On line job search is turning us into couch potatoes
14 August 2003
Job hunters are missing a fantastic opportunity to nab what could be a dream job or at the very least raise their profile with some of the country’s top employers, research from the Recruitment Confidence Index has shown.Two in five employers (40 per cent) are posting jobs on Internet jobs boards but nearly two in three are unhappy with the response they are getting. Sixty two per cent complain that they aren’t attracting enough candidates and 63 per cent say the candidates they are attracting are unsuitable.
Despite this, 46 per cent still expect to expand their use of commercial recruitment sites over the next five years.
The Recruitment Confidence Index is a quarterly survey of UK directors’ and managers’ expectations of changes in recruitment activity and business conditions. It is produced by Cranfield School of Management and the Daily Telegraph.
Each quarter the RCI analyses a recruitment issue in more detail. This quarter it has focused on how employers use the Internet to attract candidates. This is the fourth year running that it has carried out this research.
Commenting on the findings Dr Emma Parry, a research fellow at Cranfield School of Management said that the Internet was making job hunters lazy.
‘Job hunters can send their CVs to scores of different employers at the click of a button and they do. They think that by sending their CVs haphazardly to as many people as possible recruiters will work out which bits are relevant. Recruiters wouldn’t have done this before the days of e-recruitment and they won’t do it now.’
Dr Parry continued: ‘Employers are still keen to invest in Internet recruitment and job hunters need to rise to the challenge. The technology may be new, but the old rules of job hunting still apply. Employers expect candidates to research jobs before they apply for them and be sure they fulfil the minimum requirements.’
But it is not only job hunters who need to work harder. Christopher Lloyd, commercial manager for jobs.telegraph.co.uk said recruiters had to take some of the blame if commercial job sites were failing them.
Mr Lloyd said: ‘Recruiters have become lazy too. They treat jobs boards as classified advertising. But two or three lines about a vacancy are not enough for serious candidates to know if it’s the job for them. Recruiters should provide a full job description with a contact name and number as they would in a newspaper advertisement.’
The jobs boards themselves aren’t free from blame, said Terry Ellis chief executive of recruitment consultancy Burns Carlton plc, who sponsored the research.
Mr Ellis said: ‘There are currently hundreds of jobs boards with no defined branding or quality proposition. As a result, recruiters and candidates don’t know where to look. Over time the market will mature, but there’s no sign of this on the immediate horizon.
‘Five years ago people were predicting that e-recruitment would blow traditional recruitment methods out of the water. These results suggest this is now unlikely to happen and jobs boards will remain just one tool in the box for recruiters to use, alongside recruitment agencies, executive search, newspapers and magazines.’
- NOTES TO NEWS EDITORS
- The Recruitment Confidence Index is a quarterly survey of public and private sector employers that measures expected changes in recruitment activity and business conditions during the next six months. It also looks at recruitment methods, skills shortages, staff turnover and pay rates. The RCI was set up three years ago by Cranfield School of Management and the Daily Telegraph and is currently produced in association with Personnel Today.
- The RCI currently attracts nearly 2,000 responses from employers UK-wide.
- The special report on Internet recruitment is sponsored by recruitment consultancy Burns Carlton. For more information contact: www.burnscarlton.com
- The research quizzed employers on how they have used both commercial jobs boards and their own corporate sites to attract candidates over the past six months. It looked at why they used them, why they might have stopped using them and their plans for future use. It also asked them to compare their use of Internet sites with other means of attracting candidates such as newspapers, trade magazines and recruitment consultants and agencies.
- The full RCI report is available to the public, price £50. To obtain a copy contact Dr Emma Parry, Cranfield School of Management on 01234 754808 or e-mail emma.parry@cranfield.ac.uk
- The RCI web site can be found at www.rcisurvey.co.uk
For further information contact Lucie Carrington on 01234 344811or lucie@workingweek.co.uk. Or Emma Parry on 01234 754808 or emma.parry@cranfield.ac.uk
For further comment or interviews contact Kate Enright, Cranfield School of Management Press Office on 01234 754425 or e-mail kate.enright@cranfield.ac.uk