It’s always encouraging when two surveys, conducted at the same time in the economic cycle, produce results that are complementary.

The AGR Winter Survey 2009 launched last night and although there will be many headlines around a reduction in the amount of graduate vacancies available in 2009, there are other, equally interesting stories in the data.

One of the key messages is that, despite the downturn, 37.8% of employers still struggled to find graduate recruits of a sufficiently high calibre to make job offers to.

When asked about the recruitment challenges for 2009, the top two responses were “not the right skills” 53.6% and “graduates’ perceptions of the industry” 50%.

Although the opportunity to ask MP David Lammy about the Government's response to the first point was missed at the launch, the latter point leads on precisely from the wider ACE research amongst candidates which showed quite clearly that job seekers who do best are those that understand industries and roles better than others.

Their industriousness is one reason for this, but employers must make sure that they are helping candidates.  The very idea that 50% of applicants to graduate jobs in particular, a sector that is well-versed in marketing using channels as diverse as fairs, brochures, websites and search marketing, do not know enough about organisations is a real concern.

A second story to emerge is that on-campus promotion is expected to rise in 2009 (by around 11%) whereas spend on online promotions and websites together is expected to fall by something in the region of 12%.

Again, this correlates with the ACE findings which show that jobseekers use of search is fully predicated on their understanding of what to search on.  Increased use of eyeline media to generate responses has a huge impact on candidates, and in this case students’, ability to use search effectively.

There is, of course, another point in that physical presence allows for myths to be dispelled.  Although many students have been reported as sceptical of employers’ attempts to reassure them that they are hiring, there is nothing quite like having somebody reassure you face to face to drive that message home.

In the brave new world of blogging, social networking, job boards and collaboration, what role does the employing organisation have in coordinating marketing and resourcing with a view to managing reputation?

Phill Lane explains how emotional engagement and a developed employer reputation can help ensure candidates choose the right job, not just the first job, in a declining market.

Dean Shoesmith explains how candidate communication is key during lengthy and rigorous public sector recruitment processes.

Matt Alder describes how technological developments, including virtual inductions, can improve the experience and the relationship.

Dean Shoesmith, Joint Executive Head of Human Resources for the London Boroughs of Sutton and Merton, talks about the risks involved in getting too many applications over the coming months, Carolyn Gray, Guardian Media Group, urges employers to focus on their reputation and Matt Alder tracks job seeking in real time on Facebook.

Is the key to successful job hunting all about luck or, as Ian Wylie reports in The Guardian, more a case of skill and perseverance?

Ian chaired the launch event at the end of January and gave his take on the findings in last weekend's work section:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jan/24/work-careers-unempolyment.

Well over a hundred people turned up at The Guardian's Kings Cross offices on January 22nd to hear Barkers, Head of Digital Matt Alder and Guardian Jobs' Sales Director Helen Bird launch a comprehensive new study into the attitudes and experiences of job seekers, and how the more successful are different to the rest.

The research looks at every stage of the job seekers journey, it is then divided into two distinct groups: those who got a new job with relative ease (ACES) and those who had more difficulty (Chasers). One surprising finding was that, even after starting a new job, a proportion of Aces maintain their job search routines, just in case things don't work out.

The research provides many useful insights into how high quality, well thought out communications and media work can pay dividends on many different fronts. In short, organisations providing clear, honest, thorough information, multi-platform communications and feedback, and effective induction are likely to end up with more Aces.

Check out the photos below to see what happened on the day.

The ACE research wasn’t supposed to be about diversity: the project was focused on job-search behaviour, and we weren’t expecting that behaviour to vary very much between demographic groups other than age. It didn’t, but diversity popped up in the results in all sorts of unexpected ways.  When we asked jobseekers about how they decided where to apply,  for example, we ended up figuring out why all the accountants at your company come from Plymouth (or why all the auditors are from Leicester, or why all of the pastry chefs are from Poole...you get the idea.)

Any candidate who searches for a new job online is confronted with a flood of recruitment advertising, ranging from eye-catching banners to plain-text Craigslist classifieds. How do candidates figure out which employers to take seriously? They start with concrete must-haves. After they have looked at location and salary and qualifications and determined which types of roles look like they might fit, candidates still have a huge amount of advertising to sort through. The ACE research showed that the main tool they use to make decisions is name recognition – they look for employers with names or brands they know and respect. If they don’t have any information about an employer, they rely most on personal connections: friends or family who have worked for or with the organisation they are considering.

An individual recruitment advertisement that isn’t part of a larger, coordinated branding effort has a hard time attracting serious applicants who don’t already have a connection to the organisation. If candidates don’t recognise the employer brand on their own, they need reassurance and advice from someone they trust.  So they call their friends back in Plymouth, or Leicester, or Poole, and the employer ends up with “clusters” of similar employees, who all look the same, or grew up in the same place, or went to the same university. How many times have you heard someone say something like “Accounting is going to lunch with their mates from uni?” Now you know why.

No employer wants to hire a workforce composed entirely of people from similar backgrounds, but it seems that some may be setting themselves up to do just that when they fail to link their recruitment advertising to a coherent employer brand. If a jobseeker has already been exposed to a clear employer brand, she already knows what the employer stands for and what they look for in an employee. She can get right to thinking about the role, get on to Facebook or Linkedin to connect with people already doing the job, and get motivated to apply.

A well-planned, honest, consistent message about an employer’s identity can go a long way toward getting past the sorting stage and creating a truly diverse workforce. With more consistent communication, you might just end up with a pastry chef who isn’t from Poole.

The ACE research has also prompted a few considerations for employers’ selectioncampaigns. 

Larger numbers of speculative applications are going to increase the pressure on employers in handling volume applications. How to efficiently identify talent while providing a positive candidate experience for those selected out of the process – without swamping yourresources?  

It’s important to have slick methods ranging from automated online application forms to online Situational Judgement Tests tailored to the role in question.  SJTs are engaging and quick to complete, and have the added benefit of giving applicants a realistic preview of the role early on in the process.  So if the slipper doesn’t fit, there’s no need to keep trying!

But if some sectors of desirable candidates will only use CVs, how to rate them without being inefficient?  Savvy employers have targeted CV screening guidelines, or better still, turn the process over to external organisations to screen for them – dedicated resource applying consistent benchmarks to get the best of the bunch.

And if a big gripe of candidates is lack of feedback throughout the process, today’s technology allows candidates to get feedback every step of the way, from the automated outputs of a self-selection questionnaire to more detailed feedback onstrengths or role competencies post assessment event.  When candidates put a lot of their own time and effort into an assessment process, they deserve to find out what it allmeant.

Finally,to ensure a good fit between employee and organisation, it doesn’t just end with making an offer to those whose skills match the role.  The essence (or “brand”) of an employer is more authentic when woven all through the process from first ad through shape and feel of assessment events, to induction process and ongoing development.  So what the candidate experiences isultimately what they get, and what ultimately convinces them to accept the offer and stay.

One of the most interesting findings to emerge from the focus groups I and my colleagues ran with successful and unsuccessful job hunters (as part of the ACE research project) was the apparently ineffectual nature of online advertising.

In one exercise, I looked over the shoulders of our research participants as they searched online for their ideal job. What was striking was the way they used search engines such as Google and those found on job boards to produce a list of job titles, salaries and locations; then picking some to read in detail. Nobody clicked on an ad banner or button. Worse, nobody even noticed them.

The future of employer marketing looked bleak.

Calm down dear, it’s only ‘search mode’
But looking more closely at what was happening produced a more subtle picture. Remember, the candidates were in search mode. The successful job hunters knew what they were looking for and knew how to find it efficiently. They would come to the Guardian’s job pages and make a beeline for the search box (having already decided what to type in). The only things they’d look at would be the results – and none of the ads around them.

Search mode is when you focus on what you’re looking for – and exclude anything you deem irrelevant. The employer response to search mode needs to be sales/fulfilment: you want technology consulting roles? Here’s a tech consultancy role. You want a well-known technology employer? Here’s a vacancy at Microsoft. That’s sales. But it’s not marketing. You’ve not influenced candidates’ search criteria; you’ve reacted to them.

That’s why a banner ad on a search page isn’t likely to work. Because clicking on the banner has a low chance of delivering a small number of relevant opportunities, while ignoring it and performing a search will bring up hundreds of results which are far more likely to be relevant.

But what about the casual browser?
Half of our focus groups were with unsuccessful job hunters – and the reason they remained unsuccessful, according to the research findings, was because they didn’t know what they were looking for. That meant that banners and buttons were irrelevant to them for a different reason: the balance of probabilities.

Quite simply, the chance of someone who doesn’t know what they want just stumbling over the right banner or button is vanishingly small. Especially when you consider that ads are placed on the assumption that the visitors to those pages are looking for the sort of thing offered in the ads. Not true for ‘browsers’.

I’ll tell you where to stick your banner…
It’s not that banners and buttons and MPUs are useless. The problem is, so many are in the wrong places, trying to do the wrong things.

Let’s imagine you’re a technology consultancy trying to hire big brains out of a bunch of vertical markets. The candidates think they’re looking for roles in FMCG, automotive or public sector – not technology consulting. When they hit their favourite search page it’s too late to say ‘technology consulting’ to them (the sales approach). But on every page they visit before that point – whether they’re keeping up with industry news, researching training courses, reading blogs or posting on forums – you’ve the ideal opportunity to say ‘technology consulting’. And that’s marketing.

What would Tesco do?
It’s silly and irrational, but nobody buys a perfectly unmolested tin of beans if it’s on the detergent shelf. People will go all the way to the tinned produce section to pick up an identical can. So if you’re going to run banners, button and MPUs on a search page, listen to supermarket wisdom and put the right message in the right place. Place your ads on a relevant search results page. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your wizzy tech consulting banner will outgun the 300 FMCG general management roles the candidate asked to see. If, on the other hand, you happen to be Procter & Gamble then you might want to get out your chequebook.

So much for the Internet making life simple
The ACE research confirms that, credit crunch or no, neither the job sites nor employers are in charge; the candidates are. We’re no longer in the age when job hunters will turn a page and be intrigued by an employer and a role they’d not considered previously. Instead, we’ve the most sophisticated marketing tools any society has ever seen. And - too often – we’re not using them very proficiently.