For many years farrowjamieson has been tracking the slow decline in response rates of print advertising in recruitment compared to online job sites. While the initial range of generalist job boards created a cheap alternative to listing of vacancies the reality was that people were still looking at the newspapers for casual readership and job enquiries. Over a period of time as job sites increased and print decreased we have been awaiting the crossover.

History may well show us that April 08 was the time that the electronic media finally overtook the print media in dominating recruitment advertising. In that month there was a very sharp decline in the number of jobs advertised in print, a reaction to the economic downturn no doubt, but it is interesting that this has never recovered and while there was a dip in the online jobsites, their recovery has been much faster.

While the print media will be fighting aggressively for their share of this large market the reality will be that many senior roles will not appear in print at all.