Searching for workers on job portals – effective or a thing of the past?
Searching for employees on job portals is still a very common traditional way of looking for employees. For more than 10 years now, this traditional way of recruiting has been under tremendous pressure from the headhunting recruitment channel, which offers a completely different way of attracting candidates. In the battle between these two recruitment channels, the winner is already clear, but, at least for the time being, there is still enough room under the sun in the recruitment ecosystem for both.
So, is recruitment on job portals a thing of the past?
The short answer is more like the past. Unfortunately, the qualitative demands currently placed on job search and the passivity of candidates on the labour market mean that there are very few candidates actively looking for a job. The development of the headhunting or direct recruitment channel has also contributed to this – why would an employee need to look on a job portal when they are already receiving job offers in person from recruiters? It is precisely the effectiveness of direct recruitment that means that job search portals have already lost much of their effectiveness in attracting candidates, and the trend is not in their favour. In the near future, it seems that job portals will increasingly give way to direct headhunting as an additional recruitment channel.
The only area of recruitment where job portals are still effective is the search for low-skilled workers. Job portals can be relied upon to find such workers, as direct search or headhunting is not an appropriate method for this type of search.
So what will replace job portals in the search for workers?
The answer is simple: direct recruitment, also known as headhunting. This recruitment channel allows you to access the best professionals and managers in your field and can offer you an incomparably larger pool of candidates with a higher level of expertise in the recruitment process. Of course, direct recruitment is usually a more expensive service, but you can expect to complete a full search for an employee in as little as a month, whereas a search on a job portal may not guarantee results for months or even longer.
Do all job portals search for employees in the same way?
No, there are definitely differences. There are also intermediate job search engines that combine direct job search with direct recruitment (e.g. Meetfrank) or act as job portals for direct job search (e.g. Linkedin Jobs). These channels are becoming a good alternative to searching for employees on job portals, but still cannot compete with headhunting (direct job search).
Winner – direct recruitment or just headhunting
In a clear yes – not only has direct recruitment displaced job portals from the main list of candidate attraction channels, but it has also offered employers a top-notch recruitment service, where they can choose from the best candidates on the market. The only vulnerability of a direct recruitment service is the higher cost. Even when the higher price parameter is taken into account, employers tend to get a comparatively higher quality recruitment service instead of the relatively inexpensive, but incomparable in terms of quality, recruitment on job portals.
And which recruitment channel will be the leading one in the future?
It is now noticeable that direct recruitment via IoT can check large candidate databases very quickly. It is AI that will not replace but optimise direct recruitment, reducing its costs and shortening the time from the start of the recruitment process to the first candidate offer. Many recruitment companies are already using IoT tools for direct recruitment, but everyone agrees that automation is still in its infancy and that direct recruitment will take on an even greater role as artificial intelligence advances. So the future of recruitment belongs to AI-enhanced direct search or headhunting.
