Online recruitment is ripe for an update

Each day, there are millions of jobs available online--Job-search aggregator SimplyHired has nearly 5,000,000 jobs searchable at any one time. According to research firm Borrell Associates, 2006 marked the first year that online recruitment ad spending outpaced newspaper ads, with $5.9 billion spent online versus $5.4 billion spent with newspapers. Employers are working harder and spending more money than ever before but the disconnect between talented candidates and these companies seems to be as big as ever. In preparing to launch PeopleAhead, we examined why online recruitment isn’t working; and we’ve made a couple of observations.


Online job posting: When online job posting first hit the internet, it was a disruptive technology. For the first time in history, job-seekers could search for and find any company’s latest positions. The days of buying the Sunday papers from every metro market within 100 miles and circling ads with a Sharpie pen were numbered. This was a great period for employers too—instead of recruiting from the limited local population, companies were able to open the search to anyone with internet access. Soon though, too many employers started posting and too many people were applying...just too much of a good (and sometimes bad) thing.


Recruitment networking: To help employers find better people, companies began solving the problem with a novel idea (at the time)—recruitment networking. What began as HR departments sending emails to their employees soon blossomed into a full-blown recommendation-generating industry. Most recently the contact list concept has been further expanded to include referral companies that help employers harness the power of their own networks' networks. This "professional" networking trend improves online recruitment by using recommendations to source better people, but at the same time, people who don’t know much about recruitment are being relied upon to make important sourcing decisions. In addition, recruitment networking has witnessed an unexpected reaction—network fatigue. Employers that frequently use their networks as a referral base often find that the network no longer responds to requests and would-be job seekers get tired of constantly being sent mis-matched career opportunities.

So, what do these observations tell us? The industry is ripe for an update--a tweek here, a tweek there and online recruitment could be a beautiful thing for both employers and professionals.



PeopleAhead has spent the past year silently developing our intelligent TrueMatch® technology to bridge the disconnect between employers and professionals. We identify the right professionals, whether they're searching or not--and match them to the career opportunities where their background is aligned, where they fit the company culture and were their interests lie. Relevant career opportunities for experienced professionals. Qualified, interested candidates for employers. As one of our early users can attest, "I know that when I get notified of an opportunity in PeopleAhead that its something I should seriously consider."