Have you heard of a .jobs domain? Some large companies are registering their company with a .jobs domain address in an effort to boost their recruiting efforts.
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently conducted its "2007 Advances in E-Recruiting: Leveraging the .jobs Domain" survey, asking HR professionals to assess the the differences between organizations that utilize a “.jobs” domain compared to companies without such domains. The Internet is used many organizations as their primary method for recruiting.
The three most commonly reported techniques or strategies used by respondents from all organizations to engage passive job candidates were: (1) viewing membership directories for associations and trade groups; (2) scanning social networking sites; and (3) mining industry-specific blogs, discussion forums, newsgroups or list-servs.
“The Internet has opened up a whole new set of opportunities through which HR recruiters can and are creatively sifting,” said SHRM President and CEO Susan R. Meisinger.
She added, “Who would have thought, for example, that social networking sites like MySpace – often used as social hubs by so many young people – would become a rich source of background information for job recruiters?”
The study also showed that HR respondents from all organizations (.jobs and non-.jobs organizations) said their most reliable sources for quality job candidates were: a) employee referrals; b) national online job boards (e.g. careerbuilder.com, Monster.com, HotJobs.com, etc.); and c) internal job postings.
Other summary results from the survey are:
• Organizations with a “.jobs” domain reported they had better outcomes in recruiting due to advantages such as direct navigation and ease of use. In addition, they were more likely to use tracking software that allows the electronic management of an organization’s recruitment efforts.
• HR professionals from “non-.jobs” organizations cited the following as their top five greatest challenges: a) difficulty in attracting high quality candidates (67 percent); b) limited staff resources (39 percent); c) difficulty in attracting diverse candidates (30 percent); and d) difficulty attracting enough candidates (30 percent); e) difficulty in managing volumes of resumes (27 percent).
SHRM commissioned the 2007 survey to gain insight into HR professionals’ experiences with Internet recruiting at their organizations. Surveys were emailed to 3,000 randomly selected SHRM members and yielded 450 responses. In addition, surveys were sent to 1,050 organizations that use a “.jobs” domain and yielded 152 responses. The survey results examine differences among .jobs and non-.jobs organizations by organization staff size and employment sector.
