Over in the states, Job Search TV hopes to reinvent the traditional job search by using a dedicated television channel to broadcast ads. The offering differs from many of the ‘video products’ currently circulating the online recruitment world, with the format modelled on a news presenter style information show. The recruitment videos are broadcast on cable television (currently only in the Chicago area) for two hours each morning and one hour each night and are available via the Job Search TV web site.

Due to geographical restrictions we’re unable to review the daily TV show, however much of the content is duplicated on the web site, which in our opinion provides a much more interactive interface to the job content than a television based approach could hope to. The web site is similar to a traditional job site, with the addition of information video presentations on most pages.

As with most career sites job searching remains the focus of the homepage, which also features a video of a selected role (job of the week perhaps?). This has the annoyance of auto playing every time you navigate to the homepage but does seem to be an effective in drawing your attention both visually and audibly.

The job search is straight forward enough, although there is only small inventory of jobs on the site. We noticed some issues with the searching system however. Multiple attempts to search for position titles failed to return any matching results, despite the fact jobs with those position titles were listed in the job inventory. The category or sector based searching seems to work fine.

Once a position is displayed the screen is split into two parts, a textual job description to the right and a news presenter style video playing to the left. Despite the somewhat repetitive nature of the ‘news presenter job adverts’ this actually works extremely well and leaves a strong impression of the role on the job seeker. The site also has company profiles, which feature videos of selected advertisers and are similar to the type of corporate videos showcased by the likes of Reed and CareerTV.

So is the TV really an effective medium for career content? We find it hard to believe the traditional ‘TV channel’ model is right for job advertising, the online searchable model seems to have so many more benefits, which can still include professional video adverts (as Job Search TV shows). Then again we are constantly surprised that shopping channels still exist on the TV, so perhaps we shouldn’t rule out TV career channels yet.

Last quarter UK vertical search engine WorkCircle took the step of being audited by ABC Electronic, the industry auditor. The move follows 1Job’s audits in both November last year and January this year. The audits underline just how far vertical search engines have come since their original inception into the UK job advertising market.

The advent of the vertical job search engines has been extremely interesting and is proof that concepts often need time to germinate before they gain a hold in a market. The early attempts by job aggregators, as they are also known, were not necessarily that well received by established job boards. Much like when multi-posting services first arrived, there was a level of concern that vertical search engines were looking to bite a piece of the online recruitment pie that was already safely on the job boards’ plate.

While some of these concerns still exist, vertical search engines have now become an established part of the market and issues over database rights and content ownership seem to have been resolved (or at the very least pushed to the back of people’s minds). From the established vertical engines such as 1Job and ClickAJob to new comers like Indeed and Workhound, the aggregators have carved out their corner of the market.

In the UK, a natural step for a job site when it reaches a certain size or popularity is to be audited by ABCe, either as part of a survey such as NORAS or independently. While the actual value of an audit is often greatly debated, it does often underline that a site has reached a specific maturity.

The recent audits by 1Job and WorkCircle are good indicators of their audience penetration, with both sites registering strong unique user figures, over 800k for WorkCircle and almost 600k for 1Jobs. To put these in perspective, TotalJobs reported 1.9 million unique users last month and Jobsite reported 1.4 million in January. The aggregators are coming of age, who fancies an audit then?

Job advertising volumes in the UK took a further dip in July, according to the born Job Advertising Index. The index dropped one point, down to 90 points, following a three point decline in June.

Despite the decline, a single point drop is not unexpected at this time of year, where seasonal conditions such as the holiday period can impact on advertising levels. However, coming as it does on the back of a period where the index has seen no positive movement for four consecutive months, it is a far from positive sign.

Looking at the detail of the data driving the index there are clear suggestions that the current credit crunch is depressing the market.

The Accountancy and Finance sector is down more than 30% on the same time last year, although the data suggests the Finance market is affected more seriously that the core Accountancy sector (which is consistent with the economic issue).

We are seeing little year-on-year growth for many established job boards, who are often a good measure of the industry’s vitality. However market conditions, at least from an advertising volume perspective, are certainly not the same for every job board. Over 35% of the boards we’ve been monitoring for more than 12 months are enjoying positive year-on-year advertising volume growth.

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