Home : Newsletters : 2006 : September
Total Jobs has recently audited the number of 'applications' the site generates in a single month; this is good for Total Jobs and good for the industry. The more things that are measured, the more we know about the industry. And the more we know, the better placed we'll all be to make well informed advertising decisions and get the most from online recruitment.
However there are a couple of things regarding the audit that are worth looking at in detail and aren't immediately obvious from the story about the audit running on onrec.com.
1 - There is no industry definition of applications.
Unlike Page Impressions, Visits and Unique Users (that have all been defined by JICWEBS and are audited by ABC ELECTRONIC according to those definitions), applications is not yet a metric that has an agreed definition. Because of this, ABC ELECTRONIC is unable to audit applications in the same way it audits users, visits and page impressions. So if this is the case, what exactly have they audited for Total Jobs? Total Jobs' audit certificate shows that for March 2006 Total Jobs has audited Unique Users, Visits, Page Impressions and Page Impression Breakouts. It's these 'Page Impression Breakouts', effectively five pages within their site, that Total Jobs has chosen to call 'applications'.
The important thing to note here is that because there is no industry definition of applications, the metric of 'applications' in the above case is defined by Total Jobs itself. This means that whereas Unique Users are comparable across all sites taking an audit, 'applications' are not, as all job board owners will tend to define them in a different way (depending on how their sites work). Out of interest, a list of JICWEBS approved metrics is available on the ABC ELECTRONIC website.
2 - So what have Total Jobs actually audited?
As mentioned above, Total Jobs has audited five pages within their site and chosen to call these 'applications'. Three of the five pages are 'thank you for applying' pages; presumably served after a candidate has completed an online application. This is spot on and, if JICWEBS were to agree a definition of applications, would be a good place to start.
The other two pages are a 'you are being transferred from Total Jobs to the online application system used by...' page and a page that brings up a new email message (presumably so a candidate can email an employer). The validity of counting these two pages as 'applications' is less clear cut. We don't know if a candidate transferred to an external application system actually bothers to go through with the application (for example they may be put off by the length of the form and immediately close the window). Maybe a better description of the transfer page would be 'an interest in applying', rather than an 'application'? Interestingly of the 741,466 'applications' quoted by Total Jobs, 179,043 (or 24%) are attributed to this 'transfer page'.
3 - What does all this mean for the online recruitment industry?
What the online recruitment industry really needs is a standard metric that we can all agree accurately represents applications. This would mean that all job boards would then have the option to audit applications in addition to users, visits and page views and that we would be able to draw some really valuable comparisons between sites. Without that agreed definition it will be difficult to compare applications measured on different sites as one man's application will be another man's query etc etc. For example, the ITJobBoard has also recently completed an audit for March 2006 that shows that it generated 177,113 clicks on an ITJobBoard 'apply' button. The ITJobBoard's clicks on their apply button represent 46% of all page views on their site, while Total Jobs' 'applications' represent 3% of the page views on their site. The difficult thing is that we can't really say which is better or worse as we're not comparing like with like (and of course not taking into account the quality of applications, which is another story).
4 - So what should we do about this?
Enhance Media believes that the best step forward would be for the online recruitment industry to agree a definition for applications. Once we've got this definition in place, all sites that wish to audit applications can do so using the same rules. This means that we'll be able to compare like with like and increase the value of the metric - and of course once we've got an agreed definition we could offer sites the option of including applications in NORAS (as well as Unique Users). If you'd be interested in getting involved with agreeing a common definition please email me and I'll let you know what you can do to help this happen. If we can achieve this, then auditing applications will be really valuable to the online recruitment industry, before that happens any 'application' audits will be of limited value as we're dependent on using job boards' definitions and this means we're not comparing like with like.