Home : Newsletters : 2003 : May
All Jobs measure the number of jobs advertised on the 'top ten' UK online recruitment sites - defined by All Jobs as Fish4Jobs, Gis-a-job, JobServe, GoJobsite, Monster, PlanetRecruit, Total Jobs, Job Track/Magic, Reed and Workthing (who have recently replaced Quantum Jobs in the list).
The All Jobs index shows that at the end of April 355,732 jobs were being advertised on the top ten UK job boards. This compares to a figure of 431,690 at the end of April 2002, representing a year on year decrease of 18%.
AC Nielsen MMS measure recruitment advertisements placed in print. Rather than looking at the entire print market (including national press, trade magazines and local titles) for the purposes of this newsletter we'll only include the national quality press, as these titles are the nearest equivalent to All Jobs top ten sites.
The total number of jobs advertised in the quality national press in the twelve months up to April 2003 was 122,627. This compares to 147,020 advertised in the twelve months up to April 2002, a decrease of 17%. The number of jobs placed in the national quality press by private sector advertisers has decreased by 28% in the last twelve months, while the public sector has only decreased by 4% in the same time period.
This shows that the recent economic downturn has had a very similar effect on the print and online recruitment markets. To some extent this can be regarded as positive news for the online recruitment industry. Online recruitment sites are less well established than their print equivalents and there is evidence to suggest that under uncertain economic conditions advertisers revert to using tried and tested media, rather than experimenting with new alternatives, even if a cost saving is offered. Consequently one might expect online media to suffer more than established offline media during a downturn and the fact that this has not happened is positive for the online recruitment industry.
Because of the different methodologies used by All Jobs and MMS it is difficult to compare the size of the online and offline markets. Estimating the actual size of the online recruitment advertising market in the UK is difficult, due to the different time periods that different sites host vacancies for and more importantly due to the number of jobs that are duplicated across competing job boards.
At the moment both advertisers and job seekers are relatively promiscuous. The IQPC Exchange / Enhance Media Benchmarking Study shows that HR professionals currently advertise on an average of 2.5 job boards. This figure would be even higher if the advertising habits of recruitment consultancies, who dominate the online recruitment market in terms of number of jobs posted, were also included. For recruiters the relatively low cost of advertising online means that posting vacancies on many different job boards is an attractive option and still offers considerable savings compared to advertising in traditional media.
On the other side of the coin NORAS shows that online job seekers visit an average of 5.6 job boards when looking for a new job, reflecting the ease of searching for jobs on many different online recruitment sites. This job hunting promiscuity has implications for the online recruitment industry. If users are viewing the same job on different sites then the key to success from the job board's perspective becomes the ease of applying for positions advertised. The site that provides candidates with the easiest method of applying for jobs should generate more applications than its competitors and consequently provide more responses for its advertisers.
At face value this seems a good thing, however there is always a risk that sites with very easy application procedures fall foul of the 'serial applicant' who applies for many vacancies, even those that he or she is not suitable for. Getting the online application process correct involves treading the fine line between not deterring the serious candidate with too much form filling yet successfully deterring the serial applicant by requiring some level of commitment in order to complete the process. The commercial job board or direct recruiter who gets this right, especially in relation to their most direct competitor, should succeed in generating the right numbers of applications from relevant candidates.
We'll have another look at the figure for online and offline recruitment advertising in approximately six months. At the moment though it's hard to comment on migration issues, but it is possible to say that the current economic conditions have had a very similar impact on the online and offline recruitment advertising markets.