Online recruitment goes from strength to strength...

Over the next 5 years (to 2011), the e-recruitment market will grow significantly both in scale and importance. Indeed, some are predicting that recruitment will be close to travel ñ the most successful sector in terms of the online business model. A new Market Assessment report, E-Recruitment, from market intelligence providers Key Note, forecasts that by 2011 nearly 2.1 million jobs will be on offer via online recruitment websites, with a monthly average of 32.5 million unique visitors to these sites.

With around two-thirds of employers using some form of e-recruitment, the online medium for recruiting personnel is certainly moving from strength to strength. This is also reflected in the amount spent on e-recruitment display advertising, which has risen strongly in recent years. In 2006, Key Note estimates that this type of advertising will be worth 560m, compared with 315m in the previous year.

As the industry becomes more widely accepted, the future will see more advanced tools being offered to clients, such as sifting, matching, handling management and application service provider (ASP)-type products that sit on a clientís own website. Jobsites will need to become more sophisticated, both in terms of the range and the quality of services they offer clients.

The number of Internet jobseekers continues to rise and will approach 9.5 million at the beginning of 2007. Key Note estimates that 26.5% of those using the Internet to look for work will eventually find a job via the Internet, implying that around 2.3 million jobseekers will have found work via the Internet in the year ending October 2006.

During the coming years, the market will experience more consolidation and a trend towards social networking. In the US, Jobster has taken online recruiting to a whole new level, using referral networking to put jobs in front of the best prospects wherever they are. Recruiters will be able to build a referral network of harder-to-find passive candidates, using a combination of the latest online marketing techniques and social networking technology.

Key Note estimates that, by 2011, 78% of adults in Great Britain will have Internet access and, by that time, the proportion of adults using the Internet to find jobs or access careers information will have grown to 41% - representing just over 16.2 million Internet users.