During the current financial crisis many companies are being forced to retrench staff; and it’s in times like these that quality employees are holding onto their jobs. Generally these are the candidates that are making a valuable contribution to their current employer and are less likely to be considered for retrenchment. But these are exactly the types of skills that recruiters will need to hunt down if they want to ensure that they are hiring the best.

South African recruiters are fortunate in that they have access to online CV databases that employers do not. In many other countries employment agencies do not benefit from this luxury as most global job portals only provide CV access to employers and do not allow recruitment agencies to search their CV database. These recruiters have therefore turned to smart job advertising to find the best skills. So while South Africa’s recruitment agencies have been enjoying the benefit of instant access into active job seeker databases to find skills, they often neglect to advertise their job opportunities.

Both employment agencies and corporate recruiters in South Africa need to realise that the best talent is not necessarily searchable on CV databases. South African job seekers are a lot more conservative than their international counterparts, and are not as willing to make their CV’s visible or searchable in fear that their employer might find out that they are on the job market. And while most South African job portals do not allow employers access to search their CV databases, candidates are still hesitant and prefer to keep their CV’s hidden – especially upper echelon candidates. These candidates prefer to be selective in the jobs that they apply to and often create job email or RSS alerts notifying them of job opportunities that match their skills.

Gillian Meier, CEO of Jobs.co.za comments: “Jobs.co.za receives on average around 2,000 new job seeker registrations per week of which approximately 70% place their CV’s on our database, but only about 38% of these Job Seekers make their CV’s searchable.”

Job opportunities that are advertised on job portals such as Jobs.co.za are automatically matched to suitable skills on the database (whether visible or hidden) and both active and passive Job Seekers are alerted to the opportunity immediately, giving them the option to submit their application. If these opportunities are never advertised, a large number of potentially suitable Job Seekers could be overlooked.

Jobs.co.za has taken its job content to beyond the job board by extending opportunities advertised on the portal to a greater web audience through content driven advertising to ensure that they attract quality targeted passive candidates wherever they are hidden. Recruiters should therefore realise that the true value of a job board lies in their ability to reach both the active job seekers and passive candidates while simultaneously providing screening tools to automatically filter out any unsuitable applicants from landing in the recruiters’ inbox. Intelligent rating systems can further assist a recruiter in sorting through the job applicants quickly and without hassle.