The 2007 results of NORAS (online survey of job boards) are imminent and amongst the small sad world of online recruitment specialists - this survey creates quite a stir. In my opinion it gets unfair criticism largely based on what it cannot and does not do rather than what it gives to the industry.
What i would use NORAS for
- Its an industry snapshot - there are always key stats that can be picked out and used as a trusted and valuable market indicator. This is largely around the online job seeker universe and concerns stats such as size of universe, Diversity, number of sites used by job seekers etc.
- Trends - look at Noras 2003-4-5-6 etc - they show some blindingly obvious yet significant changes to this market and it does give some solid back up to this.
- As the survey is backed up by ABCe accreditation - it is a good sign of sites coming in from the cold and wanting to be "respectable" to the corporate community ie Jobserve and new sites who want to do business in a quality manner rather than have sales people just making the stats up.
- Most importantly - its the only thing in town and in this still occasionally dodgy industry - its a really good step in the right direction. Its run professionally by an organisation (Enhance) that i trust to do a decent job and check the more extreme abuses of audience inflation.
- its incomplete - some major sites do not subscribe
- Surveys and user audits are incredibly easy to fix (take my word on this from much experience)
- Its not really about audience - its about applications. Well done to fish for getting 2.5 million users for Oct 2006 and this supports many of the improvements that they have made but this huge number does not necessarily always tally with response.
3 comments on Noras - What is it Good For?
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Thank you for this balanced view. Pretty much agree with most of the post.
We are working very hard to with JICWEBS, ABCE and the online recruitment industry to agree on an application metric for NORAS 2008.
Currently we are looking at 3 metrics, although it is work in progress:
– Online job applications. The submission of an application or a CV
– Online job referrals. Click on a link from a job listing to a URL
– Email job referral. Click on a mailto link within a job listing
Happy to meet up and get your thoughts on this.
Alastair
why do you think certain people are so quick to criticise NORAS
Dom
To be honest 99.9% of the feedback we receive is either positive or constructive. Generally the constructive criticism we get is based on either:
- not all the major sites are involved. This is something that we are working on constantly.
- NORAS doesn't include application data. This is again something that we have resolved and (hopefully) as a result the major sites, who don't participate currently, will get involved in 2008.
Last year we surveyed the 5,000+ registered users of NORAS:
65% were from a direct employer or recruitment consultant
½ recruit for more than 250 vacancies per year
91% find NORAS useful
94% are more likely to advertise with NORAS participants
48% say it has had a direct impact on an advertising decision