Online recruitment sector leads the way in online accountability for advertisers

Today, Enhance Media release the latest results from NORAS Winter 2004. (The National Online Recruitment Audience Survey). NORAS produced by Enhance Media is the only annual joint industry research tool that provides details of site user profiles and user numbers simultaneously to give an accurate picture of a siteís activity across a whole sector on the Internet.

The results of NORAS Winter 2004 are compiled from questionnaires completed by 12,500 online job seekers among 17 of the UKís leading online recruitment sites - Anderselite, Brand Republic, CW Jobs, eFinancialCareers, Fish4Jobs, GAAPweb, InPharm, JimFinder, Jobs AC, JobsGoPublic, London Jobs, Prospects.ac.uk, S1 Jobs, Secs in the city, Telegraph Jobs, Total Jobs and, Workthing PeopleBank. Each site also has traffic figures audited by ABC ELECTRONIC (see below).

Key findings of the survey:

The average online job seeker is 33.6 years old (up from 31.9 in 2003), has 12 years work experience (up from 10.6 in 2003), earns 34,594 on average (up from 22,494 in 2003). Online job seekers are a well-educated audience, 60% are educated to degree or higher degree level. The audience is becoming more senior as the online recruitment sector becomes more mature.

66% of users are repeat visitors, suggesting increasing loyalty to online recruitment sites and understanding of the individual offerings of different sites.

35% of first time visitors chose to visit sites because they found the site on a search engine. This shows continuing importance of search engines in driving candidates to online recruitment sites, however only 11% found the site through advertising.

40% of repeat visitors revisit sites because they think they have the best selection of jobs or the best selection of employers - this shows increasing loyalty and previous positive experience.

Job seekers still visit recruitment sites for reasons other than just looking for jobs. 30% of users visit to find out information about employers and 23% to make salary comparisons.

45% of online job seekers say that the internet is their preferred method of looking for a job. This reflects the busy career orientated lifestyles of senior job seekers and the fact that using the internet to look for jobs is a successful way of getting a new job.

75% of online job seekers have applied for a job they found online, 59% have obtained an interview as a result of this application and 44% of these have actually obtained a job after the interview - the internet is a successful way of changing jobs.

All sites will also have ABC E audits showing the size of each siteís audience through Unique User audited figures, these will be available on approximately 20th January (actual publication date of NORAS is Jan 26th).

NORAS is being supported by industry organisations such as the Association of Online Recruiters (AOLR), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR). The AGR have 600 members, including 400 of the UKís top corporate employers and is keen for their members to learn more about online recruitment so they can recruit graduates more effectively.

NORAS Interactive, the online media planning tool which enables recruiters to get even more from the results, by allowing them to compare how many candidates each site can deliver against their chosen target audience will be available by mid February.

Tim Elkington, Managing Director of Enhance Media commented, The study was set up to provide recruitment advertisers with the objective and transparent information they need to choose the right online recruitment site and get the best response to their online advertising.

The sights taking part in NORAS are committed to providing transparent data, and this demonstrates the industry is growing up and realizing the importance of accountable data.

The industryís support for this study and the fact that there are even more sites participating in this wave of NORAS shows the industryís real need to provide recruitment advertisers with reliable and independent data in order to assist with advertising decisions.

As the sector continues to grow providing advertisers with honest and comparable data will stand the online sector in good stead to secure more advertising revenue in comparison to more traditional channels.

Richard Foan, Managing Director of ABC ELECTRONIC commented, Accountability of the Internet has been a key issue for advertisers and as such many have continued to spend a large proportion of their budgets in traditional media. Whatever the sectors, whether itís recruitment, sports or publishing media owners have to be able to prove their online properties are accountable. We will be working closely with Enhance Media to develop the model across other sectors.

Methodology:

NORAS 2004 will take place from September to November 2003. Each participant will receive a detailed demographic profile of their users, this data was collected using RedSheriffís pop-up technology and was conducted among 12,500 job seekers. ABC ELECTRONIC certified Unique User figures.

Further information about NORAS go to www.noras.co.uk.

Further information about Enhance Media go to www.enhancemedia.co.uk

Further information regarding NORAS can also be found by visiting www.abce.org.uk