Will a difficult economic climate affect the choice of a niche or generalist jobsite?

Online recruitment magazine - Will a difficult economic climate affect the choice of a niche or generalist jobsite?

Will jobseekers and recruiters change strategies in the light of a difficult economic climate? Will they be driven solely by cost, the type of site, or the services provided? We asked representatives from both perspectives what they thought, and they were surprisingly united in their responseÖ

Tom Williams, Sales Director at Jimfinder says: ìWhether a generalist site or a niche site, we all offer and provide basically the same fundamental service i.e. to connect job seekers to jobs and jobs to job seekers. Some sites are easier to use than others and some have better technology, but in the main most serious job boards offer a good user experience being both simple to use and with a good range of additional services for candidates and clients alike. Weíd all like to be operating under good economic times and in such circumstances thereís obviously more recruitment spend in the market which in turn allows online recruiters to utilise more what I call both tier one and tier two type job boards/suppliers - a tier one being a key supplier of quality candidates and which give a tangible return on investment and a tier two being a nice to have but which delivers a much lower level of service, coverage and/or return.

For example if I was asked to advise on recruiting for IT related roles then the first site of choice for me would be Jobserve who own this market; Jimfinder are the same in the manufacturing recruitment sector; and Jobsite to me is a good example of a tier one supplier across multiple sectors. What we will see in these more difficult times is not so much a preference for generalist over niche but a cutting back of spend from recruiters to the tier one only suppliers.î

Advantage of a niche site

Not surprisingly, Matt Farrah from Nurses.co.uk believes specialist sites will deliver the goods for recruiters in 2009: ìIn a difficult economic climate recruiters will be more selective, as budgets dictate. This will favour specialist sites because a good specialist site seeks to only send highly relevant candidates. Of course, sales people working at a generalist site will try to claim they're able to send the same focussed response. But by their nature generalists have to attract a very wide skills pool, in order to satisfy all of their clients across multiple industries. This is always troublesome for them, but things will become much tougher for generalist boards during the recession.î Matt Farrah explains how quality is assured on his site: ìWe spend a good deal of time and money to ensure quality is right. We're not interested in volume. Candidate skills and location are key for our clients. By monitoring our own marketing partners carefully we can claim a highly-targeted audience. If a service provider is unable to deliver focussed traffic, we cease working with them. We also understand our market and our client's requirements. This means we can structure the site around the industry. For instance, on our nursing job board, the requirement for a nursing qualification is made clear during job posting, candidate registration and CV searching. Functions like this are possible on specialist sites, and they serve to speed up the assessment process for recruiters and make candidates feel that they're part of a community that understands their needs. It's an advantage we have over generalist sites and increases the chances of specialist sites being used in the coming months.

In a shrinking jobs market, with increasing numbers of people searching for jobs, it will be hard for a generalist board to prevent their jobseekers applying for jobs they don't have the skills or qualifications for. Desperate candidates will hop around and apply in hope more often. This doesn't go down well with recruiters who are short on time. Recruiters themselves will be competing more heavily for placements in a shrinking job market, so time will be at an even higher premium. They will not welcome an increase in irrelevant responses to advertisements.î

However, Lee Biggins, MD at CV-library has the opposite perspective. He feels niche sites will struggle, saying: ìThe economic climate could potentially influence job seekers to broaden their job searches and make more use of generalist sites, resulting from the redundancies within their sectors. Recruiters dealing in specific sectors may need to start recruiting across a wider spectrum of industries to increase their revenue, particularly in financial & banking markets where job cuts are on the rise. As a result generalist sites will win over the niche recruiters which are expanding their sector specialisms, consequently niche sites may struggle if there are insufficient jobs in their sectors.î

John Salt website director at totaljobs.com, says that jobseekers are still attracted to where they find the largest pool of relevant jobs to them. He says: ìThe sites that will survive and grow in this market are those that provide the relevant jobs and can provide a great service that is easy to use, which adds value to both jobseekers and recruiters. There remains a huge choice of recruitment sites and neither jobseekers nor recruiters will stay long with a site that doesnít cater for their needs. Candidates will expect access to a wider choice of vacancies and will be looking for a jobsite which does more to help them find the perfect job. The key factors that affect the choice of job board use for a jobseeker are based around the largest pool of relevant (to them) jobs, ease of use, support and advice and a wide selection of employers. Candidates want their details to be held securely and both recruiters and jobseekers expect to have access to a customer support team if they have a query or problem. Additionally, recruiters expect quality account management to ensure that their vacancies are reaching the right candidates Generalist job boards will always be more prominent to the general population because of their spending power so will always remain a key player in the industry. Generalist sites are more geared towards offering a variety of jobs therefore attracting the masses, so tend to suit people who are not sure of their vocation or looking for a change.î

Do services vary between types of site?

Lee Biggins thinks not: ìWith jobs sites offering bespoke campaigns and niche advertising, the service between the two offer a somewhat comparative service. It is not necessarily the products that vary so much; itís the audiences in which the sites attract.î John Salt agrees that services are not the deciding factors between choosing sites: ìThe vast majority of sites, generalist and niche, offer similar products and services, jobseekers and recruiters expect the same quality user experience from niche job boards as they do from generalist job boards. What jobseekers absolutely want is to be able to enter specific search criteria and be shown a variety of jobs that relevant to them, and itís the jobseeker that chooses the criteria of relevance – geographical versus employment sector versus job role versus employer; they want to be empowered to choose their relevance.î

Future development of sites

John Salt believes: ìIn the short term, in this market, itís all about staying in the game and you can only do that if you continue to add value to both the recruiters and the jobseekers. Sites that focus on delivery of more, relevant quality candidates to recruiters will stay in the game, as long as they can offer the customer service and flexibility of transaction needed to power a large commercial business. Recruiters will also demand their vacancies reach the candidates that are most relevant to the roles in question, so using behavioural targeting on campaigns based around what is known of the jobseeker – which could be ISP address (who they work for), where they are searching, time and date of search to target messaging amongst others. New innovations from job boards which help them achieve brand exposure, for example embedded video, will just be one of a number of ways jobseekers expect to interact with a brand, others being by email, through RSS, social networking sites or by mobile, so itís important that an online brand can support all of these access points. Recruiters need to understand how they can best use these channels and what level of interaction is appropriate for reaching candidates, the sites that work with their customers to do this best will have a significant advantage moving forward. As jobseekers become more experienced ëinternetí users they are going to expect to be able to search and browse for a job with the same level of matching that they would search for goods or holidays with, fully expecting the experience to be as rich as other online ëshoppingí experiences. Sites that can offer a view your next workplace or chat to your next line manager will no doubt have more value to the jobseeker and thus to the recruiter.î

Tom Williams believes quality will out for all jobboards: ìJob boards are no different to other businesses operating in todayís economic climate, the ones that that will suffer are firstly those that are badly managed and this is applicable to tier one and two suppliers; and secondly those that donít perform and/or provide the same return on investments as their competitors. If you are a tier one job board, niche or generic, and you perform better than your competition coupled with good management then itís these job boards that will strengthen their position even further. On a further positive note, online recruitment still has huge growth potential in the direct employer market and what we are already seeing is that conversely even in more difficult times online spend will continue to grow as direct recruiters look to get more out of their recruitment budgets which in turn makes online advertising, with itís lower overhead costs and advertising rates, even more appealing when compared to traditional print advertising. The key to success in online recruitment is to be good and to be seen to be good at what you do for both recruiters and candidates alike. Coupled with the right vision, management and staff in place then whilst the future for now isnít quite as bright as it once was thereís still growth to come from this sector.î

Lee Biggins sees different formats: ìLonger term niche and generalist sites could move in a number of directions. The niche sites will potentially move into new sectors and geographical locations, whilst the generalist sites will look to take over a handful of niche sites and develop networks of umbrella job sites. Developments have already begun with some of the large publishing companies acquiring both niche and generalist sites. Both niche and generalist sites will begin creating networks of niche sites so they can offer their services across the board, but try and concentrate their marketing on targeted sector audiences. A niche site is yet to enter the top ten traffic metrics, which is understandable as they want to attract a specific audience, but there is still no major niche player out there. There have been a number of niche sites that have slowly become more generalist, because of the additional revenue available.î

Our contacts representing niche and generalist sites have been surprisingly united in naming the key factors for success in present times, such as reiterating the importance of quality in all their offerings, which is great news for recruiters and jobseekers, whatever type of site they choose.