The current climate is causing recruiters to question online advertising budgets and rely on relationships with suppliers to increase value.

Chris Jackson, business development director at IT recruiter Understanding Recruitment, told Recruiter he had cut costs: “Our use of databases and advertising is likely to be reasonably similar in 2009 to 2008, however, our costs will be reduced due to the favourable rates we were able to negotiate this year.”

He explained that one approach was to negotiate contracts at the end of the year, when job boards can offer deals to hit yearly targets. In some cases he had also paid for 12 months advertising in advance, “significantly lowering” rates.

Extending the length of contract also helped Jason Perry, director of multi-sector recruiter ASL Recruitment, to reduce costs dramatically: “We are paying 25% less for 45% more volume after we renegotiated with the job board at the end of last year.”

Drilling down the extent to which the services are used can cut costs, too.

James Procter, director of 4Leisure Recruitment, said: “We have re-negotiated a new contract, getting more value for a more specific service. Our account manager at Monster is superb and I think that’s why we’ve been able to do that.”

Sandra Smart, director of generalist recruiter Smart Start Recruitment, told Recruiter she had moved to a more geographically specific job board
to increase the number of applications she receives that are relevant to her location.

The number of recruiters looking for free trials has increased. Marc Moreso, managing director, hospitality recruiter SRG, which owns leisurejobs.com and barzone.co.uk, told Recruiter there were more recruiters on the “free trial circuit”. However, he added that his sites had made no move towards offering free trials: “When you get to an established position you can justify why you can’t give away free advertising. We’re happy to give discounted trials because we understand the value of longterm relationships, but we won’t give it away for free.”

However, Simon Wright, sales and marketing manager at accountancy job board Careersinaudit.com, told Recruiter he felt offering free-ofcharge
trials was essential to attract new customers. “A year ago we would have asked clients to pay the admin charge for free trials, but these days they aren’t willing to spend the money,” he said.

Liz Longman, UK director of recruitment trade body TEAM, told Recruiter many of its members had taken advantage of new deals being offered by job boards. “TEAM members have reported that most of the job boards are offering ‘special deals’ at the moment and many have a
free job posting model.”

Andy Wilson, business operations manager at reed.co.uk, said the site’s policy of offering 500 free postings a year but with less prominence than paid adverts had not changed, but was ideally suited to the current climate.

Chris Jackson analyses his firm’s main job board contracts quarterly and will use specialist sites when required. He will work with account managers on how to gain the best possible placement. “The way in which job boards ‘rate’ an advertisement are constantly changing so it’s vital we stay ahead of the game on this,” he said.