About

When users of guardianjobs.co.uk shoot up by 70% in just a year, you can see why knowing exactly what makes jobseekers is so important to all those working in the recruitment industry. And that’s when the idea for ACE was born.

Together Barkers and Guardian Jobs decided to discover what jobseekers really want out of the recruitment experience. ACE gave us the answers and much more. The findings of ACE can tell you how to optimise your recruitment messages to your audience; what recruiters need to communicate to candidates at every stage of the process; what candidates’ preferences are and how they change over time. It can even tell you what frustrates jobseekers and what recruiters need to do to be employers of choice in the eyes of jobseekers.

ACE consisted of three waves of research. We conducted two online surveys and six focus groups, all with the same group of jobseekers. The 3,000 candidates who took part in our research came from nearly every sector and industry, every role, every location, every age and every ethnicity you can think of. We asked them questions – lots of questions. Why are you looking for a job in the first place? How optimistic do you feel compared to six months ago? How many jobs have you applied for in the last four weeks? What are the five most important bits of information you feel you need to know before apply? And so on, and so on.

The findings make really interesting reading we can assure you - so you’ll need to keep visiting us regularly to keep right up-to-date with the latest developments.

(Source: HBX Dec 07 – Dec 08)