Rise in online recruitment

As the credit crunch takes its toll on us, many of us are now tasked with putting cost-cutting initiatives into place. For many Employers this also means cutting back on recruitment costs whilst still having the pressure of attracting high quality candidates.

The last few months have seen a trend in shifting recruitment away from traditional hiring methods such as print advertising, recruitment agencies and head-hunters towards online recruitment. This was recently illustrated by an exclusive survey of more than 400 Personnel Today readers, including HR directors, board level directors and managers.

The survey found that recruitment agency budgets have taken the biggest knock, with 48% of respondents reducing their budgets in this area, and 22% sticking to last year’s levels.

“Two-thirds (66%) of HR professionals surveyed said the jobs section of their own company websites were used as a recruitment tool for most jobs, while 22% used this to promote some jobs, with just 12% never using this method. Online jobs boards were also popular, used by a third of respondents (32%) for most jobs, and by 42% for some.”

“The increasing popularity of online recruitment was attributed to a range of factors. The overwhelming majority (86%) of respondents felt that online recruitment is more cost effective than most other recruitment methods, while 40% strongly agreed with this statement. More than 90% felt that online recruitment is easy to use, while only 9% slightly disagreed with this.”

Aswell as reducing recruitment costs online recruitment has a number of other advantages. Research carried out by The CIPD highlights that the key drivers among those making use of the technology were:

• Broadening the selection pool
• Increasing the speed of time to hire
• Greater flexibility and ease for candidates
• Strengthening of the employer brand

Also the Internet is popular among jobseekers – figures from the British Market Research show that it is the favoured job-hunting method for one in four UK adults.

To see Personnel Today’s full feature on the survey please click here.

For more tips and advice on reducing recruitment costs and attracting better candidates why not download our free recruiters guide. You can register to instantly receive a free copy of the guide here and please feel free to forward the link to your friends and colleagues.