ANM purchase Jobsite

Associated New Media (ANM), a division of Associated Newspapers Ltd, the publishers of the Daily Mail have purchased Jobsite.com

The ANM purchase is good news for the industry, it will raise its profile and justifiably so.

Online recruitment prevails despite being a secret well kept for the last 10 years. Jobseekers use it, recruitment companies use it, corporate recruiters use it, but many are still unaware of its benefits.

Corporate Britain’s slow adoption can be attributed to lack of internal process to deal effectively with response generated online. However the reluctance of HR and personnel departments to embrace the blatantly obvious selling points of quicker and cheaper still leaves many UK companies without an online recruitment strategy.

In part, I lay the slow adoption of the medium at the door of the National press. It’s has resolutely over the last decade ignored online recruitment, giving miniscule coverage, despite its impact on the way jobs are sought and advertised.

Why? The answer stems from the what has already happened in America. There 70% of classified advertising revenue has moved from newspapers to the internet.

This could explain why publishers have been reticent, in promoting a threat to the central core of their revenue, the lucrative recruitment advert.

A survey of graduates fund that 98% of graduates look online for jobs. Having recently lectured to degree students and conducted my own survey 98% is incorrect ....its 100%. If proof is needed that companies embrace the medium, the UK’s largest graduate employer, recruiting 1000 graduates every year, only does so online.

So the Jobsite deal could be the beginning of a turf war between traditional press online.

They face a challenge to formulate an online recruitment strategy and one that will be palatable internally. I can understand the reluctance to invest, set a against a back drop of high returns from recruitment advertising over the last 100 years. But faced with year on year diminishing recruitment advertising revenues in print , the only way to
defend their position, is to buy into or launch their own solution.

A number have established online solutions. How will they develop? Will they receive the funding to develop?

In the US online recruitment is dominated by a three way split Monster.com, Hotjobs.com and Careerbuilder.com. Careerbuilder is owned by a consortium of traditional press. In the US now there is talk of up-selling adverts booked online into regional press!

Online recruitment is quicker, cheaper, empowers the jobseeker. I think it will recast the way newspapers derive revenue from recruitment advertising.

David Hurst
Publisher
www.Onrec.com
Online recruitment Magazine
david@onrec.com
01702 382330