 |
Whatjobsite newsletter September 2007 |
|
 |
| |  | | | whatjobsite newsletter September 2007 | | |
Welcome to the whatjobsite newsletter
| | | In this issue we give you an exclusive preview of our Secret Shopper survey of popular Irish generalist job sites. We once again return to the subject of job site user statistics and demographics with a look at the National Online Recruitment Advertising Survey. And once again we provide a round up of the latest offers from our job site partners 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 | | | Feature Article | | |
The Secret Shopper: Job sites in Ireland
| | | This month we began the first of our whatjobsite Secret Shopper surveys. The purpose of our surveys is two-fold: Firstly, to gain an insight into the quality of product, service and advice offered by popular job sites to the smaller employer; and, secondly, to begin building a database of job site reviews that will help you make ever better recruitment advertising decisions.
There are, of course, many job sites in Ireland but for this initial review we focussed on the most popular ones: Jobs.ie, IrishJobs.ie, RecruitIreland, Loadzajobs.ie and Monster.ie. Our "job vacancy" was for a secretary/admin person in a small estate agents in Dublin 2, paying between 25K and 28K. This, we believe, is a pretty standard role for a small company.
In general, we were quite encouraged by the level of service offered by all of the job sites, though there was one notable exception. Jobs.ie, IrishJobs.ie, RecruitIreland all provided reliable unique user audience information, something you would expect from market-leaders. Disappointingly, both Monster.ie and Loadzajobs.ie were unable to provide such information. In Monster's case this was because the sales person (based in Glasgow) did not have access to Irish stats. In the case of Loadzajobs.ie, nobody we spoke to at the site actually knew these statistics and one person said that unique user figures weren't recorded. While many of the sites do offer self-posting services (i.e. you can post the job onto the site yourself via an online form) it was nice to see that many continue to offer the full account-managed service for small employers with no price penalty. Jobs.ie, RecruitIreland and IrishJobs.ie all allow you to send the job description to your account manager who will then review and upload it for you. The Account Managers at both Jobs.ie and RecruitIreland also indicated that they would review applicants for relevance before they sent them on (a very nice touch.)
Prices for job posting varied considerably. The lowest price we were quoted was from Jobs.ie at Euro 285; next came Monster.ie at Euro 320; then RecruitIreland at Euro 385. From our analysis, all these sites had roughly the same user traffic so one does have to wonder about the pricing strategy.
IrishJobs.ie quoted Euro 4,350. Of course, this was not for just one job, but for ten. But even for ten jobs this was still at the high end per job. Granted IrishJobs.ie has the largest user audience (and is the only recently-audited site) but it was disappointing that this highly-regarded site didn't offer anything for the one-off job poster.
We couldn't get a reliable price from Loadzajobs.ie. We were told that we had to buy a classified ad in a newspaper and then we'd get the online ad for free or have to pay Euro 80 depending on who we spoke to.
Jobs.ie and RecruitIreland had the best customer service. It was the simple things like asking about the job and making tips and suggestions as to how to make it work. In addition, both of these sites gave the impression that they would offer good ongoing customer service. IrishJobs.ie suffered, perhaps, from not being interested in the small employer market; the Monster.ie account manager we spoke to simply didn't have any familiarity with the Irish job market; and nobody we spoke to at Loadzajobs.ie seemed to have any familiarity with Loadzajobs.ie.
For us Jobs.ie and RecruitIreland come out on top, with IrishJobs.ie and Monster.ie following. Loadzajobs.ie, however, is a long way behind and has a lot to do before we could take it seriously as a job site and not simply as a bolt-on product for Independent Newspapers. That said, they are popular newspapers.
We'll be adding each of the individual job site surveys over the next couple of weeks, so do please visit whatjobsite to see the full reviews. And, of course, we will be continuing with our Secret Shopper surveys in the months to come. However, we'll keep our targets under wraps for the time being. | | | Key tips for online | | |
National Online Recruitment Audience Survey | | | In previous newsletters we looked at the important metrics of Unique Users and other job site demographics and how they can give an indication of the popularity of a job site. This month we take a look at the NORAS job site survey, one of the main independent pieces of research about job site and online behaviour. NORAS (the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey) is a survey of a number of job sites and job boards in the United Kingdom and Ireland. NORAS looks at the users of the participating job sites and job boards in order to build up a detailed demographic profile of their audiences. The demographic information collated about each job site is quite detailed and includes such things as gender and racial breakdown, where the job site users are actually located and where they are willing to work, their salaries, work experience, educational level, qualifications, the newspapers they read, what their current jobs are etc. In other words, rather than just a quantitative look at user numbers, you get a qualitative look those users. The NORAS survey tends to be of most interest to recruitment advertising agencies, the marketing departments of recruitment consultancies and large corporate employers, as the information can help them make valuable advertising decisions about job sites and job boards. However, smaller employers can use the NORAS too. The NORAS website offers an interactive tool that allows you to quickly compare participating NORAS job sites and job boards. Rather like whatjobsite, the interactive tool is based on estimated user reach (i.e. an estimate of the number of people a particular site will have for a particular job.)
NORAS is undoubtedly a valuable research tool that can help you evaluate and understand a job site audience. For more information on the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey and a list of participating sites, go to NORAS.co.uk | | | Job site offers | | | Here's our round up of the current offers from our job sites partners:
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 £350); Salestarget.co.uk £165 (normal price £195) | | | feedback | unsubscribe | | | copyright whatjobsite Limited 2007 disclaimer |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
Online poll |
 |
| What is the most successul job board product you have used? |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Newsletter |
|
| Sign up for our monthly recruitment newsletter. |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
