The days of trawling through the newspapers have long gone. This all changed with the new millennium when 95% of candidates looking for work moved from posting or faxing CVs to email and now web.
Over the past decade the importance of the web to the recruitment industry has grown and just seems to continue growing each year. However, once again we are on the cusp of a new revolution in the way people find work. Any recruitment agency that is not at least trying to embrace these changes will be left behind over the next few years.
Your own website
The vast majority of people looking for work use search engines, such as Google and Yahoo to find a job. Anyone with a need to attract candidates to their site must invest in making sure that their website is found by these search engines. Understanding how candidates search the web for a job is essential. Over the past few years many publications are now developing their own job boards as the revenue from traditional recruitment advertising has decreased.
Email job alerts
Being able to sit back and have jobs arrive on your email is becoming an extremely attractive way of looking for a job. Email alerts also tap into the very lucrative market of the passive jobseeker. These people are still in work and are casually looking to see what is around. The quality of these candidates can be extremely high.
RSS feed
As more and more people share information on how to the use the web more effectively to find a role, the use of RSS feeders has grown. Now potential candidates are getting searches from Google and specific websites with up-to-date listing of jobs in the market at anyone time.
Web 2.0 - social networking
Gaining a reputation through word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertising.
This has now been developed with Web 2.0 activities creating lines of communication between like-minded people. This is done through user-generated content, via blogs, social networking, business community, discussion groups and recommendations online.
What is written online about organizations within community sites can have great weight with potential candidates. Being able to stimulate good opinion online can only be good for a recruitment agency. Web 2.0 will have greater impact on recruitment agencies over the next few years. Blogs and podcasts are potential direct lines of communication between a recruitment agency and clients and jobseekers.
The future
Every year there seems to be more and more technological changes that impact on recruitment. Some people say that, with all these advances, there will soon no longer be a need for recruitment agencies. This is completely wrong.
Just as the emergence of the web and online job boards did not mean the decline of the recruitment industry nor will these changes. But they do mean that recruitment agencies will have to adapt with the times or be left behind.
For more information on how Jobshout can keep yu at the forefront, contact nathan.mayatt@jobshout.co.uk or call 01442 381434.
Other related topics:
How do applicants look for jobs
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