Guest blog, from Keith Robinson.

Many thanks to Stephen for letting me write this article and doing such a great job with NORAuk.  I am a huge fan of recognizing and rewarding excellence in any sector. Having been shortlisted last year with my new launch Careersiteadvisor, I know the thrill and anticipation when you are at the event… you cannot beat it and Stephen “Thanks for setting these, up and continuing to run the NORAUK”.   Stephen asked me to write something on/about On-Line Recruitment so a short ramble;

I saw my first job board in the U.S in 1996 on a visit to my advertising agency partner in Chicago, Shaker. I was blown away with what I saw and the opportunities I foresaw with such a platform – “the internet”, and with the quick and easy ability to search a large volume of jobs from across wide geographical regions.

Only 15 years ago recruitment media was “print”; strong national, regional and trade newspapers dominated, and often had no or little competition. In reality they had local monopolies and charged accordingly.

To place a recruitment advertisement in two local newspapers Nott’s Evening Post and the Derby Evening Telegraph could cost £60 for a single column centimeter (hugely expensive), and yet your potential candidate lived in that broad geographical area.

The “job board” had the ability to go across newspaper boundaries, and to me the opportunities to “break monopolies”, deliver new and exciting channels to “passive” candidates were limitless.

My next enlightenment came a year latter when again in the U.S I saw a company careers site, wow awesome, and given at this time I worked for a Recruitment Advertising Agency again for me what opportunities, branding, jobs, interactivity, etc etc….. but as usual I got carried away with the “limitless technology capabilities” and forgot that less that 15% of UK home had internet, and those that did were on dial-up and a heavy page took hours to download.

BUT interest had been stimulated and now it was a matter of time…. Waiting for the consumer to catch up with the technology, and the infrastructure build out to lead the consumer.

By 1998/1999 we had our first print causality, Freelance Informer, a Reed Business owned trade magazine for IT Contractors which folded due to the migration of that audience to Robbie Cowling’s Jobserve.

In 2000 I joined Totaljobs.Com and my love of on-line recruitment just grew, understanding what “job seekers’ wanted (Real Jobs with Real Companies), how a poor “candidate experience” impacted on a company’s P&L. So much so, that in 2001 we decided to take the advice of an awesome strategist at Totaljobs, Andrew Findlater and share our findings.

We created the Totaljobs Seminar Program and over 3 years ran 70 plus roadshows across the UK and helped “educate” over 700 industry professional on the benefits of On-Line Recruitment, many of today’s “In-House Recruiters” attended and we shared our passion for a move towards more in-house recruiting.

Alan Whitford our regular Chairman shared is passion for the “time and cost” to hire matrices, and we even talked about “cybersleuthing” i.e. on-line sourcing. Yes, in 2001 we had Roy Everett (spiderman) talking on the subject.. we saw a bright future for recruitment, and it was on-line.

Today we are there, but it has been much slower than I ever expected. On-line has, or is just about to overtake print media, and a recession or two doesn’t help.

We now have social media, on-line referrals, ATS… a whole multi – billion pound/dollar industry has been built to support “On-Line” recruitment.

But finally I have some regrets, and I will share them.

- We have commoditized a key part of our industry – the job advertisement, and boy what a poor candidate experience most job postings give.

- We have seen great creativity, great copy writing, and great typography disappear.

- We have made it more difficult for a job seeker to find a job – search does not work, the future has to be matching.

- We have made it too easy for job seekers to apply for a job, and for a recruiter to delete a CV. My term is “the promiscuous digit”.

BUT job boards are not dead, more will launch and other versions of boards will evolve.

The future is bright, the future is On-line Recruitment… whatever that might look like.

Throw open the shutters, open the windows, and take the sandbags from the doors. The storm of recession has past, and we can all get back to normal. Perhaps not quite.According to the Office of National Statistics, the UK economy experienced growth of 0.1% in the last quarter, and unemployment unexpectedly fell by 7,000 in December. Now that the snow has cleared away, there’s nothing to stop us. These figures may be great for confidence, but there is much to overcome still in the recruitment market. Unemployment may have dropped slightly, but so too has the employment rate (down to 72.4% from a peak of 75% in early 2008). A study, produced in January by the CIPD, reveals that 1.31 million people were made redundant during the recession, and that two-thirds of those, who subsequently found work were paid an average of 28% less in their new job.

There are no prizes for guessing how this will affect the confidence of jobseekers, employers and the professional recruitment sector.This has been reflected in the volume of vacancies advertised online.The AlljobsUK.com Online Recruitment Index has monitored the number of job adverts on the UK’s major job boards for the last 10 years.If we take January 2008 to be the beginning of the employment crisis, then our Index was standing at 1,703.31. 2 years later, it’s 59% lower, at 821.51. In that time, the much predicted demise of print advertising as a primary advertising channel came to pass as. Whilst trade magazines and some newspapers still carry job adverts, it’s only with an accompanying job board.

In bald terms, the Alljobs Online Recruitment Index shows that the number of job adverts across the ten monitored sites has plummeted from 805,695 to a low of 258,992.Currently recovering slightly to 368,722, the details of each site are very illuminating. Firstly, we should know that many sites count their volume of vacancies differently, as they hold a job advert online for anything from a week to over a month. We collect weekly figures on how many vacancy adverts there are on each site at that time. The two charts, shown here, separate out Reed.co.uk and Totaljobs.com, as their volumes far exceed those of the other websites. Reed.co.uk is often taken to be an accurate indicator of job availability, as it is largely unimpeded by cost considerations. Free advertising means that, within limits, all agencies can advertise every single vacancy they have. Despite their huge volumes, Reed is currently displaying only 31% of its maximum number of job adverts over the last 2 years. Similarly, and at the other end of the scale, JustEngineers.net have lost over 90% of their volume during the same period. Engineering and manufacturing sectors have clearly taken a big hit. Furthermore, whilst Monster have mostly outperformed their immediate rivals, Jobsite, Totaljobs and CVLibrary, they are now dipping and have lost 65% of their peak volume. Not only are there fewer vacancies, but a lesser proportion are being advertised in bulk on the biggest job boards.

As recruiters have been forced to re-evaluate all expenditure, online advertising with the major job boards has suffered enormously. The old model of “advertise and wait” simply doesn’t work on its own anymore, and recruiters are having to be far more active and creative, in order to identify and attract candidates. Social media websites, in the form of Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter are being exploited, and all networks are being leveraged by recruiters determined to satisfy clients.

We have now seen an encouraging bounce-back from the extended winter dip. The Alljobs Index is up 244.48 since New Year, and many other market indicators are positive. If the statistics are anything to go by, where we have now had steady figures for the past 12 months, the threat of a “double-dip” appears to be increasingly unlikely.

Stephen O’Donnell