Naturejobs matches smart job applicants to recruiters through smarter technology.

As of last week, the Nature Publishing Group created the webís most effective scientific careers service. Content pages across the Nature family of web sites now feature brief abstracts for live jobs in prominent positions. This means that virtually each page that a visitor to the Nature site reads will display relevant job information in their field; thus those readers not actively looking for a job will have the chance to monitor the latest and most sought-after positions. And of course those already on the job market will be served these same jobs. Itís working too, the applications to jobs are up 18% and views of individual jobs up 62%.

In carefully matching jobs to a pageís content, Naturejobs completely dominates the sci-tech recruitment market. In utilizing the 25 million page views and 6 million visits (the monthly usage figures of all the Nature sites), Naturejobs even asserts itself as a player within the larger online recruitment market.

Not only will this new service capture the most page views, but it will exploit the large numbers of visitors to nature.com. ìThis is what sets apart journal and niche publishing. While Nature is a multi-disciplinary title, readers self select the content they read in terms of peer-reviewed articles. You have community (and careers) affinity that exists here like it exists nowhere else on the webî, explained Ben Crowe, Publisher of Naturejobs. ìItís different from a generalist site like the New York Times placing jobs throughout their content. The Times and other players cannot make the claim of community and career affinity on their content pages. But Nature can.î

This is perhaps the next tactic that niche job sites will use to outmanoeuvre the larger, generalist job boards. Niche players offer strong vertical communities, a sense of membership (as opposed to being a reader), more streamlined news and information. A service like this is what recruiters have been asking for and users value. In fact, according to Electronic Publishers Services February 2004 report Online Classifieds: Where Now, What Next, ìIn the US the small, niche flexible players are seen as the core threat to the market leaders and it could be the same here [in the UK].î

This semantic-technology is expected to increase the views of vacancies and applications to advertised positions dramatically ñ and, importantly, not just from active but passive jobseekers too. ìItís not just active jobseekers that we want applying to the vacanciesî, claims Crowe. ìSometimes individuals that are currently employed make better applicants for jobs. Our ability to attract these passive jobseekers has been apparent since we created a careers editorial and resources section within Naturejobs. Now that we have jobs matched to content we can really allow advertisers to exploit Nature Publishing Groupís dominance ñ especially on the 8 million desktops we serve via site-wide licensing of NPG publications.î Advertisers get to align their recruiting organizations with some of the worldís most renowned scientific discoveries ñ the cloning of the first mammal (Dolly the sheep) and the structure of the Human Genome, to name just two.

The breadth and depth of the Nature family of online journals make this such a unique prospect. The next largest science sites after Nature serve only 5-6million page views month and donít offer similar domination of the vertical market. Nature has not only its own web site, but also news@nature, the global scientific news portal, and speciality sites such as the Bioentrepreneur, the Physics Portal, Drug Discovery@nature.com and dozens of other sites.

Itís not just good news for advertisers. As the sales model has changed to encourage more online jobs postings there will be an increased choice and variety of opportunities for jobseekers.

The development has been a significant investment for Naturejobs but the results that advertisers experience should mean theyíll return again and again. When asked more about the implications of this technology Crowe responded, ìWeíre excited about this development opening up our jobsite to more physicists, biobusiness people and lab staff, amongst others. These are areas that Naturejobs has not traditionally concentrated on, but with the matching technology and NPGís world-class science, we will have the attention of the market. Our BPA-audited demographic profile of registrants gives an accurate indication as to what segments of the scientific community can be accessed too.î

With a surfeit of jobsites, advertisers are demanding more ñ but not necessarily more and more candidates. In his closing remarks in a recent recruitment seminar Crowe offered, ìItís not just about volume of applicants, itís about differentiating our site by providing an optimum selection of the best candidates.î Using the influence of nature.com, Naturejobs looks certain to maintain this commitment for some time to come.