Understanding online jobseekers

25-November-2009

In these times of high unemployment, the need to understand the changing behaviour of online jobseekers is becoming increasingly important to recruiters

Jennifer Fernandez, senior industry analyst, Google UK classifieds team
In these times of high unemployment, the need to understand the changing behaviour of online jobseekers is becoming increasingly important to recruiters.

The recruitment market has been one of the hardest hit by the recession and is yet to see any clear signs of recovery. With increased unemployment and a wider pool of candidates, it is now more important than ever to understand the jobseeker behaviour in order to find the perfect candidates to fill the few jobs available.

Our analysis shows that the behaviour of jobseekers is becoming more sophisticated.

Query volumes
One of the areas we track is the volume of searches that are conducted on Google for job-related information. This year has seen recruitment-related query volumes rise by around 25%.

More importantly, we’ve not only found that there are more queries, but that jobseeker behaviour itself is changing. Some of the changes we’ve seen are interesting, but perhaps not that important. For instance, the beginning of the week has always seen the highest query volumes, and while this is still the case, this year we can see there has been an uplift in the number of searches between Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Jobseekers are also becoming more specific when searching for jobs. In August 2008 more than 60% of queries contained only three words and people were performing simple searches such as ‘jobs in Liverpool’ or ‘jobs in IT’.

With increased unemployment an a wider pool of candidates it is now more important than ever to understand the jobseeker in order to find the perfect candidates to fill the few jobs available

In August this year we have seen a greater number of queries with four or more words, indicating that jobseekers are becoming more detailed and refining their searches to specify exactly what they are looking for.

Advertisers can benefit from this shift in online jobseeker behaviour as the cost of these queries hasn’t caught up with their rate of growth. This means that there is an increasing amount of cheap traffic to be acquired by keywords.

Recruitment sectors
We are often asked which sectors have seen the most growth, and although it’s true that queries continue to grow across most job sectors, it is apparent that some sectors have seen more growth than others.

Analysis shows that public sector queries are not the only queries to increase significantly over the last few months. Looking at query growth by job sector can help recruiters assess where to focus their efforts.

Brand vs generic queries
Another subtle shift seems to be that job searches which include a ‘brand term’ such as a company or job board name, grew at a faster rate than generic searches, such as ‘jobs’, ‘recruitment’ or ‘job search’. Branded queries for service providers, such as ‘Totaljobs’, ‘Monster’ or ‘Reed.co.uk’ and direct employers such as ‘Tesco jobs’, ‘natwest jobs’ or ‘Vodafone jobs’, have both seen a significant uplift in the last two years.

Since March this year, direct employer job queries have pulled away, with 33% greater growth than branded queries for service providers. It could be argued that this makes it ever more important for agencies and direct employers to focus on brand awareness and employer branding.

Conclusion
Although some of the shifts we have highlighted above are fairly subtle, for anyone working within online recruitment understanding these shifts could differentiate the various stakeholders within recruitment.

Jobseekers are becoming more sophisticated with their searches and using new methods to stand out from the crowd.

The internet poses challenges to recruiters as well as offering many opportunities. On the one hand, jobseekers are able to move more quickly between providers; on the other hand, recruiters are able to reach a larger audience more efficiently and with more transparency than ever before.

If the recruitment sector is to make the most of the recovery, it is crucial that marketing plans are based on insights from data across all media, including digital.

power points

From a jobseeker’s point of view online continues to grow rapidly. In fact, we have seen a 25% year-on-year increase in recruitment-related queries (July 2008 vs July 2009).
Queries across all sectors have grown, however queries for public sector roles have grown faster than any others during 2009.
Jobseekers are using more words to describe what they are searching for. In 2008, more than 60% of recruitment queries had three words; however, this year queries with three words dropped by 40% and queries with more than four words grew by 227%. This implies that jobseekers are becoming more sophisticated.
Seasonality trends are consistent with more pronounced peaks and troughs. January and pre- and post-holiday months continue to see an uplift, although graduate seasonality is not as pronounced as previous years — it is becoming more of a year round phenomenon.
More data than ever before is available to recruiters. Those that really understand jobseeker behaviour will have the edge when it comes to attracting top talent.

HAVE YOU RESEARCHED ANY TRENDS RECENTLY? IF SO, PLEASE CONTACT THE EDITOR
deedee.doke@centaur.co.uk

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Readers' comments (1)

Bernardo Di Bernardo | Thu, 26 Nov 2009 3:27 pm
Jobseekers are becoming more intelligent. They are learning, and the web is facilitating this process. It's only logical that this sector, like many others, will continue to evolve as newer solutions start to tailor to people's needs.
Very interesting article.
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