Spending on Online Recruitment set to increase

08/09/2006
More than 40% of organisations intend to increase the amount they spend on commercial recruitment websites over the next six months, according to the latest findings from the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI), produced by Cranfield School of Management.

The latest research shows that while 44% of the 1,078 organisations responding to the survey intend to increase spending on online recruitment over the next six months, the proportion of respondents using commercial job sites for recruitment is not increasing, remaining stable at around 25%.

The number of organisations using their own corporate website for recruitment also remains static at 32%.

Those organisations using commercial or corporate sites have reported a marked increase in their use of online recruitment over the past year with 42% increasing their use of jobs boards and 49% increasing their use of their corporate website.

In addition, 44% of organisations expect to increase their use of commercial jobs boards over the next year and 62% expect to increase their use of their corporate website.

Dr Emma Parry, Research Fellow at Cranfield School of Management, said:

"These results suggest that for certain types of organisations, perhaps those in particular sectors or with specific workforce needs, online recruitment methods are very successful and are therefore being used with increasing regularity.

"The fact that more organisations are not using these methods suggests that the internet is not yet working for all recruiters. Providers of online services need to look at these organisations and their needs in order to increase their business in the long term."

The research also shows that the use of online recruitment is having an impact on the use of other recruitment methods with around a third of responding organisations (32%) saying that they had spent less money on other recruitment methods in the last year because they used the internet, and 35% expect to spend less on other methods over the coming year.

Most commonly affected recruitment methods appeared to be regional newspapers (10% organisations), professional magazines (7%), employment agencies and national newspapers (6%).

Commenting on the findings, Shaun Tyson, Professor of Human Resource Management at Cranfield School of Management, said:

"The projected increase in the use of commercial job boards and of corporate websites indicates that there is considerable growth potential within the online recruitment field.

"Whilst agencies and search consultancies may not be adversely affected by this growth because of their capacity to match candidate and job, newspapers in future may find their edge is only in their ability to attract the passive job seeker."

The latest RCI findings also show that:

- 73% of organisations that use commercial jobs boards find them successful while 70% of organisations that use their corporate website for recruitment find them successful.

- Commercial websites were particularly popular among not-for-profit organisations with 39% using them, in comparison with 24% from the public sector and 23% from private companies. This is possibly due to the relatively low cost involved.

- The most important factors in an organisation’s decision to use its corporate website was the fact that they are cheaper and easier to use - 63% of organisations say that these factors were important or very important.

- The most important factor in the decision to use commercial jobs boards was having access to a larger candidate pool with 77% of respondents saying that this was important or very important.

- The most important drivers with regard to adoption of commercial jobs boards were job seeker use of the recruitment sites (77%), job seeker access to the internet (72%) and cost (69%).