The Success of Online Recruitment Advertising

Online advertising has been hugely successful and now recruiters have a plethora of choices when it comes to spending their budget. Onrec finds out more about the ways to advertise now and in the future, and also gathers some advice on how to write a good ad.

Stuart Maxwell, Business Development Manager, ABC ELECTRONIC introduces us to the reasons for such success: ìOnline advertising has an incredible ability to engage with an audience in a way that other mediums can struggle to match. For the recruitment market, the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS) recently showed that 72% of online job seekers applied for jobs they found online, of these 65% gained interviews for these jobs and 56% of those that had interviews got the jobs. This is a clear indicator of online recruitment working both for the employer and the employee. Until now it could be said that online advertising has been predominantly used as a direct response medium through search and pay-per-click banner advertising (clicking through an ad to a website). There is however increasing demand to move up to the next level with more focus on branding opportunities through online, including video ads, CV database searches, microsites and sponsorship.

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A fundamental strength of online advertising is its measurability. You can measure the number of users, and the extent of browsing. However with this pro comes the con. You have to be aware of the negative issues, such as click-fraud and artificial computerised activity which can inflate website traffic figures. In this measurability you will also find discrepancies between buyers and sellers, each measuring activity in different ways. The standards set by the industry through JICWEBS are there to make sense of this and provide transparent, comparable and accurate figures, our role at ABC ELECTRONIC is to support this by providing independent third party auditing to these standards.î

Nicole Butt, Marketing Manager, Capital Consulting says: ìThere are literally hundreds of different job boards, with more niche sites emerging all the time covering all manner of industries and roles. The challenge is to determine not just how well they deliver in terms of generating traffic, but to qualify this in terms of how well they perform in delivering the right kind of candidates. Consistency is another key issue ñ there is very little across the industry; some job boards are more effective than others, and much will depend on the criteria important to the employer. More positively, the increasing consolidation of job board ownership with the big players buying up smaller sites is driving a more integrated and consistent approach. Creating a more standardised approach will certainly make it easier for employers and candidates alike. A further concern with job boards is that of cost: the lack of industry standards means considerable differences in costs across different job boards.

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The drawback to other types of online advertising such as banners, buttons, and targeted emails is that these represent fairly limited techniques for attracting candidates. The sheer potential of the Web ñ on a technical level alone ñ is not yet being fulfilled. More candidate-centric tools would certainly help: imagine a graphic design careers portal, for example, where individual candidates have the opportunity to upload their portfolios online to showcase their work.

Without a doubt, these pros and cons have arisen from the relatively rapid growth of online recruitment advertising. That said, weíre some ten years down the line now, and it would be exciting to see this experience being translated into a more mature recognition of the growing stature of online advertising and its importance to the future of the recruitment industry.î

Changes since last year
However, the potential of the web is gradually being used. David Ray, an independent recruitment consultant says that there have been a few new techniques for improving response and targeting being introduced by job boards (e.g. The Guardian lets you target ads by IP address, so you can for example, show an ad for programme producers only to people on the site who are currently at the BBC or Channel4). He also says the ìbuzz word of the year has been 'web 2.0' ñ how to use the 'social network' services such as Jobster (launched in the UK this year), Zubka (ditto), LinkedIn - plus the ubiquitous MySpace/FaceBooks of this world in the recruitment context.î He feels this is a much-hyped area but it remains experimental in recruitment terms.

Nicole Butt agrees in the increase in social networking ñ ìParticularly among the web-savvy ëGeneration Yí ñ is having a significant impact on online advertising, and will continue to mean that job boards and the like are going to have to work much harder to both capture and retain the interest of the switched-on. These people use MySpace, they buy their CDs online ñ in fact, they donít even buy CDs, they download iTunes. How online advertising engages with this audience is a major challenge. Social networking is happening largely online, and yet is a growing trend that the recruitment sector has largely ignored to date. We really need to catch up and think about this. A particular issue is how recruiters tread the fine line between establishing an online presence and being too proactive ñ there have certainly been cases of recruiters trying to ëblogí their way to candidates, a breach of ënetiquetteí that is not been well-received online.

Another development is likely to see the jobs boards integrating themselves across other industries and into much broader markets ñ online advertising works on a fairly isolated basis, and the more it can work with other interests will be for the better.

Weíve seen more and more senior roles advertised online over the past two years, particularly in the 60,000 - 80,000 salary bracket, which never worked online before. This trend is likely to continue as the web-savvy move onwards in their careers and upwards.î

Predictions for the future
Stuart Maxwell says: ìThere has been phenomenal growth in this sector over the last year with the value of the market tipping over the 2bn mark. This has been matched by a proliferation of the online opportunities available for both advertising and consumers including podcasting, streaming and IPTV (video on demand). Bigger budgets, more uses and more users are continuing to drive the medium forward.
The uses of the internet will continue to grow, as will its usability. Its ability to engage consumers is also likely to continue to rise as social networks grow, IPTV develops and publishers of online only magazines increase. There is also significant potential for continuing increases in advertising spend in online media as buyers become more experienced and confident in the mediums and opportunities it offers There is however a need for media owners to continue to support this through common standards and best practice that makes it easier for buyers to work with the market.î

Nicole Butt sees the most effective online recruitment activity migrating far beyond advertising to encompass all manner of activity ñ ìCareers pages, sites and even portals carrying the most job-relevant and highly candidate-specific content, and deploying the very latest technology. Some of the best sites carry videos, for example, showing the working environment. But content doesnít need to be sophisticated to work effectively ñ candidate specific content could cover anything that someone considering moving to a new area might find of use, such as information on local attractions and destinations, travel details for rail, road and air, house prices and cost of living, schools and leisure activities.More of the bigger companies who can afford to re-write their websites to improve the content are making use of search engine optimisation, particularly pay-for-clicks. This means they generate more direct candidate interest, and can circumvent the job boards.î

This increasing range of media, channel, and format options will make a bewildering choice available to recruiters deciding how to spend their budget and we should expect to see an increasing focus on performance metrics to plan and analyse activity so that they make the most cost effective choices.

Nicoleís Top tips on how to write good ads

ï Remember: the average candidate reads an advert for just 1.5 seconds ñ make sure you grab their attention

ï Consider sponsoring keyword searches

ï Make targeted emails very accurate and much more specific ñ avoid generics such as ëproject managementí

ï Make sure the advert makes good reference to the employer brand: our research shows that there is seven times the response rate to an advert if a candidate knows who the employer is

ï Think beyond the advert ñ choose your search terms particularly carefully to ensure maximum search engine optimization, and consider optimising the actual job listing

ï Be certain to give candidates upfront the information they are looking for ñ including the most basic such as salary and location

ï Structure the advert according to the job board

ï Make applying for the position easy

ï Keep the advert short

ï Check spelling