As many firms continue to shift away from online recruitment in general, its use to attract graduates continues to grow as does the number of former students sending in Internet applications' suggest new figures.
According to Income Data Services (IDS) figures, 80,830 Internet applications were processed by the 66 companies surveyed during 2003, compared to the 44,540 reported by 49 of the organisations a year earlier.
The figures suggest the average of 908 applications per firm in 2002 rose to 1,224 in 2003, a jump of 34%, while only three of the 121 companies surveyed had not used the Internet in some way to attract graduates.
Two-thirds had posted online application forms and just under a half had dedicated micro-websites for graduates. According to a recent Institute for Employment Studies (IES) research 92% of firms use the Internet to attract graduates.
However, a survey by reed.co.uk released yesterday suggested that the number of firms feeling that the Internet is an effective way to attract graduates has fallen from 47% to 42% since 2000.
The largest jump in figures was for firms looking for secretarial support. Nearly half (47%) said the Internet was effective in attracting secretaries, while recruiting senior managers and professionals saw increases of around 20% to 36% and 48% respectively.
David Hurst, publisher of Online Recruitment magazine, feels that the drop in numbers could be a result of firms not approaching the process systematically and as a result creating a poor consumer experience:
'An ideal situation would for graduate recruiters to drive traffic to the recruitment area of the site which in turn would have an applicant tracking system, a variety of tests and then a finished applicant pool.
'However, I suspect that this is not the case for many and they are getting a bad response as a result. Firms need to think of the consumer experience' he said.
Katy Nicholson of reed.co.uk points out that previous surveys such as the Recruitment Confidence Index from Cranfield - have pointed to 'CV spam' being a major problem for graduate employers. A fact that could be supported by the IDS report of increasing online applications.
