Executive Grapevine, April 2006

Betty Thayer is Chief Executive of exec-appointments.com.

March is a big month in the online recruitment calendar. The NORAS results and the ONREC awards provide the top sites with momentum for the coming year.

NORAS (National Online Recruitment Audience Statistics) is the only independent auditor of jobsites in the UK. It provides potential advertisers with unbiased information about the characteristics of visitors to each site and comparators. Four years of data confirm that more and more executives are using the internet to look at job opportunities and that the average salary of these executives is rising.

NORAS 2006 results are gathered from 18,724 people. Key statistics to emerge show the average online job seeker: is 34 years old; has 13 years’ work experience; earns £34,000; and visits over five sites when actively job-hunting.

Seventy-nine per cent applied for work electronically, with just six per cent put a hard-copy CV in the post. Search engines were the main route for people finding a particular recruitment website (35 per cent), followed by links from another website (20 per cent).

Tim Elkington, managing director of Enhance Media who manage NORAS, said: "Our latest set of results show online recruitment has come of age. The UK online recruitment industry has been going for 10 years and is worth more than £200 million, almost double what it was last year."

"Online recruitment is steadily attracting more senior candidates and, with more people applying for and obtaining jobs than ever before, is proving to be a very successful way to find work."

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Success rates show online recruitment continues to achieve results. Seventy-five per cent applied for a job they found online, and fifty-two per cent got a job, up from 44 per cent in 2004.

exec-appointments.com continues to hold the lead for the number of AB professionals who use the service (87%). Almost twenty per cent are in the £100,000+ salary bracket. As search engines are an important part of candidate capture, we rank #1 on google for thousands of search terms. Importantly we rank #1 for "executive jobs" and "executive recruitment".

The accolades keep pouring in for exec-appointments. For the second year running we have won the ‘best online advert’ category at the onrec awards. Our unique newspaper-style template, customised to reflect corporate branding, continues to set the standard for executive-level advertising. We are now offering companies the opportunity to have custom micro-sites included in their ads. Visit our home page to see how we can make your ads stand out from the competition.

David Hurst, publisher of ONREC magazine says, "The judges of the onrec awards singled out exec-appointments.com in best online advert category for their innovative use of online advertising taking traditional media and combining it with online technology to produce effective online adverts."

I am also deeply flattered that I was awarded ‘Online Personality of the Year’ for my work in promoting the industry and developing new and exciting online products.

Reprinted from Executive Grapevine, April 2006