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Finding the Ideal Candidate on the World Wide Web

© Sharon Hill

We've focused extensively on newspaper advertising and, as mentioned before, it should be your first step in the recruitment advertising process. But there are other relatively new, growing opportunities for promulgating your firm's career message.

The greatest geographic reach for your recruitment is, of course, the Internet. In the next few weeks we will look at the advertising possibilities there and compare it with newspaper employment advertising, taking a look at the advantages and disadvantages of each, and how their pricing and services differ.

We'll talk about several of the features and services of each, as well as the cost, creating some fictional company situations to serve as a guide to your advertising decision. We'll talk about a few of the best recruitment sites on the web and why I have chosen them as my favorites. We'll also offer a glossary of Internet terms crucial to your understanding of Internet recruitment advertising.

Why the Internet? What does it have that newspapers don't?

Well, the first thing that comes to everyone's mind is geographic reach.

That is, of course, true. The Internet, as we all know, is everywhere. That's a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily. Do you need to recruit from everywhere? What if it cost more to do so than, say, recruiting from your neighborhood newspaper? What if it means that you are now one firm in a pool of literally thousands of similar companies competing for candidates all over the country or the world?

But what if you don't advertise there? Won't those other firms that do grab up all the qualified candidates?

And what if you don't have the foggiest notion how to design or even write a good recruitment ad? Is there a live person anywhere on any of those sites that will help someone like you compose an effective ad?

And do you need to have the latest, state of the art computer and design equipment to deliver your ad to the site camera-ready, or will they take your almost legible germ of an idea and work it into an online recruitment success?

And when it comes to pricing how do you compare newspapers to Internet? isn't it comparing apples to oranges? How do you know what is best? Where do you get the statistics and the demographics that tell you who is looking at the site and how many?

Do people really job hunt this way? How many? How often?