Recruitment sites acquire mountains of information about their visitors that could be helpful to recruiters -- everything from the number that enter the site and which pages of information they open to their career field and most recent position title. These elements can be easily aggregated into the detailed candidate information that recruiters need to make smart online-advertising decisions.

The second column of a two part series

Despite such advantages, however, many sites keep this information to themselves. Some argue that it is proprietary, a preposterous claim given that these sites are selling access, and the consumer has every right to know to whom that access will lead. Others argue that -- lacking an independent, third-party auditor for such data -- some sites will misrepresent their candidate traffic and hurt sites that report their data honestly. Whatever the reason, the net result is that today’s online recruiters almost always operate in the dark. They can only guess at how to maximize the return on their internet recruiting.

This column is the second in a two-part series on what recruitment web sites don't tell recruiters. The first column covered traffic data. This column will focus on demographics.

With a single exception, today’s commercial recruitment web sites don't report demographic data. Despite the rich detail available in the resumes they archive in their database and in the applications submitted to the job openings they post, these sites tell recruiters absolutely nothing about the kinds of candidates they are attracting. This information could include career fields, position titles, industry background, years in the work force, geographic location, educational degree and more. With a properly posted privacy statement explaining a policy of nondisclosure for individual data, sites could aggregate and report this information so that recruiters would know where best to spend their online advertising dollars.

Alternatively, sites could give visitors the option of voluntarily providing such information through an online questionnaire. That’s the approach used by JobOptions, the only major commercial recruitment site that currently posts demographic data on its pages. In its most recent report (for the period September 1998-July 1999), over 166,973 individuals, representing almost 38% of its registered users, completed such a questionnaire. Here’s how they described themselves:

While these data are not perfect -- there’s no information about respondent location, for example -- they are clearly a step forward in terms of helping recruiters pinpoint the kinds of candidates to which they are buying access. They provide considerable insight with which to select the best resume database for sourcing particular candidates and the best site for posting a specific job opening. Indeed, without such information, recruiters’ efforts are more analogous to a game of blindfolded darts than to spending their organization’s money wisely.

So, how can recruiters get out of the dark? With their purchasing power. It can turn on the lights. If recruiters make providing detailed, accurate and current candidate information a precondition of their patronage, the sites will quickly get the message and open up. When they do, recruiters will finally be able to see for themselves the object of their investment.