AlljobsUK.com, Online Recruitment Index

Every week, since August 2000, the volume of vacancies advertised on Britain’s most popular job boards has been monitored by AlljobsUK.com. We now have data for these websites for the past 480 weeks. Because we monitor a range of of websites, we are able to more accurately reflect the state of the UK online recruitment sector. Whilst the Monster recruitment index will tell you the experience of only one job board, we are able to track the ebb and flow of the market as a whole. The effects of the current recession are all the more dramatic, when seen in visual form.

As you can see in the chart below, the index was still around our datum point of 1,000 in January 2001. It actually dropped in 2002, and again in 2003, as a result of the “DotCom Bubble” bursting, and then rose steadily, as business confidence grew. Confidence in online recruiting also grew rapidly, until late 2007, when the Northern Rock crisis shook the commercial world. They say that a rising tide lifts all boats, but the dramatically falling tide of 2008 exposed traditional newspaper recruitment advertising, and all its inefficiencies. So whilst the overall volume of advertised vacancies has plummeted, the newspaper share of the market has been decimated. We can see here the seasonal shifts which occur each year, and how vacancy volumes compare year-on-year. The most remarkable year is clearly 2008, when the index seems to fall off a cliff. 2009, whilst steadily bumping along the bottom, has at least halted the decline. Modest falls and rises throughout the year have been seized upon as signs of either recovery or further gloom. It is true that since August we have seen slight growth, but far less than is usual for this time of year, and now the Christmas dip has started a little early. We always see the New Year as the very lowest point of the year, when the fewest vacancies are advertised, and this year should be no exception.

In the year ahead, we are expecting public sector recruitment to take the brunt of the current crisis. Whilst it is the private sector that makes most use of online recruitment, we expect the AlljobsUK.com Online Recruitment Index to remain flat for at least the first half of 2010.
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Websites monitored in the AlljobsUK.com Online Recruitment Index: CV-Library, Fish4jobs, Jobserve, The IT Job Board, Jobsite, Jobsearch, Monster, Reed, Totaljobs, Just Engineers.