Recruiters 'slow' in online sourcing

9-Jul-2008

Recruiters risk losing business because they are failing to keep up with candidates and clients online.

Luke Mckend, industry head of careers and classifieds at Google, told a recent Recruitment Society event that established recruiters need to evolve their approach to online recruitment.

"The Hays and the Adeccos of the world haven't got it right. Where are they online? They are feeding the jobs boards."

He told Recruiter that agencies had been "incredibly slow" to adopt new recruitment practices and said that technology had been driven by candidates.

"They [recruiters] run the risk of not adding the kind of value they need to the recruitment process," he explained.

Dan McGuire, managing director of recruitment software provider Broadbean, told Recruiter that recruitment agencies are in direct competition with clients when trying to source candidates online. "Employer adverts get anywhere between five and 10 times more response than agency adverts. They are more visible. Most job boards give employer adverts special treatment — make them more prominent and refresh them more often."

Recruiters need to make better use of the information stored about candidates to enable them to compete, according to McGuire. "When you have got information [about candidates], then you can say where's the best place to advertise, what are candidate behaviours," he said.

Mckend predicted the next stage in the evolution of online recruitment will be monitoring candidates from 'click to hire', rather than application to hire. "Some people in the industry hide behind the fact that there aren't more statistics available [at the beginning of the online recruitment process]. If I had applicant tracking software, I'd be bashing them over the head and telling them to innovate," he said.