NORAS Winter 2003 results.

Enhance Media has released the latest results of the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS). The results of NORAS Winter 2003 are compiled from questionnaires completed by 10,000 online job seekers and feature information on the audiences of 11 of the UKís leading online recruitment sites ñ Fish4Jobs, PeopleBank, PlanetRecruit, Total Jobs, Workthing, AviationJobSearch, Anderselite, HotRecruit, Jobs AC, JobsGoPublic and Prospects.


NORAS contains two separate elements of information. The NORAS results booklet features demographic data for all of the 11 participating sites and also includes Unique User figures for eight of the sites, taken from audits conducted by the UKís leading internet traffic auditors ABC ELECTRONIC (www.abce.org.uk).

The demographic information is collected from a questionnaire served on each site via pop up technology administered on behalf of Enhance Media by Red Sheriff (www.redsheriff.com).

NORAS Winter 2003 features additional information to the first wave of NORAS that was conducted in 2002. The new information includes data on the motivations of online job seekers for visiting particular sites, activities performed on sites, comparisons of online and traditional recruitment media and the percentage of users who have actually obtained a job through an online recruitment site.

In addition to enabling recruiters to compare the audiences of leading recruitment sites NORAS provides a valuable insight into the characteristics of online job seekers. NORAS Winter 2003 emphasises the importance of search engines and portals when attracting candidates. The survey reveals that 39% of job seekers visited a generic recruitment site because they found it through a search engine or link, compared to 13% who were attracted by the advertising and only 7% who thought the site had the best selection of jobs.

NORAS Winter 2003 also shows that job seekers perform activities over and above just looking for jobs online. 41% of job seekers visit sites to make salary comparisons, 40% to find out about potential employers, 31% to obtain information about their sector and 28% to actively manage their careers.

The survey results reveal the percentages of users of each site who have successfully obtained jobs through online recruitment sites. 44% of Jobs ACís users who have applied for a job discovered online have actually obtained a job. This compares to an average of 29% for all the sites participating in NORAS. Of the generic sites participating in NORAS Winter 2003 PlanetRecruit has the highest percentage that have obtained a job online with 35%.

Enhance Media Managing Director Tim Elkington commented ìThe additional information included in NORAS Winter 2003 will be invaluable to recruiters when selecting job boards and will help advertisers get a better response from the right candidates and get more from their recruitment budgetsî.

The full NORAS results booklet contains over 30 tables comparing the audiences of leading recruitment sites across key recruitment criteria. The booklet is freely available to everyone and can be obtained by visiting