Using the Internet for business is new, dating back only a few years. Consequently, little empirical data have been collected to describe its effectiveness. All we have are anecdotes that offer little guidance on the best way to use this extraordinary medium.
To address this situation, my newsletter conducts a survey of Internet use by both job seekers and recruiters. The data are collected with an instrument posted at my web site. On a regular basis, I update and publish the findings so that readers have an accurate, up-to-date picture of best practices in online recruiting. What follows are the findings presented at my annual Subscribers Conference.
Not surprisingly, recruiters are becoming more experienced in their use of the Internet. Of survey respondents, 42% had been using the Internet for three or more years, and only 8% described themselves as having "just gotten started." Although the data support the prevailing view that many of these e-recruiters are relatively new to recruiting -- 60% had five or less years experience in the field -- an astonishing 27% reported having spent 11 or more years in the profession.
Just over 57% of the respondents identified themselves as agency recruiters, contract and independent recruiters or recruiting consultants. Human resource practitioners, employment managers and internal recruiters comprised the other 43% of the population. This tilt in usage represents a shift from previous findings (December 1998), when respondents were evenly split between third party and corporate recruitment.
What have they been doing on the Net? The most frequently noted activity, cited by 85% of the population, was posting a job ad on a free recruitment web site. That was followed by posting a job ad on a for-fee recruitment site (77%), searching the resume database on a free recruitment site (76%), posting a job ad on a corporate site (71%), searching the resume database on a for-fee recruitment site (69%), and posting a job ad on a search engine site (55%). The high level of usage in all of these areas suggests that a multifaceted online recruiting strategy is the best way to optimize results. For the moment, recruiters have apparently concluded that no activity by itself can get the job done.
That conclusion is reinforced by their assessment of what works best in online recruiting. Although the survey instrument offers them 14 different options, fewer than ten percentage points separated the five techniques identified as most helpful. In the top spot was posting a job ad on a for-fee recruitment web site, which was cited by 38% of the respondents. It was closely followed by posting a job ad on a free recruitment site (37%), searching the resume database at a for-fee recruitment site (34%), searching the resume database at a free recruitment site (32%) and posting a job ad on a corporate site (30%).
Respondents also said that they were pleased with the outcome of this activity. Almost nine out of ten (89%) rated their online recruiting efforts as moderately or very helpful, with 59% pegging their experience at the upper or very helpful end of that range. Only 7% felt that their use of the Internet was no more helpful than other recruiting techniques, and just 1.4% found it not helpful.
Not everything worked as planned, however. The survey found that respondents were seldom satisfied with the results achieved by searching for resumes in newsgroups, acquiring resumes through a resume distribution service and purchasing a print ad which included a job posting on the publication’s web site. Of these techniques, the first two are often portrayed as the best available strategies for accessing passive job seekers on the Net. Hence, these findings would seem to support the anecdotal evidence of recruiter frustration with the medium’s ability to reach "employed-but-willing-to-look" professionals.
That issue, more than any other, is likely to shape the future of online and traditional recruiting. It is a seemingly intractable challenge, particularly in an era of virtually full employment. Everyone wants to recruit the passive job seeker, but these blue-chip candidates always seem to be off in other places doing other things.
Ironically, the Internet may well offer the best potential solution to this dilemma. Its ability to attract and support virtual communities provides a strategy for supporting the interests and aspirations of working professionals and, concurrently, a way of nurturing the long-term relationships necessary to recruit them. By offering a "sticky" blend of engaging content and interactivity, recruiting and employing organizations can attract job seekers into the Internet version of private, gated communities. The members of these virtual neighborhoods benefit from their participation and become a ready source of human capital for the sponsoring organization.
Add that technique to job posting and resume sourcing, and we’re likely to see recruiter satisfaction with the Internet soar beyond even its already impressive levels.
