Want to find out how your recruitment advertising is stacking up to others? Then you need to purchase a copy of our new report, produced in conjunction with Classified Intelligence — Job Sites Up, Print Going Down: Recruiters Rate Advertising Effectiveness.
Despite all the negative press and complaints posted to forums, online job sites are considered by recruiters and HR leaders an effective means of finding and hiring workers. Respondents to our in-depth survey of human resources executives, conducted by ERE Media and Classified Intelligence reported they fill a high percentage of their openings with applicants from job boards and, in relatively large numbers, expect to increase their spending on job sites in the coming year.
Only employee referral programs got higher marks as an effective recruiting method. And while an even higher percentage of respondents expect to increase their spending on these programs in 2006, the mean number of respondents told us they spend less than $25,000. That compares to the online job sites where the mean spending is twice as much.
These findings are part of the first, comprehensive study of recruitment advertising effectiveness to be conducted on a broad national scale. ERE Media and Classified Intelligence collaborated in developing the survey and analyzing the results in order to provide guidance to recruiters looking to get the best results from their advertising budgets and to advertising publishers, whether print or online, seeking to understand the changing recruitment marketplace. We studied online job sites, print media, employee referral programs, the budding social networks and career fairs. We asked recruiters to rank each — and, for online job sites, certain sub-sets — on a scale of 1-to-5 for effectiveness. We compared the effectiveness ratings to dollars spent, hires made and spending intention for the balance of 2006.
About the Respondents
Our respondents hold a broad cross-section of positions (from recruiters and a few hiring managers to vice presidents), in a wide range of company size and industries. Total recruitment advertising budgets ranged to a high of more than a million dollars. The majority of respondents control budgets exceeding $50,000. Several dozen industries were represented with the largest numbers coming from banking and finance, IT and related consulting, healthcare, retail, biotech and engineering.
Respondents based their opinions on value, telling us that the number of hires made compared to the cost was the most important criterion in determining effectiveness. They also took into account the number of offers generated and the quality of the candidates in relation to the amount spent. Using that yardstick to decide effectiveness, respondents told us:
- Print is an ineffective medium for recruiting candidates. It received the lowest effectiveness rating of all the advertising methods we surveyed. Almost 60 percent of respondents rated print "ineffective" or "very ineffective." Only 13 percent of respondents, the lowest of any category, said they expected to increase their print spending.
- Job sites generally rated well with nearly 50 percent of respondents calling them "effective" or "very effective." Some respondents said they make over 50 percent of annual hires from online job sites.
- Niche job sites and national boards are more effective than others; diversity sites, for example, received low marks. In fact, diversity job sites was the only category we surveyed that did not receive a single vote as being a "very effective" means of recruiting.
- Fewer than 2 percent of respondents indicated that they did not use online job boards, and only 8 percent of respondents indicated that they did not use print media; on the other hand, over 40 percent indicate that they do not use social networking sites. Fifteen percent said they did not use career fairs to recruit, and 12 percent said that they did not use employee referral programs.
- Career fairs, while not seen as a particularly good value, have their supporters. Survey comments indicated that many see career fairs as a branding tool and as a way to quickly hire large numbers of workers.
- Respondents appear ambivalent about the effectiveness of social networking sites, and at present, a majority of them spend less than $25,000 annually advertising on such sites. However, respondents said they would increase rather than decrease spending.
- Ninety percent of survey respondents said their organization had a corporate career site.
- Over 60 percent of respondents said they used an applicant tracking system to capture recruiting data on candidates. The most commonly tracked metric was the number of hires; after that, in order of most common, was the number of offers extended, the number of candidates that applied for a position, the number of interviews generated, and the number of resumes received. Survey respondents indicated processing about 1,000 resumes a month against about 50 open requisitions monthly.
More Information
The table of contents will provide you with an overview of the report length and contents. (Download the free Adobe Reader to view these PDF files if necessary.)
Order Today
If you want to find out how your recruitment advertising efforts measure up, order your copy of Job Sites Up, Print Going Down today for $495.
