More
companies are turning to the internet to fill their top jobs, research from the
Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) has found.
The
number of firms using their corporate sites to recruit board directors has
almost doubled over the past year, from 12 per cent to 23 per cent. And as many
as 81 per cent of said it has been a success, compared with only 34 per cent a
year ago.
There
has also been a three-fold increase in the use of commercial recruitment sites
to fill the most senior vacancies. The number of firms turning to jobs boards
to find directors has risen from 4 per cent to 13 per cent. And 72 per cent of
them rate the exercise a success compared with 54 per cent last summer.
Companies
are using the internet in addition to traditional recruitment methods, such as
newspapers, to widen the potential pool of candidates and attract more
applicants.
Commenting
on the results, Emma Parry, a research fellow at Cranfield School of Management, said: "The
current state of the labour market means it is increasingly difficult to
attract suitable candidates, particularly at higher levels.
"Organisations
are therefore spreading the recruitment net as wide as possible to find the
best people."
This
is the fifth annual internet recruitment survey from the Recruitment Confidence
Index, which is published by Cranfield
School of Management and The Daily Telegraph, in association with Personnel
Today.
It
is not just the top jobs that are being filled via the internet. There has also
been a massive hike in the number of employers using corporate and commercial
job sites to recruit unskilled and clerical staff. For example, the number of
firms using corporate sites to hire manual staff has risen from 14 per cent
last year to 44 per cent this summer.
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However,
there is a still a hard core of about two in five employers who do not use the
internet to recruit and have no plans to do so.
