What Little I Know…

Recognizing that newspaper revenues have been on the decline, those of us in the industry know that the number one contributor has been the employment classifieds category. Although the employment revenue plague has affected all of North America, we feel the greatest area of impact has been seen in the US. However, on a positive note, recent statistics and analysis from the US Government shows that that downward trend is on the rebound.

The US Government is claiming that their stimulus program is responsible for creating and saving over 2 million jobs. Aside from the administrations claim that the economy overall is in a better position, given their stimulus spending, I think there is something to be said about how their stimulus success has positively affected the newspaper industry (print and online classifieds), in the way of employment advertising. According to statistical data, employment across the US is expected to increase by 1.4 per cent or by 22 million positions. Similarly, forecasts by Borrell show that print recruitment revenues are expected to increase by 5% and online by 7%. So, it’s clear that the market conditions will leave the publishing industry in a positive position. All that’s left now is for publishers to recognize their newfound positioning and put to practice some of the recruitment and online strategies we’ve talked about, throughout 2009:

1. Create standalone recruitment niche sites to support your newspaper-classified properties
2. Create categorical recruitment sites that align with the stronger industries in your region
3. Critical mass is important. Look to create partnerships and alliances with other publishers, and your local public government offices to ingest their job board content
4. Maximize applicant tools
5. Focus on creative ways to increase resume bank content. We’ve seen newspapers run contests that would randomly find one resume per week, featured in print in the form of a half page ad. They did this, undoubtedly, to increase the number of online resume submissions.
6. Stop force bundling print in recruitment buys and if print is a part of the buy, utilize each medium to have it do what it does best: Print=Branding + Online = Utilitarian
7. Utilize social media in your recruitment awareness strategy. Social media has permanently injected itself in the recruitment world and if you don’t believe us, check here to see how LinkedIn is embedding their recruitment professional social network, in some of their key geographies.

Recruitment advertising outlook 2010: a jobless recovery