Gossip - and a greater question to ponder

I’ve heard a whisper. And I guess blogs are as good a place as any to see if there’s any truth in that whisper – especially when the whisper (true or otherwise) gets me thinking about raising an important question. (Fingers crossed the right of reply that a blog offers is enough to prevent any posting being litigious, here we go).

Anyone else heard that Jobs Reunited has just made its sales staff redundant?

If there’s no truth in the scurrilous rumour then I of course apologise to anyone employed by the site. But whether this is or isn’t true leads me to muse as to whether the explosion of this and that careers site .com or .co.uk is so fragmenting and confusing the candidate and, importantly, client market that the industry is in fact in danger of once again becoming it’s own worst enemy.

Now with a pretty mediocre economics degree I understand that this is just market forces playing out and therefore an understandable and expected part of life. There are only so many people that will make £millions from establishing and sticking with a niche offer long enough to flog it on to a traditional media desperate to once again try and get a bit more of “that online action” (or at least show their share holders that they are) as they watch their bread and butter revenues evaporate before their very eyes. Them and some established online players who I guess are far better placed than I to evaluate the true worth of an established candidate / market presence over a starting from scratch and taking the smaller guys head on approach.

It’s just that even with a dedicated online media team behind me the number of sites available to try and all vying for client spend (whether vertical, horizontal, verti-zontal or hori-tical) are just mind-boggling for us – and it’s our job to try and be all knowing. And there’s more coming to our attention every week. Even with the predictions of massive continued movement of spend online surely we’ve reached / are reaching the point of over saturation and there’s a market led cull on its way? I’ve been asked about when the market will reach tipping point for clients to migrate their spend more comprehensively online – I think that before that we’re approaching a different tipping point altogether.

Don’t get me wrong – most, well many, of the “newer” sites have very credible offers and seemingly the potential candidate traffic too. If it were my money then I’d probably give them a pop. At the right price then why the hell not. All you exponents of digital recruitment know that in a candidate driven market it doesn’t take a lot to provide a decent ROI. But it isn’t my money – and my client’s budgets are limited, often very modest with it, and they’re predisposed to being conservative (perhaps me too with my arse / the future of their online confidence and therefore spend on the line). 

I’ve got my own thoughts on this (of course – when don’t I ;-) but I thought rather than pile it all into one posting I’d see if anyone has any comments they’d like to make on this. I’ll continue writing on this now (offline as it were) and then come back and post my thoughts on the matter in a few days.

So what you heard and what you think? Anyone out there?

:-)

Comments

[Jamie Leonard]

I agree the market is getting crowded but I guess we don’t feel it as much as the agencies. Ultimately candidate experience will prevail and candidates will return to the sites that are easy to use, helpful and give results. This will always be the acid test and we can only hope it make's the market easier to manage and a more pleasurable experience for candidates. With regards to media starting a site and calling themselves a recruitment media, well, it’s an issue for me.

When I was at Monster a head hunter for Friends Reunited called him and said they were going into the job market and would he like to look at the Sales Directors position. My friend replied "No thanks because I want to stay at Monster as we are launching a section of the site that helps old mates stay in touch". The recruiter replied "Monster can’t do that, we are the market leader and you'll never catch-up" to which my mate replied "exactly".

I saw on Ri5 the other day The London Paper was launching a recruitment site. Today the site has 883 jobs, apparently no target market and is as bog standard as you get. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with anyone trying to break into the recruitment market but for god sake, be different! Stand out, have a USP, do something no one else is doing…..where’s the inn ovation???

Rant over.

[John Whitehurst]

When you look at the current recruitment media market it is very fragmented … So when you look at something like comscore you see the following results.

To explain the table the first number is unique users and second number is the % of total internet audience. Also i have only done the top 10.

Total Internet : Total Audience 30,072 100.0
Career Services and Development 10,522 35.0
JOBCENTREPLUS.GOV.UK 2,683 8.9
Monster 1,661 5.5
Totaljobs.com Sites 1,603 5.3
Guardian Jobs 1,413 4.7
Fish4jobs 1,323 4.4
NHS Careers 922 3.1
REED.CO.UK 882 2.9
Jobsite 803 2.7
CareerBuilder LLC 710 2.4
1JOB.CO.UK 699 2.3

What does this result in for planning? Well it all goes back to the clients objectives, budget and the strategy you create to hit them.

I find the greater choice makes planning more interesting and the results more effective – I have seen the cost per hire reduce by significant amounts by spreading the budget across a larger group of sites. Simple fact that putting more money you put into a site does not result in a greater volume of applications – you have to find the nice spot based on budget, the way people use the site, etc …

But saying that I have also seen the smaller site perform very badly; most of the time this is down to poor media planning – people don’t understand what they have to achieve or find the complexity difficult (the days of engineering job lets pop it in the telegraph have gone). It is very easy to blame the media (and this happens all the time) but quite often the planner did just not do their job. Did you set the right budget, did you actually pick the right site (a lot of these decisions make me cry) and did you actually pick the right executions?

I would love to hear a planner say … oh the campaign did not work – what did I do wrong? How could we make it work next time? NOT, monster did not work, or tj was crap – maybe just maybe there are other factors that need to be looked at.

The huge volume of sites also leaves another point to consider; how are people using sites and researching roles? I have seen many sites removed from a schedule due to lack of hires (normally a stupid decision based on badly collected information from the ATS). The result has been a decrease in hires and the cost per hire increase. Why is this? Quite simply people look at the vacancy on a number of sites before applying – all the best candidates have a wide pool of information to help them make decisions.

Applying for a job it is a complex decision-making process so people will refer multiple mediums and media. People will also talk with friend, family, peers, experts, use chat rooms, post questions on forums … The information seeking process is amplified by the internet – companies need to use this and to be honest popping a few ads on the internet or in a newspaper is not engaging with the audience.

So what is going to happen? Well if you look at traditional market patterns you see growth; consolidations etc … that gives a small view of what is happening. What you are really seeing is information becoming more and more accessible – THIS WILL NOT CONCOLIDATE or SHAKE out.

I hate people who try and tell people what will happen and impose their views – it is better to keep an open mind. But you will find more sites, more information sources and more power in the hand of the candidate.

[Joe Slavin]

In response to John's Top 10 post, I'd like to say the following:
Agencies and clients alike have to remember that whenever Hitwise or Comscore stats are produced they always severly undercount fish4, since they don't assess our network of 180+ sites that fish4's jobs will also appear, e.g., Manchester Online, JobsWales, and DailyEcho. This simple fact helps explain the disparity between NORAS and the Comscore/Hitwise figures.

A good rule of thumb is to multiply by two for the more accurate figure.

[John Whitehurst]

Yup a good point - the stats in that report will be different to all the actual quoted stats from the sites.

This report measures users in the UK going to the sites and any integration with other sites will not be counted.

[John Whitehurst]

Yup a good point - the stats in that report will be different to all the actual quoted stats from the sites.

This report measures users in the UK going to the sites and any integration with other sites will not be counted.

[Kork Desai]

It was always going to be hard for a new job board to take on the established generalist sites (many of whom have a 7-8 year headstart). The concept of Jobs Reunited may have been different, however it was entering an already over crowded industry (online recruitment)

I always thought a website with a unique sell would be able to hold its own, i'm now beginning to change my mind.

Would be good to know if anyone has a number of how many job boards there are out there?