Task 1 - Recruitment Methods Used by Employers

Source – Chartered Institute of Personnel Development

Task 1 

This week we will look at a simple table for task 1. I find task one to be quite difficult when it comes to using more difficult vocabulary and in future posts we will look in more detail how a good task one is structured. One thing to bear in mind is that you must:

• Have an overview - state what the graphic is about plus any main trend you can see
• Mention every single category of data (at least briefly) or you will lose marks

My Answer: 

The table shows the various different methods that are used by companies to source new staff in the years 1999 and 2007. It seems that most of the methods have seen an overall decline in use with only an increase in use of two of the methods utilised by companies; namely that there has only been a rise in the use of agencies and e-recruitment.

For print advertising, adverts placed in local newspapers, specialist magazines and national newspapers have all experience a major decline in popularity, however the fall in local newspaper job advertising was not as steep as it was for adverts placed in the national newspapers or specialist magazines. Job adverts in local newspapers decreased from 82% to 75% whereas those in specialist magazines fell from 91% to 61% (a fall of 30%) and job advertising in national newspapers fell by 38% (the largest fall in popularity from 80% to 42%).

Other methods also saw a fall in use. Adverts on the radio or on the television where not that popular anyway, the figure stood at 13% in 1999 and it declined a little to be used by only 6% of companies in 2007. Word of mouth was quite popular and was used by 54% of companies in 1999 but this also fell to 44% in 2007. Links to educational institutions and link via alumni saw a similar level of decline in popularity, falling from 40% to 32% over the period.

The only two methodologies that bucked the trend of decline and in fact experience a surge of popularity were the use of recruitment agencies which rose from 60% to 73% but the hugest increase was that of e-recruitment via employee websites which almost doubled from 42% to 75%.

Overall it is apparent that the more traditional forms of news media that used to be popular in advertising vacancies have all experienced a decline in popularity. This could be due to an increasing emphasis on outsourcing some business functions or a greater reliance on technology to try and reduce costs.