148% increase in Job Seekers for new FE Careers site

The latest web development at FE Careers has paid dividends. The specialist Further Education, Work Based Learning and Skills sector job advertising site has enjoyed a 148% increase in Job Seekers since their latest and largest web development in April.

Their monthly traffic has increased from 109,000 monthly job seeker visitor sessions in April 2008 with the old site to 270,367 job seeker visitor sessions in October 2008 alone. CEO Gavin is overjoyed ìTo enjoy a 148% increase in job seeker sessions in just six months is amazing and is totally above my own estimations of what was possible. We also tripled the amount of enhanced advertising space with the new site design as the waiting list for these services was for several months on the old site. Six months down the line and with triple the amount of space, we now have a waiting list again for several of our enhanced advertising services and at one point last month all of the space for enhanced advertising was filled.î

Both large and small advertisers are enjoying the improvements to the FE Careers site and the increase in response rate. Steven Shippey, Operations Director with Government Funded Training Provider Training Enterprises has been very impressed with the improvements and response on the FE Careers site. Steven explains We started using FE Careers for our recruitment at the beginning of February 2008. We were particularly seeking Qualified Assessors and Internal Verifiers. We were recommended the site by a former teacher. Since signing up FE Careers it has helped us recruit around 8 new qualified members of staff and all have been of a very high standard.

In April 2008, FE Careers gave their site a new shape & look and the response to our advertising has continued to be very good if not even better. The new changes makes it even easier for employers to see how the advertising in getting on. I would recommend FE Careers to any Colleges, Schools & National Training Providers like us.

It appears as if the credit crunch isnít affecting the Further Education sector. This month alone several of the largest Public Sector recruitment agencies have committed to long term advertising campaigns on FE Careers along with some of the largest Government Funded training providers in the UK. Gavin explains ìOur news team were at a large Work Based Learning conference last week, in fact we were sponsoring it, so we had to be there. The feedback was amazing, with several CEOís of large providers coming up to our news team and thanking them for how many thousands of pounds they had saved them. Every single recruitment agency that attended the event all advertised on FE Careers too. My News Editor and New Media Editor couldnít believe just what a positive response there was from the audienceî.

ìWeíre enjoying a real snow ball effect at the moment, with more training providers and Colleges using the site on a continuous basis. All of the major FE and specialist NVQ Recruitment Agencies advertise on FE CareersÖ we are now being approached by an ever increasing number of very large and also start up agencies all of whom are starting to move into the Further Education sector. With the credit crunch effect on the rest of the UK economy and the doom and gloom reported on a daily basis in the press – it appears that a lot of people can see that a recession will actually further boost the Further Education sector, particularly the NVQ & Skills sector, Employability, Advice and Guidance, if the slump hits a lot harder than predicted.î

As usual the FE Careers team are working on the next developments. www.FEnews.co.uk the sister news site to FE Careers is in the final stages of what has been a yearlong development of new concepts and incorporating four separate websites into one.

The FE News site has gone through two major re-developments this year. At the beginning of the year the FE Careers team launched a series of pilot sites to test the Further Education audience response to these new media services. FE News.co.uk has now incorporated FE Video and FE Events in the main FE News.co.uk service. Visitors are now able to keep up to date with the latest news through written word and feeds from across the web, through to videos of speeches from conferences and exclusive video interviews through to education event information.

Gavin goes onto explain the thought process behind these web developments ìFE News is an incredibly useful and highly regarded resource used by the entire FE sector, but to be honest we werenít utilising this potential as well as we could have to benefit FE Careers. FE Careers is our main business. So at the beginning of the year we underwent a major research and development project. We launched three pilot sites. These were basically concept sites for our audience and a total revamp for FE News. The new sites went down very well; the concepts really captured a lot of FE professionalís attention. So we then decided to incorporate these into FE News. So this meant another web development programme again!

So at the beginning of the year when we launched FE Events, FE Video, Search FE, then straight away kicked off the FE Careers development. FE Careers was live for a week and then we released a new design on FE News. After I had three new business babies at the beginning of the year, my wife got a little jealous – so we had another baby in September. 2008 has been a hectic year. I now have three kids, and that is by far enough as I am concerned, launched three new businesses, dealt with more web developers than I ever want to again, revamped FE Careers and FE News twice. Iím looking forward to Christmasî

With a 148% increase in job seekers in a 6 months period it appears that all of the hard work has been worth it. It seems that the Christmas break canít come quick enough for the FE Careers team!

www.FEcareers.co.uk
www.FEnews.co.uk