The majority of employers believe that making better use of online recruitment is the best way to save money when attracting new recruits, according to a study by Personnel Today‘s sister publication Employment Review.
The survey of 133 employers, with a combined workforce of just over one million employees, found that more than three-quarters (78%) were convinced that making changes to the use of general job boards was the most effective way of achieving savings when attracting new candidates.
The findings show that altering one or two aspects of online recruitment often yielded the most effective outcomes for candidate attraction. These included making greater and better use of corporate websites, general job boards and specialist job boards (56%), improving their use of intranets to advertise jobs on them more effectively (60%), and encouraging readers of printed job ads to go onto a nominated website to find out more information about the job and the employer (47%).
The various elements of e-recruitment accounted for four of the employers’ top five most effective ways of improving candidate attraction.
However, the results were more varied when considering the best way to improve the suitability of candidates applying for vacancies. The majority of employers (17%) believed that taking measures to change their use of employment agencies was the best way to improve the quality of job applicants. But specialist job boards and advertising on corporate websites were also highly ranked, as well as taking steps to improve the use of search consultancies.
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Half the employers found that improving their corporate websites was the most successful way of increasing the number of job applications, while increasing their use of general job boards and corporate websites was also regarded as a successful way of broadening the diversity of the candidate pool.
There was also a greater interest in hosting open days for prospective applicants, with one in six employers (17%) changing their attitudes towards them in 2006 and 2007 – 47% decided to make greater use of them, while 37% incorporated them into their recruitment drives.
