More Job Seekers, Firms Use the Net
The highly competitive online job-search market that began in earnest about six years ago is showing no signs of slowing down.
In fact, the sputtering economy, the rapid succession of dot-com companies becoming “dot-gones” and large-scale layoffs have made this relatively young venue even more popular and important. Worried employees and laid-off workers crave the breadth, immediacy and low cost of online searches. So do employers needing wide or highly specific searches in trying to make every hire count.
The jury is still out, however, on how effective this far less personal but huge database has become for those looking for work and companies looking to fill their ranks with the right people.
Each of the online job-search companies has its own strengths and weaknesses. Those such as Monster.com boast enormous databases of resumes of every kind.
Monster.com has become its own virtual community, with some users logging in to stay in touch well after they found the job they were seeking. The downside is employers and applicants can get very misleading information.
Some online sites are strictly niche-oriented in terms of jobs, catering to a specific profession, such as https://www.toxpath.org, run by the Society of Toxicologic Pathology.
Others operate mostly in the background with ASP, or applied service provider, technology. ASP software allows job hunters to go directly to a company’s Web site that has been digitally retrofitted to accept and pre-screen applications. The vast Sutter Health network in Northern California uses the latter.
Keith Vencel, 45, is clearly among the digitally converted. As the Sutter Health administrator in charge of bringing ASP technology to 27 hospitals and five medical groups, Vencel is happy to leave behind the expensive, time-delayed and paper-driven reliance on employment search firms, print ads, job fairs and college campus sojourns.
“Three years ago, we were paper-driven. There were 100,000 to 200,000 resumes coming in, and it took too long to get the resumes in front of the right manager,” Vencel said. “Search firms were charging us 20% to 35% of the starting pay for each and everyone we hired. Now, the applicants come right to the front page of our career Web site. I’m posting more openings on online job boards, buying banners on Internet sites. We’re saving a fortune and have cut the paperwork by 40% to 60%.”
Traditional job-search firms that troll the Web for likely resume hits can sometimes waste considerable time doing so.
The Net appears to be filled with resumes so old that they are the digital equivalent of Sputnik. Respond to some and you might get a college dorm room years after the resume poster has graduated, or a dead-end connection to the resume writer’s former employer.
Precision in search criteria appears to be crucial. Leigh Taylor Berry, a technical writer and editor from Baton Rouge, La., who is looking for her next gig, has been waiting since December for Monster.com to come through for her.
So far, the 29-year-old Berry has received one inquiry, from a company looking for a computer programmer. Berry had been trying to let prospective employers know that she was familiar with several different kinds of software. But prospective employers using keyword searches mistook her software experience for programming ability.
Barry R. Liden, vice president of Los Angeles public relations firm Rogers & Associates, searched Monster.com’s vast database for prospective employees between January and June of 2000 before dropping it. He used keywords such as “creative,” for “ability to be creative,” and “design,” for “able to help design an effective campaign” to narrow the search. He wound up with resumes from a lot of set designers, interior designers and writers, none of which he needed.
“We were overwhelmed with resumes that didn’t fit us,” Liden said. “We haven’t hired anyone from online job sites.
But the online experience is perfect for job seekers like Richard Le, 23, who know where they want to work. Le determined he wanted to work for Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp.
“I applied right online and never used a piece of paper or a fax. It was very easy from a job seeker’s perspective,” said Le, now a staffing technology consultant for Cigna.
Pascal Dornier, 34, agreed.
“In the past, I have used Dice.com to locate high-tech contract positions,” said Dornier, who now runs his own company in Sunnyvale, Calif., where he designs embedded hardware for personal computers. “They [online job pages] are definitely useful. It provided an easy way for me to search through employers. I can search through companies geographically or by the specific skills they want.”
Ronald Moskovitz, 42, goes so far as to say Monster.com saved his life. Moskovitz was a chef in Philadelphia working more than 95 hours a week, leaving him unable to spend time with his nephews and the rest of his family. On Monster.com, Moskovitz listed his interest in remaining in Philadelphia, his need for a shorter and less hectic workweek and his desire to have weekends free. Within a few days, he found a job on Monster.com that perfectly suited his requirements: a chef’s position at a mental institution in Philadelphia where he works only six hours a day and gets off every other weekend.
But how do you pick the right online job-search company? How do you know which one serves its clients best or commands the most loyal audience? The problem is that there are a variety of measures and no one knows which method is most precise. By one estimate, for example, Monster.com has dropped from the top to the 13th-busiest search site.
Nielsen/NetRatings’ statistics show that JobsOnline’s Web site (https://www.jobsonline.com) has the most visitors by far, logging nearly 6.5 million people in January. But Nielsen/NetRatings says JobsOnline’s visitors spend barely more than three minutes at the site. Clients of Monster.com and Dice.com, though far fewer in number, give the sites more attention. On average, visitors to those two sites spend 36 minutes and 40 minutes, respectively. Monster.com’s users on average click on more than 28 pages per visit.
Perhaps more important than such measures is the fact that it can be very difficult to determine where a successful match of applicant and job originated.
Richard Stein used the mass-assault approach in his quest for an information technology job. He posted his work experience on 10 online job-search boards. He dropped his resume into online databases. He introduced himself to recruitment agencies and headhunters.
In less than three months, he was contacted by a Southern California company and hired as a systems engineer. Stein doesn’t know how his employer discovered him and says he is too busy to bother asking.
Pamela Petruschke, chief talent scout for Thousand Oaks-based biotech giant Amgen Inc., would love to know how many of her new hires used online job-search platforms such as Monster.com and more refined sources such as ELabRat.com, https://www.toxpath.org, https://www.chemweb.com and more traditional approaches. Petruschke, who joined Amgen in March 2000, has seen the use of online platforms as a job seeker and a hirer. She put her resume on Monster.com and ExecuNet.com, a site that focuses on upper-level executives. Petruschke also networked through friends and professional organizations.
In the end, she hooked up with Amgen through more traditional means: a headhunter.
Petruschke said 30% to 35% of Amgen’s hires come through employee referrals. An additional 10% to 15% come via advertisements in magazines such as Chemical & Engineering News, Science and Fortune. Petruschke said another 10% to 15% of hires find Amgen at professional organization meetings.
Amgen might get 10% to 12% of its employees from online job-search firms, Petruschke said.
“It’s hard to say. Sometimes our people can come in through four or five different venues,” she said.
But don’t look for online job-search firms to replace old-line search firms and headhunters, said R.D. Whitney, vice president of operations for Kennedy Information. Kennedy compiles the annual Directory of Executive Recruiters and also produces the e-Recruiting & Staffing expos that will be held in Las Vegas, London and New York this year.
“Existing recruiters are taking advantage of these new solutions,” Whitney said. “But the business is still about selling the candidate on the firm and selling the firm on the candidate. This streamlines the process but won’t replace face-to-face contacts.”
Austin, Texas-based Hire.com isn’t trying to replace the traditional approach, just overwhelm it. Through ASP technology, it allows applicants to seek jobs on the career pages of about 150 client companies such as FedEx Corp. and Charles Schwab Corp. Job hunters can register their interests without looking at listed jobs. The company’s technology automatically matches candidates with the right kinds of jobs.
“We can aggregate all of the online job boards. With one click, the job can be posted to all of the boards at once,” said Doug Miller, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Hire.com. “And our costs to employers are low compared with traditional search firms, ranging from $8,000 a month to $35,000, and it’s negotiable above that.”
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Recruiting Rigors
A recent survey of 400 corporate recruiters by Advanced Internet Recruitment Strategies shows that companies are planning to spend less on recruitment. *
*
1. Your recruiting budget has:
Reduced for 2001: 43%
Stayed even with 2000: 38%
Increased for 2001: 19%
*
2.Thousands of workers have been laid off over the last several months. Which is true?:
* It’s easier and better to recruit laid-off workers than passive candidates: 23%
* It’s harder but better to recruit passive candidates than laid-off workers: 41%
* They require equal effort, and the results are the same: 36%
*
3. In the last six months, has it taken more or less time to fill positions?
More time: 44%
No change: 34%
Less time: 22%
*
4. Will you reduce your list of third-party recruiters* this year?
Yes: 73%
No: 27%
* Outside recruitment and search firms
Source: Advanced Internet Recruitment Strategies
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Career Search
Though JobsOnline led career Web sites in the number of unique visitors it had in January, its visitors spent an average of only three minutes on the site, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. On Monster.com, the average visit lasted 36 minutes. The number of individuals to visit the top career Web sites in January and the duration of the average visit:
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Avg. minutes Site Unique visitors per visit JobsOnline 6,454,000 3 Monster.com 5,901,000 36 HotJobs.com 2,646,000 13 CareerBuilder 1,241,000 7 Salary.com 971,000 7 Jobs.com 739,000 7 Dice.com 652,000 40 FlipDog.com 577,000 20 Net-Temps 369,000 11 Vault.com 314,000 8
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Source: Nielsen/NetRatings
