Home : Newsletters : 2008 : March
NORAS focuses on how online job seekers use job boards, but how do online job seekers use recruitment consultancy web sites? This is the question that Enhance Media and the REC aimed to answer through RIO - Recruitment Industry Online. RIO sampled over 4,840 online job seekers that visited nine different recruitment consultancy websites representing a variety of different industry areas and seniorities. Those job seekers completed online questionnaires that looked at their demographic profile, their motivations for visiting recruitment consultancy websites and their job seeking behaviour.
Demographic profile
RIO found that those using recruitment consultancy websites were 48% male and 52% female with an average age of 36.4 years. 5% were Chief Execs / owners or Directors, 45% were Managers and 29% categorised themselves as employees. The average salary of visitors to consultancy websites was £35,134.
Job seeking
75% of visitors were actively looking for a new job with 80% looking for a full time permanent role. 42% of those surveyed had been looking for a job for less than two weeks, 33% for between three and eight weeks and the remainder (24%) had been looking for a new job for over two months.
In addition to using consultancy websites, visitors were using a range of other job hunting methods, including job boards (81%), trade magazines (46%), employer websites (40%) and national newspapers (32%). 51% said that they had actually registered with a recruitment consultancy in addition to visiting a consultancy website. However, despite the use of job boards outweighing registering with a consultancy (81% vs 51%), more visitors to recruitment consultancy sites thought that they would get their job through a consultancy than through a job board (43% vs 31%).
Three quarters of the users of recruitment consultancy sites have applied for a job that they found online - of these 70% have obtained an interview and of these 54% have obtained a job. The most popular methods of applying for a job were electronic - with 79% of job seekers having either emailed a CV or completed an online application form.
Site usage
Most visitors said they visited recruitment consultancy sites to browse jobs (76%), while 10% said the main purpose of their visit was to obtain contact details. Search engines were responsible for driving 28% of visitors to the site, while 19% said they found the recruitment consultancy site through a job board.
Interestingly, 56% of visitors to recruitment consultancy sites said they first visited a recruitment consultancy site immediately they started looking for jobs and another 26% said they first visited within two weeks of looking for a job. This is a valuable insight as it shows the state of mind that the job seeker may be in when visiting a recruitment consultancy online and can be used to inform decisions about the nature and tone of content on consultancy sites.
Conclusions
Although it seems obvious, most job seekers visit recruitment consultancy sites to look for jobs! Consequently making sure that all your jobs are uploaded to your site and are easy to search and apply for is vital to meet the needs of candidates. Most also visit consultancy sites very early on in the job seeking process and therefore could welcome guidance on current market conditions and key issues that employers in their sector are likely to discuss at interview (rather than the some of the standard interview advice content about wearing a suit and looking the interviewer in the eye, that you still occasionally find!).
Search engines and job boards are responsible for attracting approximately half the visitors to recruitment consultancy sites and as such maximising the effectiveness of your presence on both mediums is essential.
Feedback from participating consultancies
Several of the consultancies that have taken part in the research to date have offered their feedback on the project - Julia Robertson from Tate said "the findings have proved invaluable for us in terms of the content that we use online and have helped us establish best practice guidelines"
Penny Glazzard from Hill McGlynn commented that "the results produced gave us a great insight as to who we are attracting to the site and have enabled us to develop a justifiable and structured online strategy".
Getting hold of the results and getting involved
Getting the results couldn't be easier - for a limited period you can download them for free from the REC's website - in addition to the RIO results, the results booklet also compares the findings to the profile of job board users through NORAS and to agency workers through the REC's 360 degree Monthly Tracking Survey. We're running RIO on an ongoing basis throughout the year and are able to add bespoke questions to the survey to tailor it to different recruitment markets. If you'd like get involved and run the research on your site then email Tim Elkington - thanks.