Supply and demand don’t seem to be related when it comes to online job searching.
As more job openings are posted on the Internet, finding the qualified candidate has become more difficult for employers, according to a recent survey conducted by the New Jersey-based consulting firm CareerXroads.
The survey looked at nine big public companies, which together accounted for more than 62,000 hires last year, and found that only 1.4 percent of the hires were made through the Big Four job boards on-line – Monster, Hotjobs, CareerBuilder and Headhunter.
In addition, said Mark Mehler, a principal at CareerXroads, only 16 percent of hires were initiated through corporate Web sites.
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Wes Cotter, a spokesperson for the Providence-based Gilbane Building Company, said that while his organization has been using online techniques to attract workers, they most often don’t find them there.
"We have received a steady stream of resumes since we started the practice of posting jobs on the Web site a few years ago," he said. "But a lot of people that we are hiring are required to have highly technical skills and a lot of what we receive over the Internet isn’t a good fit. There is a percentage of people that do fit, and that makes it worthwhile."
According to Linda Woods a senior producer, at Ocean State Online (OSO), a Providence-based Web site, the inability to match job openings with a qualified workforce, isn’t stopping companies from trying. In fact, she said, many companies are trying to increase their odds by posting more jobs now than they did a year ago.
"On Jan. 23, 2001, we had 594 local jobs posted," she said. "This year on the same day we had 1,076. That’s almost double. We are definitely finding that people are using the service."
Woods said over a year ago OSO partnered with the larger national job search page, Headunter.net, to better meet the needs of users – who she said were growing in number.
"We had our own tool prior to the partnership but we decided this was better," she said. "It’s a co-branded page so when you click on our Web site it immediately puts you over to Headhunter. It’s been very popular."
So popular in fact, companies are having a hard time dealing with it. Cotter said all resumes sent to Gilbane go through his e-mail address, and it has become a constant, sometimes overwhelming flow of traffic for him.
"We are seeing it more in 2002, definitely," he said. "The volume on any given day is much more than it was six months ago. It’s the path of least resistance, it’s convenient for people."
But according to Mehler it has also made some people lazy – as a growing trend in the corporate arena is not to respond to the resumes’ sender. What’s more, he said, many times people are sending resumes to job postings that are out of date and sometimes phony.
Still, Cotter said there are benefits such as reaching a far wider audience.
"Rather than targeting the Sunday paper in one location, you are putting the position out to people who are reading it all over the country."
And for a company that has multiple locations this has been a good thing, Cotter said.
"We post our jobs in categories, but what we are looking for is to fill specific jobs, in specific locations, and in specific markets," he said. "Reaching a broad base makes this easier. We have also found recently that people don’t mind moving anymore. So that’s another positive."
Woods believes what makes her site so popular with companies is the market it caters to.
"We obviously have a Web savvy audience," she said. "That’s why I think we have so many hits."
The Internet’s ease and popularity still has one major competitor, and according to CareerXroads, that’s not likely to change anytime soon.
"All of the companies we surveyed rated employee referral as the number one way people were hired," Mehler said.
