Home : Newsletters : 2005 : January
Monster.co.uk started the year with a new TV advertising campaign on January 9th. This is good news for the UK online recruitment industry as it shows that a major player has the confidence in the market to invest in a relatively expensive and high profile advertising medium.
Kim Walma, Monster.co.uk’s Director of Marketing commented “Every time we have run a similar burst on UK TV in the past, our candidate traffic has risen dramatically … for example in October 2001, traffic went up 75.8% over the prior month” and there’s no doubt that this TV advertising campaign will boost Monster’s traffic levels.
However the most relevant question that those in the online recruitment industry (including job boards, employers and recruitment consultancies) should be asking themselves is ‘how can I drive quality traffic to my site?’ rather than ‘how much traffic can I drive to my site?’
One of the biggest criticisms of online recruitment is that the internet generates too many irrelevant applications. The best way of addressing this is to ensure that your site attracts targeted relevant candidates and the best way of making sure this happens is through the careful selection of advertising media. Though offline media should not be ignored there are significant cost savings available in terms of candidate acquisition for those using the internet to drive traffic to their site.
From an employer’s perspective the most effective way to use the internet to drive traffic to a corporate careers site is to use a blended approach to online marketing that attracts a variety of candidates. For example active job seekers can be targeted using job boards, passive job seekers using content led sites and semi-active job seekers (those that are using search engines to look for jobs but have not yet visited job boards) through search engine marketing.
If online recruitment is to be successful in 2005 then the focus should be on improving the quality of applications generated online, rather than just increasing the volume of online activity. While large scale TV advertising campaigns do have a place in terms of building brand awareness it is likely that highly targeted advertising that focuses on desirable candidates will play a more valuable role in improving the quality of online applications.