Review: IrishJobs.ie (Verdict: 6 out of 10) This review of IrishJobs.ie was conducted as a secret shopper experience. We approached the site with a "hypothetical" vacancy. The role to be advertised was an Admin/Secretary job for an estate agents office based in Dublin 2 on a salary of €25 to 28K. The job site did not know that this was a review call. IrishJobs.ie whatjobsite profile.  Reviewed: September 2007.

The IrishJobs.ie website

A pretty good site for job seekers offering all the usuals including jobs by email and CV uploading. The site also offers considerable career resource in a nice careers area called "Workwise." The job search is quite good and intuitive. The results are returned according to how well they match the search criteria (though as this match is not explained, it offers little of benefit to users.) Another niggle is the lack of a salary search. 

How IrishJobs.ie works

The call was taken by an account manager. I outlined what I was looking for and the account manager went straight to the price. €4,350 was the starting price for a package of 10 job ads. I tried to establish whether there were any products more suitable to the one-off job poster but was told that there wasn't. At this price, I am sure — and hope — that many small companies with one job to advertise would simply hang up. Howevever, as this is a very popular Irish site I went on.

The Products

As indicated, the €4,350 was not the cost of one job, but rather a package price that would allow me to advertise up to 10 jobs over three months. This still makes it €435 per job, which was higher than any of the other job sites and job boards we spoke to in Ireland. I enquired about a CV search and was told that it would cost another €1,400 for six months.

I indicated that all of this was beyond my budget and the account manager did suggest that there might be something she could do about discounting the CV search. When I indicated that other sites I was talking to were in the €200 to €300 range, the Account Manager merely insisted that many of their clients did find Irishjobs.ie value for money.  Unless she could knock about €4,000 off the price of the ad, no CV discounts would make IrishJobs.ie a good option for a one-off job ad.

Irishjobs.ie does offer an online account management system which allows advertisers to upload their jobs themselves, but the Account Manager I spoke to indicated that I could simply send the job over and she'd put it on for me. The site also offers the option of having 3 candidate screening questions and applications are sent daily to advertisers.

IrishJobs.ie user statistics and site demographics

The Account Manager said the site was the 6th most visited on the island of Ireland, receiving more than 413,000 Unique users per month. Over 1,400 companies were said to be advertising at the time of the call, of which only 360 were recruitment agencies. Disappointingly, the account manager could not tell me how many jobs were on the site. Later, in the media pack, I learned that the site advertises over 40,000 jobs at any one time.  I asked about anticipated response for my job and was told that a similar job at a similar salary was giving 223 views and 23 applications. 

IrishJobs.ie — the Pros and Cons

The Pros: A great site with some great resources for candidates. At the time of this review, the site was also running an extensive TV advertising campaign. The user audience and statistics were good and healthy and Irishjobs.ie is to be commended for being the only Irish recruitment website whose traffic is independently audited by ABCE.

The Cons: Firstly, there are 4,350 very big cons here. Such pricing puts it out of the budget of sensible small and medium-sized employers. Indeed, pricing like this (and a look at the advertisers on the site) would suggest that Irishjobs.ie is not aimed at the small to medium-sized employer but rather at larger corporates.

Secondly, I was also disappointed by a throw-away comment made by the account manager. She suggested that many small employers did advertise with them and that in order to use up their leftover job ads as well as advertise their recruitment brand, they continued to advertise “jobs” on the site even though they had been filled. I am not sure how accurate this suggestion is, but it would be disappointing if IrishJobs.ie were turning a blind eye to companies placing ads for jobs that didn't exist.  

Overall Verdict: 6 out of 10.

This was a disappointing experience with one of the most popular recruitment web sites in Ireland. The site is good, the traffic is good, it's just that the right product isn't there. This site might offer a real return for large corporates, but for a one-off secretarial/admin job it would be more cost-effective to use another job site. In fact, at €4350, I'd be better off going to a recruitment agency —and if I did end up paying a recruitment fee, it would be on placement and not on an ad with no guarantee of success. Go to the IrishJobs.ie whatjobsite profile.   

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