[London, ENGLAND] A new report published Wednesday by technical
recruitment agency Wynnwith
Engineering
confirms what many U.K. job seekers have long suspected — that online
recruitment is riddled with inefficiency, misleading information
and outright fraud.
The report — entitled “Is the Net Working for Job Seekers?” —
was produced independently for Wynnwith by specialist Internet
research company The-eReport.com, working with genuine job
hunter 53-year-old David Hall, an unemployed project manager
from Surrey.
In a hard-hitting summary, the report finds that recruitment sites
repeatedly advertise the same jobs, quote inflated salaries
to make them more appealing, make unsubstantiated claims about
security of personal information, and fail to provide trained
staff to give job seekers help when they need it.
“Overall the findings do not make pleasant reading — particularly
for the many thousands of job seekers pinning their hopes and
faith on this new medium to find work,” notes the report.
Mr. Hall, who to this day remains unemployed, logged onto 12
online recruitement sites back in March this year, including
top sites monster.co.uk, netjobs.co.uk, and stepstone.co.uk.
Only five percent of the jobs recommended to him matched his
experience and qualifications, and he was offered just one
interview for a completely unsuitable job.
Hall said he was bitterly disappointed with his experience of
job seeking on the Internet, having spent nearly all his time
for several months using online recruitment companies.
“Most of the time I am bombarded with unsuitable job opportunities
via e-mail, even though most of the Web sites require you to
complete an exhaustive registration process, supposedly to
help them select the most suitable jobs for you to view,” said
Hall.
Hall said the sites appeared to offer little more than
“pretty colored graphics and empty promises about job
opportunities.”
The report, which is bound to receive plenty of attention
by the media despite its limited scope, may serve as a
wake-up call to the online recruitment industry in the U.K.
Wynnwith, the publisher of the report, has just launched
its own Web site and says it views the Internet as an
opportunity for the industry to deliver better services
and “the utmost professionalism” to job seekers. To date,
however, most sites have failed to deliver because, claims Wynnwith,
they lack “bricks and mortar foundations,” qualified staff, and a
proper code of conduct.
Noirin Guinan, marketing director of Wynnwith, warned
that job seekers could lose confidence in a medium that
has the potential to “revolutionize the way we work and
the way we find work.”
An extensive summary of the report’s findings is available
online at the Wynnwith site.
