By incorporating several vehicles that can encompass print, online, broadcast and geo/demographic targeting, newspapers offer creative, viable solutions for their recruitment advertisers. In order to use these platforms to best effect, however, it is critical that both publishers and recruiters understand how consumers incorporate various media resources into their job search process.
To explore this media usage, the NAA commissioned a consumer panel survey from comScore Networks of Reston, Va., to identify key habits of job seekers as they consume offline and online media. This recruitment study was fielded in August 2004 to comScore panelists. A sample of 508 respondents yielded some interesting key findings, compiled in the accompanying PowerPoint slides.
Highlights of the study include the following observations:
The career category has experienced significant growth online in the last year.
- One in four Internet users visits a site or multiple sites within the career services and development category.
- More than 41 million people visited career sites in September alone, a 23 percent increase over the prior year.
Local newspapers, both online and offline, are a leading media source for employment seekers.
- Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (63 percent) used local print newspapers to assist them in their most recent job search.
- The Internet was the second leading resource (59 percent) for people that were looking for employment.
- Among Internet sites, newspaper classified sites ranked third in visitation by respondents.
- The top factor driving consumer visitation to online newspaper classified sites cited by respondents was a greater number of job listings in their local area.
- Consumers who preferred local print newspapers to Internet sites stated that they did not want to give out personal information, they thought the paper was easier to search and they felt that there were more local opportunities in the printed edition.
Job board sites are the most frequently visited career resource online.
- Two thirds of the respondents visited a dedicated job board site and 37 percent stated it was the most helpful resource.
- Not surprisingly, the top job board sites visited were Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs.
- The top reason respondents cited for visiting job board sites was a higher number of career listings followed by the ability to post a resume online.
- General searching on the Internet was the leading method for finding the site that respondents found the most useful.
Search engines play a major role in the employment search process.
- More than 80 million career searches that included the keywords Job, Career, Employment and Monster were conducted in Q3 2004.
- Nearly 15,000 different search strings included one of these words.
- A combination of both branded and generic searches were conducted.
- Local searches continue to grow and currently represent approximately 8 percent of all searches at the major portal sites.
