Active job seekers visit fewer and fewer job boards

The NORAS results show quite a few trends over time, following up from yesterday, here are the average number of job boards that active job seekers visit when looking for jobs:

2004     7.0
2005     6.1
2006     5.9
2007     5.3
2008     4.8

Down from 7.0 to 4.8 in five years, I think this shows that job seekers are becoming more familiar with job boards and getting to know which sites offer the jobs they want and which don't.  This looks pretty significant, obviously passive job seekers might visit more sites because of the less focused nature of their usage, but the number of sites visited by active job seekers continues to fall. I wonder how low it will go, how big a portfolio of good sites will job seekers need?

As always, visit NORAS to download the results for free.

ps - I'm at the Chinwag Skills Emergency event tonight, be sure to say hello if you're there!

Comments

[Charles Rattray]

Hello,

“The career needs of employees and employers are changing as employees take on greater responsibility for their own careers, while employers seek to provide a more effective career environment for employees leading to increase profitability and remain competitive.”

I am an MBA student at Liverpool University and I am completing a dissertation on the UK IT Recruitment industry to investigate if there is more that recruitment agencies can do to help both employers and employees with career management in the IT industry.

My research survey questionnaire can be found here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=aZtug5Z6ySSg5a10QlJYKg_3d_3d

The focus of the questions is career management and the respective needs of employers and employees. The aim of the dissertation is to present a framework that UK IT recruitment agencies can adopt, should they want to, in order to offer a more career focused set of services to employers and employees, in addition to candidate search services.

Would you be willing to post the URL on your blog and/or pass it on to anyone you think might have contacts with UK IT employees. Note, I’m focussing on UK IT employees and not contractors.

Many thanks in advance of any help you may be able to provide.

[Tom Waiting]

I would be interested to know if there were differences between the different types of job seekers with how many sites they visit. For example, would an IT job seeker visit more sites than a sales job seeker?

I do agree with you though, I think as time progresses job seekers will become more sophisticated with job searching.

Tom
http://www.hrconnexions.co.uk

[Tim Elkington]

Hi Tom - good point - we can do something on this and get back to you - I'll keep you posted.