ONLINE CORPORATE RECRUITMENT ACTIVITIES: How is the recruitment landscape changing?

Use of corporate web sites for recruiting

According to a Borrell Associates report from December 2004, employers spent $1.5 billion on their own recruitment web sites in 2004, a larger amount than that spent with the job boards. In addition, the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI), a survey published by Cranfield School of Management and the Daily Telegraph in September 2004, found that corporate sites were more widely used than commercial sites. 42% used corporate sites compared to 25% using commercial job boards. The report also found that job boards are most commonly used to recruit sales, IT and customer services staff.

Corporate recruitment sites: the threat to existing players

Newspapers

Newspapers? online properties have a significant number of large corporate clients, as well as a variety of medium to small business advertising derived from their local newspaper base. Newspaper sites are likely to be affected if a large number of these companies begin advertising solely on their own recruitment sites.

However, newspaper-run sites are likely to be in a stronger position than the pure-play recruitment sites if employers were to pull away and advertise vacancies on their own corporate job boards. Newspapers already have a network of local sales teams, which they could use to build more revenue from small to medium sized businesses who might not have web sites, or for whom it might not be worth the investment to build an online recruitment facility of their own.

Recruitment agencies

Recruitment agencies will continue to be attractive to companies who want to avoid the time and effort of administering their own recruitment process. They can handle the whole process, from advertising to initial screening of applicants. Recruitment agencies are convenient, often have good industry knowledge, and their key strength is human interaction.

Online-only job boards

The key benefit of online job boards is their wide reach and a large established audience and brand. One of the risks an employer takes when advertising via a corporate site is that it may not attract a large enough audience. This is particularly true if the company does not have a strong brand or is not the kind of company that job seekers would specifically seek out.

The job boards are experiencing impressive growth compared to traditional offline media. The majority of job postings on the major job boards is from large corporates - those that are most likely to start investing in a corporate jobs site. If spending by these large corporates were to slow, efforts by online job boards such as Monster to attract small to medium sized business advertising would become doubly important.

Niche job boards

Sites specialising in jobs from a particular industry have sprung up across a range of vertical sectors. Niche job services appeal to employers who want to reach a particular audience. The corporate job board poses a threat to the value of niche services because clearly no audience can be as relevant as that which visits the specific employer?s careers site. This is a particular danger for niche sites focused on industries, such as retail, where corporate job sites have become especially popular amongst employers.

The Future

The .jobs domain

Search engines will become the key new player in this market as the .jobs domain web sites are launched.

Job boards

Commercial job boards may suffer more from the creation of corporate job sites than other players.

Trade publications and national newspapers

Trade publications will continue to retain an important position in recruiting, but must work to ensure that print and online operations complement each other. Publishers must take advantage of the interactive opportunities offered by the web to ensure that candidates apply through their service, thus demonstrating their ongoing value to recruiters.