Can Recruiters Compete with Job-Boards for Candidate Traffic?

I read with interest the article on recruiter.co.uk, 17th March 2010, & its opening paragraph ….. “Recruitment agency and employer websites are missing out on traffic from online searches. How can they get more people to their pages? The internet is often a jobseeker’s first port of call and website search engine rankings are crucial to reaching potential candidates. However, a new report indicates that recruitment agencies and employers’ websites lag far behind jobs boards in generating traffic from employment-related search terms.”

Having worked in the job-board industry since 2004 and given that the majority of companies advertising on job boards are recruiters, you would think that it would be ‘obvious’ for recruitment agencies to develop their own websites and ‘beat the boards at their own game’! In my opinion it is virtually impossible to compete with the generalist sites and their top keywords – they will naturally hold thousands more vacancies, have dedicated online marketing professionals increasing their site visibility including highly targeted search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns.

For large recruitment firms with highly generous candidate attraction budgets then I am sure that with the right strategy in place, long-term, they will definitely see the benefits of a well-optimised, content rich and dynamic website. Competing directly with job boards on broad based terms such as “solicitor jobs” or “nursing jobs” is a losing battle. However a well optimised website that targets terms such as “recruitment agency” or “recruitment firm” with a geographical qualifier can still bring in traffic from both candidates and potential clients.

If your agency covers a fairly small geographical location you can also have a degree of success when using the location in your SEO and terms such as “jobs” and “vacancies”. It’s also a given that you should claim your Google local business listing as this is free and is triggered by the term “recruitment agency” and the location.

As it says on recruiter.co.uk “The selection of keywords by careers sites and recruitment agencies’ is often more selective than the job boards that are achieving higher levels of visibility online.”

For small to medium size agencies they can have a good quality, well-thought out website and candidate attraction plan covering social media to increase their direct applications, but I do believe that trying to compete against the job-boards really isn’t worth the effort & that your money would be far better spent on a monthly subscription to the job-boards that are most effective in your sector/region etc.

Are you inundated with jobseekers?

It was reported in the February 2010 edition of the Recruitment Consultant magazine that “businesses have seen a 130% increase in applications in the past two years” and on average they receive ”c120 CVs for each newly created advertised vacancy according to a survey of 872 businesses”.

It is true that most vacancies are attracting far greater numbers of candidates, a natural process in such times of high unemployment. I am currently running an advert for an Administrator and in 8 days have received 150 applications! It takes lots of time to view each application and make a judgement as to whether they are suitable for the role/client. It is difficult as probably at least 50% of those applicants could do the job, but we have to be harsh and cut it to a min of 10% to take it to the telephone interview stage. The benefit to clients of course is they can literally cherry pick the best applicants for their role.

The Recruitment Consultant also reported “Shortlists have also doubled and candidates face a one-in-ten chance of passing the interview process”.

If you are a business looking for help to relieve the burden of the extra administration now involved in the recruitment process, then we at e-recruitment buddy would be delighted to hear from you. Our Vacancy Management service could be ideal for you.

As a candidate if you want your CV to stand out from the crowd to stand a chance of being shortlisted, then take advantage of our CV Writing Service.