Positions Vacant And Out-dated

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will know that my major gripe is unsubstantiated or out- dated claims.

Well, PositionsVacant have given me some fresh fodder. I saw this when arriving at their home page…

And:

First up, who cares what your ranking was back in ’06? One year in the online world is equivalent to seven years in the offline world – things move fast. Some days I get motion sickness with how quickly things are moving. According to this calculation, the claim made by Positions Vacant is fourteen-years-old. Just to give you some perspective, it’s kinda like Los Del Rio trying to get free drinks at the local club because they were number one on the Billboards for The Macarena in 1996.

Their second statement, that for June, July and August they were the largest audited privately owned job board in Australia, seems a bit more credible, until you click on the link to find out more. This claim regards data from ’07!

Can we start bragging about stats that are at least remotely current??

I never could quite do that Macarena dance…

Directing Traffic

Statistics are king in businesses such as online job boards, where success or failure is measured by the amount of traffic to a site.However, there are two methods of collecting data used by the online recruitment industry in Australia.

The industry standard is the panel-based methodology used by Nielson/NetRatings. This tracks data from a panel of about 400 consumers. They report the stats to the market on a monthly basis. As data relies on subscription at a fee, several of the smaller job boards, such as JobX and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs do not participate in this form of data collection.

Alternatively, Hitwise Australia collects data directly from ISP networks. Stats from Hitwise are updated on an hourly basis. The data from this method is therefore more raw and “real-time”. It gives the stats-geeks a chance to analyse the comings and goings of consumers, peak times for views etc, providing an excellent opportunity to better understand consumer practices. Hitwise data is not reliant on individual job board subscription, as is the case with the NetRatings data. However, this data excludes any information from the Telstra ISP networks.

First up, let’s all agree on this: before any one method can be considered the industry standard, it should include data from all possible sources. Therefore, both methods currently in use are deficient in this regard. Hitwise, for its exclusion of Telstra data, and NetRatings for its exclusion of minor job board data.

Arguably, the effect on the data purity of these two deficiencies differs. The NetRatings data gives us no indication whatever of the popularity of the minor sites. It is merely indicative of the popularity of the three main players, Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer. However, the Hitwise data, while excluding a whack of info from the Telstra ISP, allows us a snapshot of where all the industry competitors sit in popularity. It would be difficult to contend that a greater portion of consumers of any one site would be more likely to be Telstra ISP customers. Therefore, as the exclusion affects both the big and smaller players, while it alters quantity of data, it probably does not alter the quality of it.Whatever method of data collection one considers, if we have a look at the figures for January, Seek is the undisputed market leader.CareerOne have seen a better- than- average traffic rise than their close competitors MyCareer and have assumed the number two position. If this was due to spending more dollars on advertising then MyCareer can quickly buy back the number two spot in February.

However, when we consider the popularity of Linkme for the month, there is a conflict between the two data. Linkme have dropped off the NetRatings list with a 97% decline. However HitWise shows a rise in their traffic and rankings. This discrepency may be due to the launch of the new site in January. NetRatings is possibly still tracking the old one and Linkme have moved on.Admittedly, there are several other factors to be considered in the question of success and failure of the job boards. These include: number of c.v.’s on their databases, how many job alert emails go out each day and how good are the quality of applications. Volume isn’t always better.

However when looking at popularity alone, based on the above, we need to challenge the idea that NetRatings is the industry standard of popularity rating for the recruitment industry. But, even if we all concur that a new metric is required for the measure of popularity, will we ever be able to agree on how that measure should be derived?