Recruitment Marketing: National Job Sites are not Cost Effective, Part 4

I recently dispelled the 3^rd myth of in my Recruitment Marketing series 5 myths of recruitment marketing. Today, I want to discuss Myth #4: Posting jobs on national job sites is a cost effective recruitment strategy. I will share some insights and surveys from recruitment professionals that clearly dispel this myth. They contend that the use of national job sites (e.g., Monster, Career Builder) are still widely used but are not a cost effective recruitment strategy.

Origins of the Job Board

For many years job announcements were informal and based on word of mouth. Then the bulletin board job postings gained popularity in local villages, colleges and markets. The next evolutionary step was print classified job ads. This dominated the recruitment advertising until Monster.com merger in1999. Monster and then Career Builder and many other online job boards surfaced having a major impact on recruitment campaigns for the next decade. During that period, the world was immersed in the dot.com revolution and the exponential growth of the Internet.

But, in the last three years (2006-2008), there has been a significant decline in the reach and effectiveness of national job boards. (including: Monster, Career Builder, Dice and Indeed)

The Adler Group, Inc, Sourcing in a Slowing Economy (Webinar)

What is changing… what is not?

The media preferences and the preferred venues for interaction of the younger demographic (Gen Y and Gen X) have changed dramatically. It is widely acknowledged that the younger demographic read the newspaper less frequently than their older counterparts, while preferring to interact via social networks (e.g., Facebook, MySpace), cell phones, and engage in video and rich digital media. The marketing media landscape has changed 180 degrees, but the recruitment marketing strategies have been slightly adjusted by most companies.

During this same period there is a growing shortage of talent in different regions of the USA for selected occupations. (e.g., nurses, therapists, engineers, IT professionals). The Talent Crisis is growing and will be greatly affecting corporate performance in the next 3+ years. The Adler Group 2008 Recruiting and Hiring Challenges survey revealed 76% of the 775 respondents said it was becoming increasingly difficult to find enough top candidates.

The traditional role of the company is the “buyer of talent”. Companies have a degree of arrogance in that they think they have the choice of the best qualified job seekers on the market at the price they want to pay. Now the scene has changed in many markets and occupations; the company is now the “seller of jobs/careers” and the job seeker is the “buyer of the choice job”. Again with this dynamic change in roles, the company has often been laggard in responding with a Recruitment Marketing Strategy that reflects these changes. Instead they are resting on its old laurels. They have spent considerable budgets with a poor return.

Professionals speak …

On cost-effectiveness:

“Start reducing your job-board spend - I know of several F500 firms that have dropped at least one of the big three job boards in the past quarter. Reasons given: increasing subscription prices, rising cost-per-hire, wide applicant: offer rate (e.g. too many candidates to weed through…), and the internal need to source passive or semi-passive candidates vs only active candidates.” Peter Brasket is a co-founder of HotGigs

On quality of candidates:

Lou Adler, Author and President of The Adler Group wrote in his article on sourcing strategies,

“Eighty percent of 200 surveyed recruiters were seeing a significant decline in the quality of the candidates coming from the major job boards.”

In this market the best people will not come from the major job boards.

From a study in editorandpublisher.com:

“While recruiters grumble that using national online job boards is like fishing in an ocean, they have no plans to cut spending there. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said they intend to budget the same amount on national job sites as they did in 2006. Only 13% indicated they planned to cut spending.”

“Niche sites were one of only three types of advertising that ranked higher year-over-year,” editors of the report wrote. Fifty percent of those polled ranked niche sites as effective or very effective”.

“61% of respondents said they planned to increase their spending with social networking sites.”

What is working?

Narrowcasting or targeted recruitment:

Borell Online Recruitment Advertising 2008 Report states,

“The general job boards such as Monster and HotJobs, while loaded with listings and users, frustrate many recruiters due to the sheer number of unqualified resumes that they generate. While the general boards are working to improve their filters, tighter, more focused niche boards will generate most of the growth in the recruitment arena.”

Video:

The Borell Report suggests that video is the hottest tool for recruiters.

“Hundreds of major companies have added short-form videos to job sites expounding the virtues of working at their companies.”

Networking:

As Lou Adler describes Trends Affecting the Future of Recruiting, he states,

“In a recent Execunet survey, 70% of over 6,000 executives and executive recruiters indicated that networking would be the key to either finding a job or finding candidates, compared to 16% through online advertising.”

This is being bolstered by the use of LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networking sites.”

Integrated Recruitment Marketing:

The current recruitment market is not homogeneous. The younger demographic and baby boomers will respond to different massages from different sources. A recruitment strategy that combines traditional advertising( TV, cable, radio, billboards ) with online marketing ( including Search engine optimization), social media and networking will be successful. An Integrated Recruitment Marketing will not only combine the above venues but strategically leverage the power of each venue to achieve significantly more results.

Conclusion

Thus, national job boards are no longer the online panacea for recruiters. Online advertising will be joined by social media/networking as powerful tools in discovering hidden/passive talent. Coming soon I will dispel the fifth and final myth-: Social media is only read by youth and it’s not an effective tool for recruitment marketing.

Here are some similar posts on this subject …

Recruitment Marketing: Is Social Media Cost Effective for Recruitment, Part 5

Are Job Boards and Career Sites Dead?

Recruitment Marketing: Print Advertising is Not Cost Effective, Part 3

Employment Recruitment Marketing, Showcasing Your Company - Part 2

Facebook for Recruiting… What’s working

Tags: Interactive Recruitment, job boards, recruitment advertising, Recruitment Marketing, recruitment strategy

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