ITCRA Backs New CV Database

I read an interesting article on iTWire (read here) about an online CV system invented in the UK that is rumored to become the standard here. A few big name IT recruitment agencies including Ambition and Paxus have thrown some dollars at it.

What is iProfile?
iProfile are the creators of the dynamic profile for professionals, which is replacing the tradtional CV by unleashing the potential of both jobseekers and recruiters. We help recruiters make placements, faster, and for candidates it means more control and feedback when job seeking.

I got pretty excited about the prospect of the standardisation of the CV. Imagine a site which houses everyone’s electronic CVs…how convenient, how streamlined, what an advantage to job seekers!

Unfortunately, my excitement dwindled soon after entering the site.

The option is given to re-do a CV or to upload your current one. Who’s gonna re-do it? I uploaded mine. It turned out to have major formatting issues and looked ridiculous. Basically a lot of fiddling around for little results. Any candidate worth hiring would not have the time for this.

Once you’ve uploaded your CV, it quickly becomes apparent that raison d’etre of the site is not to give you a new standardised CV, but to collect your data for recruiters to access. In other words, it’s nothing more than a resume database.

I can’t imagine any candidates worth their salt spending the time to do what a recruiter would do anyway and input all of their details so they can be listed and solicited.

I will stick with my Visual CV…

Directing Traffic

Statistics are king in businesses such as online job boards, where success or failure is measured by the amount of traffic to a site.However, there are two methods of collecting data used by the online recruitment industry in Australia.

The industry standard is the panel-based methodology used by Nielson/NetRatings. This tracks data from a panel of about 400 consumers. They report the stats to the market on a monthly basis. As data relies on subscription at a fee, several of the smaller job boards, such as JobX and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs do not participate in this form of data collection.

Alternatively, Hitwise Australia collects data directly from ISP networks. Stats from Hitwise are updated on an hourly basis. The data from this method is therefore more raw and “real-time”. It gives the stats-geeks a chance to analyse the comings and goings of consumers, peak times for views etc, providing an excellent opportunity to better understand consumer practices. Hitwise data is not reliant on individual job board subscription, as is the case with the NetRatings data. However, this data excludes any information from the Telstra ISP networks.

First up, let’s all agree on this: before any one method can be considered the industry standard, it should include data from all possible sources. Therefore, both methods currently in use are deficient in this regard. Hitwise, for its exclusion of Telstra data, and NetRatings for its exclusion of minor job board data.

Arguably, the effect on the data purity of these two deficiencies differs. The NetRatings data gives us no indication whatever of the popularity of the minor sites. It is merely indicative of the popularity of the three main players, Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer. However, the Hitwise data, while excluding a whack of info from the Telstra ISP, allows us a snapshot of where all the industry competitors sit in popularity. It would be difficult to contend that a greater portion of consumers of any one site would be more likely to be Telstra ISP customers. Therefore, as the exclusion affects both the big and smaller players, while it alters quantity of data, it probably does not alter the quality of it.Whatever method of data collection one considers, if we have a look at the figures for January, Seek is the undisputed market leader.CareerOne have seen a better- than- average traffic rise than their close competitors MyCareer and have assumed the number two position. If this was due to spending more dollars on advertising then MyCareer can quickly buy back the number two spot in February.

However, when we consider the popularity of Linkme for the month, there is a conflict between the two data. Linkme have dropped off the NetRatings list with a 97% decline. However HitWise shows a rise in their traffic and rankings. This discrepency may be due to the launch of the new site in January. NetRatings is possibly still tracking the old one and Linkme have moved on.Admittedly, there are several other factors to be considered in the question of success and failure of the job boards. These include: number of c.v.’s on their databases, how many job alert emails go out each day and how good are the quality of applications. Volume isn’t always better.

However when looking at popularity alone, based on the above, we need to challenge the idea that NetRatings is the industry standard of popularity rating for the recruitment industry. But, even if we all concur that a new metric is required for the measure of popularity, will we ever be able to agree on how that measure should be derived?