Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

Hitwise ande ComScore Stats - May 2008

Back in April I had a plan to regularly publish a blog showing monthly stats from Hitwise and ComScore.  I'm not sure what happened, but here are the figures from May.

If you read the ukrecruiter newsletter (and if not, why not!) you'll know each week we publish the Hitwise's top 10 most visited UK recruitment sites.

Once a month I get the equivalent stats from ComScore.  Here are May's figures.

comScore: Top 10 Career Services & Development Sites by UK Unique Visitors (000) – May 2008*

Total U.K. Internet Audience 34,489
Career Services and Development 10,197

Jobcentreplus.gov.uk: 2,729
Totaljobs: 1,715
Monster: 1,331
Reed.co.uk: 1,276
Fish4jobs: 999
NHS Careers: 970
CareerBuilder: 889
Jobsite: 847
CV-Library: 647
1job.co.uk: 529

*Unique users aged 15+, excludes traffic from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs

The Hitwise top 20 Recruitment Sites, for May 2008 are:

www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk
www.jobs.nhs.uk
www.totaljobs.com
www.reed.co.uk
www.monster.co.uk
www.linkedin.com
jobs.tes.co.uk
www.jobsite.co.uk
www.s1jobs.com
jobs.guardian.co.uk
www.cv-library.co.uk
www.1job.co.uk
www.axcis.co.uk
www.jobcentreonline.com
www.workcircle.com
www.jobstoday.co.uk
jobs.trovit.co.uk
www.clickajob.co.uk
www.jobs.ac.uk
www.jobserve.com

If you are looking to compare these stats the main differences are that ComScore include sites like Fish4 (Hitwise don't aggregate data from sites who form part of a network) and that comScore don't include LinkedIn (they class LinkedIn as a social networking site and rank it under their "conversational media" category as opposed to the "Careers Services and development" category we are seeing above).

Why Zubed is worth a look

I've had an email about Zubed in my "blog action" folder for ages.  I keep thinking I must make the time for a proper look.  It looks like procrastination can be a good thing as low and behold Jim Stoud has written a superb blog post about it (thus saving me the effort!).

Basically, Zubed, geographically maps CVs.  You can read Jim's comprehensive review here.

Now, I think that Jim is great, and Jim thinks that Zubed is great.  Which to my mind means that Zubed must be worth a look!

Recruit me Now in Oz

Recruit Me Now is the equivalent of our UKRecruiterJobs site in Australia.

Last week I spoke with their MD, Michael Dimopoulos, who is looking to promote the site in the UK market for recruitment professionals looking to work in Australia and New Zealand.

Recruit Me Now has created a bridge at last between Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Recruit Me Now is apparently the first exclusive career site in Australia for recruiters.   

What was great about talking with Michael is that he isn't just offering a job board service, its almost a recruitment to recruitment consultancy service. As well as the job board - actually on the site there are directories of industry products & services, an industry ambassador and industry news.

Last week I passed Michael's details to a recruiter who was asking about how he could move to Australia.  Rather than just pointing him in the direction of the job board Michael spent some time getting him the relevant information so that he could obtain all the information he needs.

In the short term Recruit Me Now will be launching a candidate board where candidates will create a profile in the same style format as a job ad, post their profile on the site and recruiters will be able to also apply to the candidate. The idea being that you create your profile here in the UK and sit back and let recruiters in Australia apply to you prior to coming across!

There's not much more I need to say about the site except if you are interested in moving out of the (currently dreary!) UK and over to Oz you could do far worse than check out Recruit me Now.

Reed.co.uk Guaranteed Response Service

I thought I’d do a quick update on Reed’s guaranteed response service.  This was introduced in November 2007 and caused a fair bit of controversy on our discussion board

I recently spoke with Mark Rhodes (who is Head of Marketing at reed.co.uk) about how the service is working out…. (note his carefully constructed answers!)

What developments have you been making at reed.co.uk?
We've just upgraded our Guaranteed Response service by doubling the guarantee. Recruiters posting jobs now receive a guaranteed ten CVs for their vacancy, so it's an even more compelling proposition for recruiters of all sizes looking to remove the uncertainty from posting their vacancies online.

Why did you upgrade the service?
Guaranteed Response has been a real success since we launched last year. Jobs posted using the service receive more than seven times the number of applications as standard listings, so we're confident we can deliver quality candidates for our clients. Doubling the guarantee, whilst fixing the price at only £50 per job, is a logical development. What's more, Guaranteed Response continues to undercut the cost of other, less sophisticated job posting services on other big job boards.

The Guaranteed Response service typifies our aim to give recruiters the best possible return on their investment. Because of our recruitment agency heritage we understand what recruiters of all types and sizes need to be successful. All of our products have been designed by recruiters for recruiters and we pride ourselves on our ability to respond to the feedback we get from our clients.

What measures do you have in place to ensure the quality of applications?
We've long understood the importance of pre-screening for online job applications and offer a number of tools to assist in the process. All jobs posted on reed.co.uk can include up to five screening questions, any number of which can be assigned auto-reject status, to ensure that only those applicants giving the correct answers reach the recruiter. In addition, recruiters also have the facility to block applications from jobseekers who are not eligible to work in the UK.

Has Guaranteed Response increased the amount of business you are getting?
The Guaranteed Response service has opened up an important e-commerce channel for reed.co.uk, as it was the first product we made available to buy online with a credit or debit card (we’ve since added CV Search and mixed product bundles).

And because the service offers so much more than equivalent products, not least by including a guarantee, we’ve continued to see a significant rise in Guaranteed Response postings.

If you want to find out more about how the “Guaranteed Response” product compares to the other Reed offerings (including their free of charge job posting service) you should view their comparison table.  For the sake of impartiality here is a link to all the other job boards in the UK we list on our site.

Recruitment Advertising and Google Adwords

Peter Gold at Hirestrategies has put together a 5 day programme (sent by e-mail) that will allow you to understand how to start using Google Adwords from scratch.  It covers the techniques you can use to create a successful campaign on Adwords to reduce your dependence on job boards and get highly relevant applicants.

If you are considering how you might make use of Adwords as part of your recruitment advertising programme it's well worth popping along to his site and registering.  It's all free of charge - all you need do is enter your name and email address here.

Connected Jobs - Facebook Application for Recruiters

Panlogic is a strategic UK digital marketing agency with a specialism in social media. They are creating a Facebook application for recruiters (corporates and agencies) "to ease the chronic skills shortage in our industry and to improve the process of employees and employers finding each other by using the power of the Facebook platform".

Whilst they are loathe to the use the word job board (they call it a sector based recruitment application) it is a kind of job board for Facebook. Helping individuals find the roles they are looking for and helps companies find the staff they need. It is the way it does it that is innovative i.e. tapping into the social aspects of Facebook such as showing where your friends have worked, getting the low-down on an employer, the inside-track of the job etc.

They are yet to launch the official version (I think they are in Beta at present) are currently integrating the application with Broadbean to allow all agencies to post vacancies direct to Facebook.  The idea is to set up niche sites for different sectors with some funky features such as videos, rating of corporates (by ex/current employees), etc, to make it more interactive (in keeping with the style of Facebook). 

Basically a recruiter advertises their job and it's pushed out to the people that are signed up to the application. Currently we understand that nothing will be shown in the user’s profile in order to retain anonymity. Whilst this may reduce its viral pick-up it does ensure total discretion. Panlogic were keen to stress that this area is under review and will depend on user feedback.

Some existing job boards have already created Facebook Applications and both of the main referral recruitment solutions (Zubka and Jobtonic) have them.  I've not heard fabulous stories about their success but I guess for existing job boards it's just another route to market.  Their early Beta has launched for the Digital Agency sector (no surprise there, then) but, as above, I understand that there is a later version to follow soon.

What do you think?  Will "jobseekers" add this application and can a recruiter rely on advertising their vacancies on Facebook alone?

comScore's & Hitwise's Top 10 Job Sites

Each week in the ukrecruiter newsletter we publish the Hitwise's top 10 most visited UK recruitment sites.

Once a month we now get the equivalent stats from ComScore.  The plan is for us to publish them regularly on this blog (with a link from the newsletter).  Below are March's figures.

comScore: Top 10 Career Services & Development Sites by UK Unique Visitors (000) – March 2008*

Total U.K. Internet Audience: 33,761
Career Services and Development: 11,099

Jobcentreplus.gov.uk: 2,704
Fish4jobs: 1,795
Totaljobs: 1,631
Monster: 1,418
Reed.co.uk: 1,108
NHS Careers: 996
CareerBuilder: 915
Jobsite: 822
Guardian Jobs: 626
CV-Library: 570
*Unique users aged 15+, excludes traffic from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs

As we don't have a newsletter issue this week (we only do four a month and April is a five week month) the latest Hitwise stats are here.

Hitwise top 10 Recruitment Sites, week ending 19th April 2008

www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk
www.jobs.nhs.uk
www.totaljobs.com
www.monster.co.uk
jobs.tes.co.uk
www.reed.co.uk
www.jobsite.co.uk
www.linkedin.com
www.cv-library.co.uk
www.s1jobs.com

If you are looking to compare these stats the main differences are that ComScore include sites like Fish4 (Hitwise don't aggregate data from sites who form part of a network) and that comScore don't include LinkedIn (they class LinkedIn as a social networking site and rank it under their "conversational media" category as opposed to the "Careers Services and development" category we are seeing above).

What we've been doing with UKRecruiterJobs

Now, I'm not one for a lot of self publicity (well, I don't think I am).  However, I do want to mention what we've been up to with UKRecruiterJobs.co.uk since our launch a couple of months back.

We've had a great response from people within the UK Recruiter community.  The launch of a job board is something quite a few of you have been telling me is a "no brainer" for ages!  So we partnered with Brainhunter (Colin Minto, ex REC and thoroughly decent chap, is their MD) to launch the site.

We've now integrated the site with AdCourier (the award winning advert distribution solution from Broadbean Technology) and have a partnership with 1Job.co.uk (according to Hitwise the most visited Job Vacancy Search Engine in the UK) so that our jobs are shown via their website. 

Broadbean are our co-hosts for the networking events and I've known Dan McGuire for 7 years.  I asked him if he'd do a quote for the press release we sent about our integration with AdCourier.  This is what I got Dan McGuire, Managing Director of Broadbean and general all round top fella said; “We have a long standing relationship with UKRecruiter and I think this really enhances their offering. They are our co-hosts of The Recruiters Network so, naturally, we are delighted to add UKRecruiterJobs to our list of job board partners. I would like to add that Lou is a babe and Colin has THE best beard in the world.” It might not have made it into the press release but I have found it hard to resist the temptation to immortalise his words (and not just because he called me a babe!).  Sorry about that Dan.

Oh yes, ought to mention (as I'm going for the self publicity bit here) - We have also just launched our unlimited job postings for one year for £1,000 package.  We're are limiting the number of successful applicants for this offer to just the first 100 organisations that apply though.

Creativepool's Guide to Online Recruitment

We have been referenced in the Creative Pool "Guide to online recruitment" so I felt it only polite to reciprocate.

Creativepool is a specialist UK online creative job board and have put together an overview guide to online recruitment.  The objective of the guide is "to help candidates and employers, who are yet to try this method of recruitment, decide whether it might be right for them".

To be honest I can't think there are many clients or candidates who haven't experienced some form of online recruitment.  However, I am all for information about how to use the internet better so ...

You can download the free PDF from their website.

Contents include: how the market has grown and continues to grow in 2008; some key statistics on online recruitment usage; how it works; the pros and cons for both candidates and employers; tips for making the most of online recruitment and a few handy related links. At the end of the document, there are even recommended creative recruitment consultants for those who do not wish to pursue recruiting online and therefore need an offline alternative.

Worth recommending to candidates and colleagues who are still resisting the lure of online recruitment.

Candidates are NOT looking for a job at Easter!

Recruiters may as well knock off early today and roll in late next Tuesday because, according to Broadbean, few candidates apply for jobs on Good Friday and Easter Monday.  In fact this Easter weekend is just behind the Christmas period (New Year’s Eve and Day, Christmas Eve and Day and Boxing Day) in terms of poor job seeker activity.

Contrary to popular belief, the weekend is also a slow time for responses with the number of applications falling by around two thirds. Broadbean sees candidate applications increase on a Monday (but not this Monday!) and responses peak at lunch time on a Tuesday.  As Dan recently pointed out on his blog this message has still not got out to the general recruitment community: "Friday night is NOT the best time to distribute your adverts. It is, however, the most popular time for posting amongst my clients".

So... sneak off after lunch and come back in on Tuesday ready to post all your jobs and snap up the best candidates (of course, if those are recruitment jobs you should be giving our new site UKRecruiterJobs a go!).