The internet has transformed the employer/candidate recruitment relationship. But how can employers make it work to their best advantage? Richard Nott explains.
Online recruitment uses the power of the internet to match people to jobs and employers – making the process of finding candidates quicker, cheaper and more efficient. Used correctly, it enables employers and recruiters to:
- target a wider, more diverse talent pool;
- reduce the cost per hire;
- speed up and streamline the recruitment process;
- promote an employer’s brand, culture and values;
- better interact with candidates;
- yield more targeted results; and
- find the right person for the job.
The challenge is to provide a truly engaging brand experience in every job advertisement – this means writing great copy and choosing the right digital channel for placement.
Why recruit online
Whether you want to post a single ad or multiple roles on a job board, or even plan to develop a full-scale corporate careers site, online recruitment offers significant advantages for any business.
Speed and efficiency
Jobseekers are online 24/7 – especially in the IT sector. Compared to traditional print media, posting a job ad can attract a response within days, speeding up the entire process from start to finish. It also allows recruiters to integrate the three fundamentals of finding a hire:
- Attraction: pulling in enough high quality applicants.
- Communication: enabling you to engage directly with candidates.
- Administration: simplifying the processing of applications and interviews.
Access to more candidates
Online recruitment is growing by 30% year on year in the UK[1]. More than 69% of the UK population use the internet at home or work. IT professionals are inherently comfortable with registering their details online and using internet based job seeking tools. A survey conducted by CWJobs.co.uk found that almost 50% of all IT professionals surveyed visit our job board several times a week, and over 20% visit several times a day. More than 80% are active jobseekers.
Cutting costs
The low cost associated with advertising vacancies online has opened up online recruitment to businesses who may not have the budget to use traditional print-based media. By targeting the best sites to attract the right candidates, and using automated and pre-selection processes to move candidates through to the interview stage, online recruitment represents a very cost-effective option.
Building a brand
Online advertising is a very effective tool to develop brand awareness. By putting a human face to the organisation, you can communicate to candidates what it’s really like to work there, what the business stands for and corporate story behind it.
Typical job board listings are likely to include any or all of the following tools to help you get the right messages across:
- Job posting – similar to a lineage ad in print media, a job posting contains a short description of the job, location and contact link.
- Featured job – all of the above, as well as a company logo and a hyperlink to a corporate or careers site.
- Banners and buttons – use your corporate logo to act as a hyperlink to a corporate or career site. The best jobs boards allow you to use a direct link to a specific area of the site.
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Corporate profile – the equivalent of an online corporate brochure, and an opportunity to showcase your employer brand in more detail.
Choosing the right job board
Job boards primarily advertise vacancies; some specialise in specific fields and industries, others are more generic. The best ones also offer a plethora of value-added tools and functions to assist the recruitment process. These include searchable CV databases, email job alerts, banner advertising for employers, news about who’s hiring and general advice for jobseekers and recruiters alike. But with more than 700 recruitment sites operating in the UK, how do you choose the right one?
Analyse your recruitment needs
Begin by looking at your own recruitment needs: Will you be advertising several specialist positions at once, or over a period of a few months? Are you looking to attract a candidate with a clearly defined skill set? If you’re looking to advertise for one or two different generalist roles, a generalist site might be more appropriate. These advertising vehicles, like totaljobs.com and monster.co.uk, cut across a number of industries and can serve a regional, national or international audience. And don’t forget to think like a jobseeker – where would you look for a vacancy and why?
Talk to a few chosen sites
You’ll need to do some research on job boards before you trust them with your business. The most important questions to raise are:
- How long has the board been operational?
- Who owns it?
- Who advertises vacancies on the site?
- How does the site attract candidates?
- Where does the site target its marketing?
- Can you test drive the CV database?
- Can you talk to other clients?
Seek independent advice
Job boards can bombard you with visitor and application rate statistics, to prove how successful they are compared to competitor sites. Independent scrutiny is the best way to cut through this information, and get to the real facts. ABC Electronic has an established auditing process that measures internet traffic. You can use this data to explore key job board indicators – the most important ones are:
- applications – the number of job applications recorded through the website;
- page impressions – the number of pages users download;
- visits – the number of times users go to a site; and
- unique users – the number of individuals visiting the site.
Of these indicators, page impressions and unique users will give you the most critical and reliable data to compare performance. By combing this data with jobseeker demographics supplied by the job board, you can build a complete picture of how relevant it will be to your recruitment needs. Many of the major job boards publish ABCe information with their data – more information is available at www.abce.org.uk.
Running a successful online recruitment campaign
The key to attracting the right new hire is a good advertisement. First you need compelling copy – one that says much more than a title, salary range and list of duties. This is your chance to update the corporate story, let people know about your culture and values and what it’s really like to work there. By putting a human face to the brand, candidates will be better equipped to decide if they match both the role and the company (assisting you with the filtering process too).
Second, you need to use relevant words to ensure your ad is picked up by search engines – so that when a jobseeker searches online, your ad appears higher than the rest. This is known as search engine optimisation (SEO).
Writing candidate-winning copy isn’t as hard as it sounds, here are some simple rules to follow:
Think about the job title
Using multiple yet specific words to describe the job title will hone responses to an online ad, particularly for candidates using the ‘search by title’ function. Being more descriptive, for example ‘Java developer, software house in Birmingham’ will yield more successful search results than just ‘developer’.
Be clear and specific about skills and experience
Use as many well-thought out words as possible to describe the skills and experience you’re seeking. Identify ‘must-have’ qualifications or skill sets before you talk about desired attributes – making a bulleted list will be much easier to read and for candidates to use as a checklist.
Always list your location
Include the country, region, county, city, town and postcode wherever possible. The last thing you want is to find the perfect fit, only to discover they live too far away to be eligible for the role.
State the salary but don’t ignore softer benefits
If you can’t provide details of a definite remuneration package, then a salary range is better than nothing.
Jobseekers today are looking for more than just a title, salary and role description. They want to know if they’ll fit into your organisation, achieve work/life balance and find a meaningful work environment. Including some details of softer benefits will help give a human face to the organisation too.
And don’t forget the specifics of the role
Working hours, start dates, pay and benefits such as holiday allowance are good for candidates to know up front. Make sure you also let them know how to apply and the deadline. Most job boards will have specific data fields for including this type of information, but it’s a good idea to include as much detail as possible in the ad itself.
Take account of international jobseekers
UK job boards are accessible to candidates across the globe – some actively looking to relocate to the UK. You must include whether candidates should be EU residents or hold relevant work permits.
Encourage jobseekers to find out more
Inviting candidates to contact a real person by email or phone has a dual benefit: The jobseeker gets to find out more about the role, and you get to talk to the jobseeker before they apply. Include a website address or careers page wherever possible.
Include a unique job code
By including a reference number, you can easily track job postings online – and the activity they are generating. Using this data can also help you build a picture of the job boards you’re using, and which ones are most effective.
It is important to refresh your jobs regularly and remove out-of-date or filled roles quickly – so you don’t run the risk of candidates applying for a job that no longer exists. And don’ forget that although online recruitment can help you drive more personal relationships with candidates, the value of a person at the end of the telephone should never be underestimated.
Measuring success
Online technology is king when it comes to capturing and analysing key recruitment data. As well as determining how successful a campaign has been, this data can also give you crucial leverage when selling in the recruitment investment to colleagues or bosses.
The two most basic ways to analyse performance is to calculate cost per hire and time to hire. This will give you a set of metrics to determine whether you achieved value for money switching from traditional to online recruitment methods. Ultimately, the best measure of success is to track the quality of appointments made online and the impact it has had on your hiring managers or recruiters. Starting with the basics:
Cost per hire
This is a great way to highlight savings you’ve achieved – and it’s relatively easy to calculate. To work out cost per hire, you need to include items such as advertising costs, job fairs, agency fees, a proportionate amount of the salaries of recruiters, line managers and other staff involved, candidate interview expenses and any additional costs such as relocation allowances. This should give you a total figure to compare with how you would have traditional placed a job ad and filled the position.
Time to hire
You would typically measure the time to hire from the point when a job has been formally approved until a candidate accepts an offer. It’s also worth tracking separately the time it takes from the position becoming vacant to the day a new employee starts work. With this data, you can then analyse how long it takes to move a vacant role through the requisition process to a candidate accepting and starting the job – also giving you a good benchmark to measure the opportunity cost of an empty chair.
[1] World Advertising Research Centre