Why have a career site when there are job boards?

Over the last few years I have been working with retailers to maximise the Internet as a recruitment channel. I've constantly reminded them that their brand will attract so many 'free' applicants and as e-commerce grows so will the volume of 'free' applicants. Don't rely on job boards I said, rely on your brand instead!

Having now also managed the media buying for a number of my customers, I have proof (oh yeah) that the brand is more powerful than the board. In one case, over 50% of Google related searches contained the employer brand name in relation to looking for a job e.g. jobs with X, working at X etc. Yet, believe it or not (try it for yourself) when you run a searche like this, on many examples there are no links to the employer career site on the first page. Even worse, I did a search yesterday for a specific job for a retailer, for a job that is on their own career site, yet only got a link to the same job that is being displayed on a job board!! I know why this is but not sure if the e-recruitment vendors have this on their road map.

Anyway, according to a new study by Booze Allen Hamilton 51% of new hires in 2005 came about through the Internet, and only 5% through newspapers.

To quote further:

"Employers' own Web sites were the top source of new hires, followed closely by referrals from current staff, each accounting for about one-fifths of new hires in 2005. A host of other channels, including job boards, search firms and campus recruiting, accounted for remaining newly hired employees. Referrals were the top source, in terms of volume of candidates, by a large margin."

OK, so I've not Anglicised it but you get the message.

So what next?

Get a career site, get a referral scheme going, get your site optimised. And maybe even get a .jobs domain name while you're at it - just like ASDA has.

If you are an e-recruitment vendor you may want to point out this Blog to your customers (I will be!) or copy the content and use it in your pitches as it will only help them get more from what you have sold; or hope to sell!

Happy searching.