IT Recruitment Advertising

New job advertising boards spring up every day and the recruitment industry's own trade press is crammed full of the latest and the greatest - all offering their free trials of course.

The market for recruitment advertising, especially in the IT industry, is packed to bursting point.

Each site makes outrageous claims about the numbers of "active" candidates. Every one claims to be the "market leader".

The recruitment agency market has been saturated by job boards and now many newer ones target employers directly, with the aim of selling recruitment advertising space.

I was one of the very first recruiters to use the Internet to recruit IT professionals. That was back in 1994 when the Internet was still new and not as over-used as it is today.

In those early days, job sites were in their infancy, but newsgroups presented recruiters with a free medium on which to experiment with Internet advertising.

Although the Internet offers an extremely effective and efficient method of advertising and communication, it cannot replace the work of an experienced, motivated recruiter.

Unfortunately, there seems to be an abundance of web site owners who continue to try and convince us otherwise and who constantly try and re-invent recruitment.

Some recruitment agencies have even got so caught up with the new technology, that they have changed their entire business models and corporate identities in an effort to become the next dot-com success story.

Their businesses are now mere shells of what they used to be when they relied on highly trained people rather than key word searches, automatic candidate registration and flash technology that does little to enhance anything, let alone recruitment.

In the meantime, the specialist IT trade press have seen their own advertising revenues come crashing down to the lowest levels seen since the recession of the early 1990's.

If you were to look at one of the two most established and respected IT publications today, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were reading a newsletter rather than a magazine.

Again, the same publications try desperately to convince us to advertise on their new, (re-launched and re-branded every six months) recruitment web sites.

Unfortunately, magazine web sites are not nearly as effective as their paper alternatives and generally speaking, do not offer a viable advertising platform.

So can you recruit effectively via the Internet?

Yes you can - under certain circumstances.

The trouble is though, the people you are reaching are often the least qualified individuals for your positions - unless you are looking to fill the most junior of positions.

This is because most recruitment advertising sites allow their candidates to register once and then receive daily or weekly job alerts that are loosely relevant to their own backgrounds.

Others allow their candidates to place their CV onto a massive on-line database that employers or agencies can access when searching for certain skills.

The problem with this is that most people who use the Internet and sign up for these services, often forget that they have done so.

Others are contacted by so many companies and agencies that they begin to inflate their salary expectations.

Ask yourself this; would you place your CV onto a database that you have no control over?

It's a no-win situation unless you have a highly experienced recruiter at the end of the process to correctly screen each application.

In years gone by, people have accused recruiters of placing advertisements for positions that don't exist.

This isn't usually the case of course, because the fact is that so many candidates respond to the advertisements that it would cost a fortune to administer. And for what reason?

The majority of the jobs advertised on job sites and in the press from recruitment agencies are absolutely genuine.

That doesn't mean that the agents advertising them are working on the vacancies exclusively though.

In fact, most positions are advertised several times by competing agents.

Not All Candidates Are Genuine

Job boards attract large volumes of candidates, but some are not quite what they appear to be.

Some will be recruitment agents attempting to find out the identity of the client.

Others will apply just to see whether they can use a job offer as a lever for a pay rise.

Some are unemployable and apply to everything they see advertised, whether they are qualified to do the job or not.

Reduce Your Candidate Screening Time By 90% - Things To Watch For

Web Based Email Accounts

Most candidates are genuine, but those with no contact details other than a free web-based email address are most likely to be the most unreliable.

If there are no additional contact details, delete them - they'll never contact you again anyway.

Mobile Telephone Numbers

Does the CV only contain a mobile telephone number and no full address details?

This is a sure sign of a rogue application, most likely from a recruiter fishing for more details from you.

Who Is The Email Addressed To?

Is the email addressed personally to you or your company? Or does it appear to have a different address than yours in the "to" field?

Some candidates send literally hundreds of applications at one time - all exactly the same - to just about every advertiser on a job board.

They address the email either to themselves - or to the first company on the list - and then use either the "cc" field or the "bcc" field to duplicate the posting to a long list of recipients.

Don't waste your time on these people. If an application isn't accurately targeted, it doesn't deserve your consideration. (Though some recruitment agencies seem to think differently).

Covering Letter

A good cover letter speaks volumes about a candidate. So does a good quality CV that instantly identifies the candidate's areas of relevance to your vacancy.

Candidates prepared to do the up-front work to create a good impression are worth spending time processing.

It's surprising how many candidates ignore this key tool for making a good impression, but at least it makes it easier to identify better candidates right at the start of the process. Candidates should see www.cover-letter.co.uk for free cover letter tips.

A Better Way 

Naturally, you'd expect me to say that I can offer you a better alternative to the norm and I really think I can.

I've successfully recruited many senior and not so senior IT professionals using recruitment advertising.

My approach is entirely different from the rest of the recruitment world and I can assure you of a more personal approach.

Have you ever dealt with the same recruiter on a senior level appointment from start to finish? It's doubtful, simply because the recruitment industry doesn't really work like that.

To get away from the agency mentality and to explore some new media ways of recruitment advertising that the rest of the industry hasn't thought of yet, call me, David Carter on 01564 824554.

Click here for more about recruitment advertising.