Applying for Jobs Online....

Part of the purpose of the internet is to make information readily available to users. Part of the information made available is making available jobs easily known to perspective employees. 52 million Americans have used the internet to search for a job. Which is a 60 % increase in the amount of people who have used the internet for job related searches since March 2000. This data was in comparison to data from July 31, 2002. (4) There is no doubt that these statistics have changed, whether in an increase or decline, but the main idea behind this is that using the internet is a means for effective job searching. Using statistics from the same website, I found that the cost per hire (CPH) is also much cheaper when using the internet. The average CPH from an internet recruiting strategy was $377. The average CPH from a major metro newspaper was $3295 (4). Obviously you can see that here is a significant amount of money saved by the employer.

The internet was adopted by people much more quickly than any other broadcast media. It took the internet 5 years to reach 50 million people where as it took television 38 years and radio 13 years. According to the statistics from 2002, 77% of internet users who are actively seeking a job use the internet to do so (4).

There are many sites that offer innumerable employer listings of possible jobs and during this time of recession there is no better time for job listing websites to get the most use. Listed below are the top 5 search engines used to find jobs in the United States according to page views: 1. Indeed with 171 million views 2. Careerbuilder with 159 million views 3. Hotjobs with 96 million views 4. Monster with 73 million views and 5. SimplyHired with 26 million views (5).

I know from personal experiences the ease of using the internet to apply for jobs. Personally I've used the search enginge Craigslist.org to search for possible jobs. With this particular site, you are able to localize the job search according to your location or a favorable location (done by state and then city). One the location has been selected, you can narrow down the job search by picking which field of jobs you desire. A few of the offered categories are accounting and finance, administraton/office, education, food/beverage/hospitality, general labor, real estate, security, tv/film/video, etc. The next page shows all of the available posted jobs listed in order of most recent to least recent. The listing usually includes a detailed description of requirements they seek in the employee, what the employees new position would entail, the jobs schedule (for example, 8am-5pm Monday through Friday), and at the discretion of the employer, pay wages. If the description fits what you have to offer and what you desire in a job, you would email the employer whatever they request (generally a resume) and they will get back to you if they want to schedule an interview. This method of job searching makes it much easier of the employer and perspective employee, allowing each person to either receive or submit multiple applications without having to physically go to each place.

I am sure that there has been a significant decline in the use of internet job searching recently. However, I do not believe this is due to the ineffectiveness of internet searching. This is largely due to the recession we are currently in and the unavailability of jobs everywhere. The less jobs there are, the less internet searchings that are available to people...

until next time, peace love and go noles =)

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SOURCES:

(4) http://www.recruitersnetwork.com/poll/stats.htm

(5) http://techcrunchies.com/largest-job-search-engines-in-us-by-pageviews/

PICTURES:

http://www.indiaactive.com/home/images/stories/online_job_search.jpg