Is the Printed Job Post Dead?

Employers, Jobposting / 17 April 2019

If you’re of a certain age, you might remember using the local or national newspapers to advertise for (or find) jobs. The ‘help wanted’ sections of broadsheet and tabloid alike were the go to place to advertise your roles. Once the internet job board was born, that started to change.

Job boards instantly had some inherent advantages over the paper led adverts. A jobseeker could scroll through and search thousands of job posts in a matter of minutes, for one, and recruiters and employers could place a greater number of cost effective ads than ever before.

Some things haven’t changed of course – the importance of making sure your job post appeals to the right kind of candidate is just as important then as it was now. The reach and potential of print based advertising however, has changed drastically. Are print based job adverts completely dead then, in the face of their digital and online counterparts? Not entirely, as we’ll see.

Costs

The costs of running print job adverts can quickly ramp up if you’re not careful. A small printed job listing in local papers can cost around £450 for example. If you keep this advert active for a number of months, and in a variety of papers, then costs will quickly add up. Having said that, the most well known newspapers tend to offer a combination of print and digital job posting options. While still quite expensive, these options can at least offer you the combined reach of the paper’s physical and online presence.

The fact is, however, that even these combined packages will rarely be as good value as online only adverts. Some job boards offer free, unlimited postings to employers and recruiters (like us here at JobLookup for example – check our employer section to find out more), and the ones that do charge are still generally more cost effective due to the sheer potential reach.

Reach

If you’re an employer or recruiter that’s looking in a specific area, then a job advert in the local paper can still be very effective. The more targeted reach, and potential for word of mouth, makes it an especially good option for smaller communities and towns. This can also apply to specific industries or values as well. Some papers, like the Guardian and Telegraph have well established job boards, but are also known for their political stances. Advertising for roles that align with the values of these papers could make finding that ideal candidate all the easier as a result. Readership levels of a paper are another aspect to consider as well.

Furthermore, older job seekers are more generally more likely to use papers as the starting point of a job search. Some younger jobseekers might try newspapers first as well, in order to avoid some of the competition that can be present on popular job boards.

Online job adverts, on the other hand, have a massive potential reach. It’s possible to advertise roles that are viewable for anyone, anywhere in the country, provided they have access to the internet. This can also extend abroad, depending on the site hosting your adverts.

As remote working becomes more of a reality, then location becomes less of a defining factor when sourcing candidates, which counteracts the advantages of having a print advert in a local paper to some extent. Reaching niche applicants isn’t much of an issue for job boards either, because jobseekers can generally search for roles using keywords and specific job titles.

Any potential downsides of job boards when it comes to reach, are more to do with jobseeker trends, google search algorithms, and employer and recruiter posting preferences (some may prefer certain sites to others, for example).

Engagement

This aspect of a job advert is generally going to be tied into the reach potential, but there are a few cases where less reach can mean more engagement. Niche roles are a good example. It’s also worth noting that neuroscience research, conducted back in 2015, shows that print media is generally much more engaging than its digital counterpart. This is because our brains can process print media, especially adverts, much more quickly and easily than they can the digital equivalent.

The study also found that the amount of information retained from a print advert, as well as the level of emotional response, was much higher. Readers of print adverts were also able to recall more important details quickly than with digital adverts. Much like the reach comparison, this suggests that print advertising is most useful for advertising very specific roles to a select readership.

When it comes to online job adverts, the potential for engagement is very high. It could be argued that this engagement is more a numbers game than print advertising – online job ads can simply reach more people. This is true to some extent for sure, but the fact remains that a well written job advert will still help to fine tune the kind of applicants your get, regardless of numbers..

A high level of engagement can cause its own set of problems however. Recruiters and employers can easily get bogged down reviewing thousands of interested candidates (you can read about how to spot potentially problematic candidates at the CV stage in our guide, which helps speed the process up). Even so, having a larger pool to choose from can be seen as an advantage.

A Balanced Approach for Overall Success

As we can see from the above comparison, each approach has its own pros and cons. It does seem that online job adverts are the most effective choice all in all. However, the fact that we all still engage with print media a little bit better than we do digital landscapes, because of the way our brains work, should not be overlooked. It means that printed content will never disappear completely. It also means that even at a time when the online job advert is king, there is absolutely still room for relevant printed job posts.

The best way forward then, budgets permitting, is to make sure that all angles are covered. Using both printed job adverts and online job boards in a combined campaign is likely to yield very good results, especially if you’re recruiting for specialist roles.

Overall, the printed job advert is very much alive and kicking, then. It’s just no longer the widest reaching option.