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Online Job Listings on the Upswing
Postings on online job sites are on the rise. That's been a good predictor of an uptick in hiring in the past, so proactive HR executives should consider mining for talent now before their competitors find them -- as well as consider ways to protect their own organizations from losing their best performers.
Hiring may be starting to return in a big way -- if the number of ads posted to online job boards is any indication. Monster, which measures activity not just on its own site but other online employment websites, reports a 21-percent increase in the number of job postings in July, compared to one year ago. CareerBuilder, meanwhile, reports an 18-percent increase in job listings in June 2010 versus one year earlier, according to the company. SimplyHired.com, a Mountain View, Calif.-based site that aggregates jobs from multiple sites, has seen its postings increase to nearly 3.5 million in July 2010, compared to 2.2 million in July 2009. That's an increase of more than 55 percent. The surge seems to be fueled by upswings in a wide variety of industries. Indeed.com, a job aggregator in Stamford, Conn., reports that in 11 of 12 industries studied, job postings increased. Transportation, for example, saw a 103-percent increase in online help-wanted ads, while manufacturing was up 44 percent, hospitality increased by 34 percent and information technology rose by 32 percent. The only sector that saw job listings fall was healthcare, which is down 2 percent -- but still has, by far, the most postings of any industry on Indeed, with 690,000. Of course, not all jobs are posted to online job sites, but some organizations -- including Monster and The Conference Board -- suggest that these positive numbers are a good predictor of the hiring market in general. First come the postings, then a few months later, the jobs. But not 20-percent more jobs, says John Sumser, director at Salary.com and a blogger on ERE.net. The highest the total job-growth rate ever hits is around 5 percent, he says. "Do you know what the economy would be if there was a 20-percent increase in jobs?" he asks. "Money would be flying across the sky!" But the increase may indicate that HR executives are taking the opportunity, while hiring is still slow, to look for some of the talent that's available before their competitors find them. In many industries -- except for IT and mathematical sciences -- there are three candidates for every advertised job, says June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board in New York (It's just the opposite for IT and mathematical sciences, she says, with roughly three advertised vacancies for every job candidate.). Jesse Harriott, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at Monster Worldwide Inc. in New York, says "the market hasn't completely turned around yet and so there are a lot of people out there -- if you can lure them away from the position that they do have -- who would be great to add to staff. So you can really replace the bench strength you would have had trouble recruiting three years ago. You really have more choices now." He notes that the 21-percent increase in postings is nice -- and should certainly correlate to more jobs in the near future -- but it doesn't mean there will be a 21-percent increase in jobs. "The job problem is nowhere near solved," he says. "We're still under pre-recession levels. It's still a very tough job market out there." Brent Rasmussen, president of Chicago-based CareerBuilder North America, says the increase in job postings is due in large part to demand for temporary workers. CareerBuilder has a seen 37-percent increase in the number of temp-worker ads, he says. "I think the economy is better. I think employers are more confident. I think employers probably cut too far in 2009 and realized that 'I can only squeeze so much productivity out of the individuals that work for me without burning them out so I've got to have some more human capital to grow our business.' " According to The Conference Board, which tracks online job postings and also reports a significant year-over-year increase, the hike was sharpest in December and January, Shelp says, but has been modest ever since -- leading to an average of about 43,000 new job postings per month. "I would categorize that as modest improvement, I would not call it fantastic. ... When you go back and you look at employment itself, you need to be adding 100,000 or so jobs per month to really get a lot of those people off the unemployment rolls and back to a more stable economy," says Shelp. August 26, 2010 Copyright 2010© LRP Publications |
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© Copyright 2012 LRP Publications. All rights reserved.
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