for the online recruitment industry. On one hand the number of vacancies advertised in all media will probably decrease, on the other hand recruiters will be more predisposed to using online recruitment as it offers such clear advantages, particularly in terms of cost effectiveness. Consumer use of online recruitment may also increase as job seekers, competing for fewer vacancies, employ more efficient techniques to ensure they discover opportunities before their peers. Given a combination of increased use of online recruitment by recruiters and an increased demand for online recruitment by consumers it’s likely that despite economic pressures then the online recruitment industry in the UK will continue to grow.