E-recruitment is experiencing phenomenal growth, according to the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) e-recruitment special. Almost 50% of employers now go on-line to fill their vacancies – nearly three times the number who used the internet three years ago.
Produced by Cranfield School of Management and the Daily Telegraph, the RCI is a quarterly survey of UK directors' and managers' expectations of changes in recruitment activity and business conditions during the next six months.
"At a time when budgets are being slashed across the board for advertising and recruitment, people are naturally turning to the Internet," says Nick Hill, recruitment sales manager at the Daily Telegraph. He predicts that as recruiters become more experienced in their use of e-recruitment they will integrate it more successfully into the recruitment marketing mix.
However, there have been great changes in the way recruiters are using the Internet. Initial growth in the e-recruitment market was fuelled by the use of commercial job sites, but over the past year employers have proved less enthusiastic, with the numbers using them down from 40% to 25%.
When asked why they stopped using commercial sites, nearly three in four employers blamed low response rates while more than two in three said candidates had been unsuitable. Only one in three said they had not been cost effective and one in ten blamed technical difficulties with the site.
Meanwhile, corporate sites are proving ever more popular as a recruitment tool with respondents who claim to use them up from 13% cent in winter 1999, to 43% this summer.
Graduate recruiters are, however, turning to the web with a vengeance. According to RCI figures, more than half of recruiters now use the web to fill their quota of graduates. Graduate recruitment campaigns are well suited to the Internet because the current generation is regarded as web-savvy. A growing minority of recruiters, including consultancy KPMG and retailer Asda, now only accept applications via the web.
The real growth over the past couple of years has been in recruiting junior and middle managers. The number of employers using the net for middle management vacancies has risen from 28% to 69% per cent, and for junior management jobs from 29 %two years ago to 72% today, according to the RCI.
|
The full report is available to the public, price £50. To obtain a copy
contact Caroline Mahoney, Cranfield School of Management, on 01234 754808 or
email [email protected] For further information contact Helen Fulcher, Press and PR Officer, Cranfield School of Management 01234 754348 or email [email protected] or Kate Enright, Press and PR Manager, 01234 754425 or [email protected] |