Board Level Jobs Hit the Net

More companies are turning to the internet to fill their top jobs, research from the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) has found.

The number of firms using their corporate sites to recruit board directors has almost doubled over the past year, from 12% to 23%. And as many as 81% of them say it’s been a success compared with only 34% a year ago.

At the same time there has been a three-fold increase in the use of commercial recruitment sites to fill the most senior vacancies. The number of firms turning to job boards to find directors has risen from 4% to 13%. And 72% of them rate the exercise a success compared with 54% last summer.

Companies are using the internet in addition to traditional recruitment methods, such as newspapers, in order to widen the potential pool of candidates and attract more applicants. Commenting on the results, Dr Emma Parry, a research fellow at Cranfield School of Management said: The current state of the labour market means that it is increasingly difficult to attract suitable candidates, particularly at higher levels. Organisations are therefore spreading the recruitment net as wide as possible in order to find the best people.

This is the fifth annual internet recruitment survey from the Recruitment Confidence Index, which is published by Cranfield School of Management and The Daily Telegraph.

Dr Emma Parry, said Perhaps more than anything, this reflects the penetration of the internet into our homes as well as our workplaces. An ever-increasing number of people are using the internet regularly at work, at home, or at the local library - regardless of their age, skills or qualifications.

Mark Payne, Group Commercial Director at The Daily Telegraph said: The notion that directors should be recruited through the internet in significant numbers comes as no surprise to us. We predicted 10 years ago, when we started putting jobs online at The Daily Telegraph, that internet recruitment would eventually cover all the salary ranges across industry sectors and disciplines. We said then that it wouldn’t happen overnight, but would be a natural evolution. These results are a clear sign that the internet has now established itself, in the minds of job hunters and recruiters, as an integral part of the recruitment mix.

It is not just the top jobs that are being filled via the internet. There has also been a massive hike in the number of employers using corporate and commercial job sites to recruit unskilled and clerical staff. For example the number of firms using corporate sites to hire manual staff has risen from 14% last year to 44% cent this summer.

However, there is a still a hard core of about two in five employers who do not use the internet to recruit and have not plans to do so. Dr Emma Parry said: There remains a lot of caution and confusion out there. Some people have tried the internet and given up, but the technology is only a decade old and still in its infancy. Employers need to step back and look carefully at how best they can use the current offering on the Internet.

The research also found that:
Corporate websites remain more widely used than commercial sites - with 42% of responding organisations using corporate sites compared to 25% using job boards. Job boards are most commonly used to recruit sales, IT and customer services staff Of firms who do not use the internet to recruit, 33% expect to try out job boards over the next year, while 42% plan to start using a corporate site to recruit.