Does online recruitment benefit from a recession?

I have just spotted an article from back in April that starts "I have suggested in the past that the online recruitment industry will benefit from an economic downturn ..."  the author goes on to say that as more people find themselves out of work, many for the first time, they will turn to the internet (cv databases/job boards) to find work.  The speed of response of these methods as recruitment tools will bring the industry back to it's feet quicker than traditional methods would.  The old reduced time to hire/reduced cost argument for online recruitment.

However, I'm not sure that this statement bears any scrutiny. Yes, online recruitment can reduce the cost to hire, but it has been doing that, in a fairly across-the-hiring-world type way for about five years.  Right now, in the main, job boards and CV databases are suffering due to lack of actual vacancies and are certainly not being helped by the number of applicants applying for a gazillion vacancies in one go.

The online recruitment industry is certainly still developing and becoming more complex/sophisticated but it's pretty established as a means to attract and engage jobseekers.  I'm not suggesting every hiring manager/recruiter in the UK uses job boards or CV databases, but they would be getting there with or without a recession.  The popularity and interest in social media sites as recruiting tools was already ramping up before the recession hit so I think that growth in this area is just a continuation of a trend. 

Recruiters may well benefit from the tools provided by online recruitment when things do start to pick up.  However, I doubt that suddenly we'll see a huge new interest in online recruitment. It was already there, people who were recruiting could see why it worked, people who need to recruit in the future will give it a go and see why it works. 

I know there are loads of other issues in here (redundancies within many online recruitment channels, impact of general decline of print advertising vs online, ongoing role of ad agencies, issues around high costs of integrating with multiple posting tools) but this is a quick reaction to what I think was one of those things that people, often who are deemed as experts, say and other's just accept.  In this instance I thought the author was wrong.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Well, I think not only online recruitment but recruitment itself has been benefited in recession. Appropriate hiring becomes even more important in economic downturns (for more on this see: http://hirelabs-hirelabs.blogspot.com/2009/07/pre-employment-screening-in-recession.html )
Online tests and tools available (http://www.hirelabs.com/) make recruiters work pretty much easier and in recession everybody wants some ease so, obviously online recruitment has gained even more popularity.

[gary hodes]

Hi Louise; I have been saying for years (but no one is listening) that there is no such thing as "online recruitment". Recruitment is a people-business, and people are analogue not digital - so "online recruitment" is oxymoronic.

There are two separate businesses - 'recruitment', and 'online recruitment advertising'. I agree most people including job-board operators can't tell when one ends and the other starts (or think they are the same). One has to run a job-board and a recruitment company (as I do) to have a clear understanding.

So I guess your blog above is about companies using online recruitment advertising as a tool to gather candidates in their recruitment process - which saves money compared with out-sourcing to a rec. co. and so is logical in a recession.

BEst wishes

Gh

PS I liked your "Death of a Recruiter" blog. well said.

[Morren]

Great presentation. I think you are completely speaking about the tools for online recruitment. Well Said. Thanks Louise.