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.

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.