The Internet in the eyes of graduates - 01/2001

As two recent surveys conducted by Park have shown, 88% of graduates have used the Internet for job-hunting and 98% of graduate employers have used the Internet as part of their recruitment strategy, it would appear that the Internet has never been more popular amongst student job-seekers and those that employ them.

The importance of having an effective, graduate-focused recruitment website is highlighted by our finding that students see the Internet primarily as a source of information on employers, however the sheer number of sites that they looked at in the course of their job-hunting meant that sites would need to download quickly if their interest was to be maintained, many expected that they would loose interest if the site took longer than five or six seconds to fully appear. Clearly the issue here is that advertisers must ensure that sites they design take into account the technical specifications and limitations of students' computers.

76% of respondents used university facilities to access the Internet and it was felt that in general university-based machines tended not to lend themselves to overly creative websites. Students therefore placed a greater onus on content rather than creativity. However, given the length and somewhat tedious nature of the job-hunting process, interactive features were much appreciated.

In terms of advertising strategies, a lot of students had issues with banner advertising; the major factors here being irrelevance, repetition and the failure of many banners to link to their home sites quickly and effectively. Therefore when advertising to graduates it is useful to ensure that the contents of pages behind banners are made immediately obvious, that links from banners are working properly and that in the case of creative banners a policy of less is more be employed.

Students use of the Internet is dominated by the use of e-mail, with 53% of students spending most of their time sending and receiving mail: the use of e-mail based marketing techniques would appear to have great potential within this marketplace.

Students felt that the Internet, while possessing some advantages in terms of its ability to find information quickly from a number of sources and its strength as a communication tool, did have limitations as a recruitment tool when compared to traditional sources of information such as newspapers and directories. The latter were strong by virtue of their portability while websites had limitations in terms of access to hardware and machines.

Students, also expressed considerable anxiety about sending personal data over the Internet. This was generally a gender specific issue with female students voicing greater concern. However, anxiety was tempered by the individual's familiarity with an employer's brand. They expressed a preference for e-mailed rejection letters as they were felt to speed up the job-hunting process and they liked the idea of online psychometric testing.

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