Online Recruitment - review of the year 2002

After the closure of the UK subsidiary of StepStone in late 2001, 2002 has been another turbulent year for the online recruitment industry. Here are some of the highs and lows of the last 12 months.

The German multimedia company Scout 24 withdrew their backing from Top Jobs on the Net Ltd (www.topjobs.co.uk) and consequently the company went into liquidation. Days later the brand was saved and TopJobs.co.uk Ltd was formed when Smug One (www.smugone.co.uk) bought the assets of the old company. Smug One, who also launched their consumer site in the UK and announced a sponsorship deal with the BAR Formula 1 racing team this summer, continue to operate Top Jobs from Warrington.

Another site launch was www.thisisjobs.co.uk. This Is Jobs is a joint venture backed by Associated New Media and Northcliffe Electronic Publishing. This Is Jobs comprises of a network of 17 local sites, covering areas including Bristol, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, London, Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire.

There was also a new magazine launched specifically for recruitment consultants, www.therecruitmentconsultant.co.uk. In addition to content targeted at the consultancy market the magazine and website include plenty of useful information for anyone working in the recruitment industry.
The UK online recruitment industry is facing a real challenge in the form of the UK Employment Agencies Act. If job boards are not excluded from obligations outlined in the Act then many will go out of business or relocate abroad. The situation has provided a stern test for the AOLR (www.aolr.org), who have been working to ensure that job boards are excluded from the Act; the result of their work is expected next year.

The IQPC Exchange / Enhance Media Benchmarking Study found that the integration of backend technology remained the most important online recruitment issue for HR professionals for the second consecutive year. A full copy of the Benchmarking study results booklet can be obtaining by emailing results@enhancemedia.co.uk.

All Jobs UK (www.alljobsuk.com) awarded the second National Online Recruitment Awards. This year’s winners included the excellent www.jobsatbaesystems.com (best national employer’s site), www.secsinthecity, which provides highly useful tools for its target audience, (best specialist jobsite) and www.gojobsite.co.uk (best general job site for the second consecutive year).

May 2002 saw the release of the results of the first wave of NORAS, the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey. Wave one sampled over 7,000 internet users and provided advertisers with comparable information on the users of eight leading job boards. The second wave of NORAS (Winter 2003) is due to be published in January 2003. NORAS Winter 2003 contains more in depth information on more online recruitment sites and includes data gathered from 10,000 online job seekers. More details of NORAS can be found at www.enhancemedia.co.uk/noras/ and there will be an overview of the results in next month’s newsletter.

Research from Total Jobs (www.totaljobs.com) suggests a healthy future for online recruitment in 2003. Recruiters interviewed for the survey were enthusiastic about the advantages of online recruitment, feeling the internet was the most cost effective, quickest and easiest to use of all recruitment media. In addition to this one in three companies anticipated increasing their spend with job boards, compared to just one in ten predicting an increase in spend with consultants and one in twenty with press.