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.

The findings discussed in this presentation 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 2007.