Changing face of online recruitment to have profound effect on candidate attraction strategy

Changing face of online recruitment to have profound effect on candidate attraction strategy

Report from the UK’s leading provider of Labour Market Intelligence reveals shift in online recruitment trends, the balance of power between the top job boards and the implications for recruiters

Job Board Landscape Report – Q1 2011 report published this week reveals a shift in the balance of power within the UK’s online recruitment sector during the first quarter of 2011 and highlights the potential implications this will have on recruitment consultancies and employers reliant upon online job boards as part of their overall recruitment strategy.

The report from Innovantage, the UK’s leading provider of decision-ready insight into the online recruitment market, provides the most comprehensive and truly representative in-depth analysis of nearly 3 million¹ original² job postings aggregated from the UK’s leading job boards between January 1st and March 31st of 2011.

Q1 of 2011 continued where 2010 left off as the UK job board market became increasingly diverse, with a rise in the number of vertical (or niche) job boards. However, in the niche sectors examined in this report, vertical boards are notable for their absence from the list of the top five boards in each niche which are dominated by the major horizontal (or general) boards. This raises the doubts over the long term prospects of many of the UK’s niche job boards.

The main findings of the report are:

Online job postings for UK-based positions increased by 15% in Q1 2011 compared to Q1 2010 to reach a total of 2.1 million original job postings.

The strongest growth was seen in those job boards which have a significant presence in IT & Telecoms, Engineering/Manufacturing, and Supply Chain/Logistics whilst the weakest growth was experienced by those most exposed to the public sector cuts, such as Education/Training.

IT & Telecoms represent almost half (40%) of this growth significant growth in the number of postings for Engineering/Manufacturing and Supply/Logistics roles.

By contrast, original job postings for Education/Training followed by Health/Social Care positions saw a significant downturn in line with cuts in public sector spending.

· The top five job boards in the UK in Q1 2011 by volume are: TotalJobs, Jobsite, Reed, Jobserve and Jobsearch – the latter having jostled for fifth position with Monster throughout much of 2010. Overall the top ten boards make up 69% of all online job postings.

Matthew Dewstowe, Managing Director and founder of Innovantage, commented: “Q1 of 2011 not only saw the end of the recession but it marked the beginning of what became a shift in the balance of power between many of the UK’s major job boards. Advertisers are starting to recognise this shift and are reacting accordingly by using more job boards to advertise their vacancies compared to the same quarter last year.

“This report provides recruiters, employers and job board owners with an invaluable source of benchmarking information to help them better understand the current online recruitment marketplace and enable them to identify the most relevant job boards for their vacancies.”

With organisations under increasing pressure to reduce their recruitment marketing budgets and maximise their return on investment the Job Board Landscape Report – Q1 2011 report addresses a number of critical questions posed by recruiters:

· Which are the largest job boards in Britain (nationally and broken down by job discipline)?

· Which job boards are gaining or losing share (nationally and by job discipline)?

· What kind of jobs do job boards specialise in?

· Which job boards are the best ones for advertisers to post jobs on?

· What role do niche (or vertical) job boards play compared to general (or horizontal) boards?

For more information and to obtain a copy of the Job Board Landscape Report – Q1 2011 report, please go to http://www.innovantage.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=61&Itemid=35

¹2,994,439 original job postings

² ‘Original’ - using their in-house duplication detection algorithm, Innovantage have been able to exclude all duplicate job postings across the job boards to provide recruiters with true count of the number of jobs that each job board is advertising.