Total Media Solutions

Survey reaffirms power of local media

2nd Feb 2010, Newspaper Society

A survey of just over 2,000 people across 12 UK regions has concluded that local media (newspapers and their websites) are the most popular destination for job-seekers looking for public or private-sector recruitment ads.

According to the survey (undertaken by Continental Research for the Newspaper Society), local media websites are nearly five times more popular (39%) as the first port of call for online job-seekers than Monster (8%), identified as the most popular pure-play recruitment site.

And nearly twice as many (33%) respondents turn first to local media than the second most popular source, Jobcentre Plus (18%), when looking for a job.

In the context of public-sector recruitment advertising local media performs even more strongly, with more than double the proportion (33%) of job-seekers claiming they'd turn first to local media compared to those (16%) who cited the next most popular option - employers' own websites - as their preferred source.

NS marketing director Robert Ray said: "‘the wanted ads Jobs' [study] shows that local media is by far the most popular and widely-used source of public and private-sector recruitment advertising. These findings provide compelling evidence that, particularly in the public sector, local media's unique connection with audiences cannot be replicated by online portals or pure-play websites."

Other headline findings from the project, which also looks at general trends in the recruitment market, include:

• job security is valued just as highly as salary (with 82% of respondents citing both factors as important in their job);
• 79% of employed respondents would consider working in another sector, while 65% claimed to be considering a wider range of roles than they'd done previously;
• 72% of respondents would look for a new job via local media, compared to 51% who'd use pure-play websites;
• local media (28%) came second only to word of mouth (31%) as a means of sourcing employed respondents' current jobs.

For the full findings of ‘the wanted ads Jobs', go to www.thewantedads.co.uk.