In this issue we share the main findings of our recent survey "Focus on Accounting, Audit and Finance Support roles." We also look, in a little more detail, at the key metrics of unique users and what they mean when choosing a job site. And once again we provide a quick round up of the latest offers from job sites in the UK and Ireland.

Please feel free to forward this issue to a colleague, and let us know if there are any topics you'd like to see us cover in upcoming issues. We'd love your feedback.

Editor
Karl Schweppe

The job site market for Accounting, Audit and Finance Support roles is quite mature with many generalist and specialist sites catering to it. The accounting career lends itself to online job searching and advertising. There is, for example, a clear career path with definitive job roles and duties at each stage. Consequently, both candidates and recruiters can be clear about the job being hired for. This clarity might also go some way to explaining why accounting is one of the more successful areas of online recruitment.

When it comes to choosing job sites for your accounting, audit and finance support roles, our research has found that there are a number of key considerations that will affect your choice.

Firstly, what job sites you choose really depends on the level of your vacancy. The users of specialist or niche job sites tend to be older, hold more senior positions, and have higher average salaries than those using generalist job sites. This would suggest that higher level jobs will do better on specialist or niche sites, while lower level or entry-level finance support roles would tend to suit generalist job sites. 

Secondly, time of the year can play an important role. With the usual new year resolutions, January and February are always popular times for changing jobs. In accounting it's no different. But the release of the accounting exam results in December and July/August means that many newly-qualified accountants will be looking to move jobs around these times. And anecdotal evidence suggests that September sees a significant rise in job seeker activity (the post holiday blues, perhaps?)

Thirdly, and perhaps most significant of all, the hiring market is unanimously reported to be buoyant. Buoyant is good for candidates but not for employers. For the latter it means that it's harder to get good people and probably more expensive too in terms of salary. 

This buoyancy can also mean more expense in your advertising. With finance people in such demand, you will have to consider enhancing your basic job ad with something additional, like an email alert or a keyword sponsorship, to make sure your job has the edge over others.

For  a more detailed look at recruiting for Accounting, Audit and Finance support roles, please click here. Find out more about job sites and recruiting online in our Help and Advice area.

Last month we looked at the important statistic of Unique Users and how it could give you an indication of the popularity of a job site. This month we look a little deeper at this metric and see that the job site with the most unique users isn't necessarily the best site for your job ad. 

Let us imagine that you are looking to fill an accounting job. There are two job sites you are considering: abcjobs.com with 50,000 unique users and xyzjobs.com with 1.5 million unique users. Xyzjobs.com is clearly the more popular site. Wouldn't it be the better bet for your job? Well, not necessarily.

Let's suppose that abcjobs.com is a specialist accounting site. That is, it covers many different industry sectors and many different locations but it only covers accounting jobs.  Because it only covers accounting jobs, abcjobs.com will generally only attract users looking for accounting jobs. In other words, although there are only 50,000 unique users they are all looking for jobs like yours. They are all relevant users.

Xyzjobs.com, on the other hand, is a generalist site. It covers lots of different types of jobs across lots of different industry sectors across lots of different locations. Naturally, its users are looking for jobs in all these different areas too. The question for you is this: how many of xyzjobs.com's 1.5 million users are looking for accounting jobs like yours? How many relevant users are there?

If you discover, for example, that only 3% of the 1.5 million unique users are looking for accounting jobs, then the total number of relevant users is only 45,000. This compares with 50,000 for abcjobs.com. So, although xyzjobs.com has 1.5 million unique users, it actually offers you fewer relevant users for your accounting job than abcjobs.com. In this case, the better job site for your ad is abcjobs.com.

Unique users are important when choosing a job site. But as we have seen it's relevant users that are more important when judging one site against another. It is always the case that generalist sites will have more unique users than specialist or niche job sites; but it is not always the case that generalist sites will have more relevant users.

The whatjobsite search engine can help you find job sites with relevant users for your vacancy, but we'd still recommend talking to your shortlisted job sites to investigate relevant users further. 

There are some further issues with relevant unique users that will play on your choice of job site, but we'll have to look at them next time. Until then...

Here's our round up of the current offers from our trawl of the job sites:
 
Quite a number of job sites are offering discounts on their online posting products:  CareerStructure.com £210 (normal price £240); CWjobs.co.uk £195 (normal price of £250); RetailChoice.com £297 (normal price of £350); Fish4jobs.co.uk £149 (normal price of £199); Salestarget.co.uk £165 (normal price £195); Totaljobs.com £175 (normal price £250); GAAPweb £325 (normal price £350); Workingmums.co.uk £89.95 (normal price £149.95)