When a company seeks to recruit a manager, press advertisements often remain of top importance.
Agencies specialized in recruitment in Switzerland claim that if you want to reach top managers, publishing newspaper ads is still a Swiss tradition – “he who thinks, reads,” goes the adage.
Figures seem to corroborate this. Recruitment specialist Mercuri Urval has conducted a study every year for the past five years, analyzing the results of diverse recruitment campaigns. According to their study, in 2008, roughly 40% of managers were hired in a recruitment process via the press. For top managers the percentage rose to 45%.
For the highest echelon of managers, recruitment often passes bypasses advertising entirely.
In spite of the increasing number of websites specialized in recruitment, press advertising remains one of the most successful means for top companies to advertise jobs in Switzerland when the position they are recruiting is an executive position.
Studies indicate that two-thirds of executives regularly read the press. Recruitment specialists, HR experts and economists agree that the employment pages in newspapers are a good barometer of the general economy.
Undeniably, the internet has become a key recruitment venue and has cut substantially into press revenues for advertising. Online recruitment companies are fond of publishing studies showing that nearly 60% of recruitment now takes place online.
The subtlety however is in which jobs are more suited for online recruitment and which jobs are more suited for or a more elitist approach. Clearly, for jobs in IT and telecommunications, as well as engineering, the overwhelming majority of job opportunities are to be found in online recruitment sites.
Recruiters prefer to recruit via the internet for many types of profiles : it’s less expensive and one receives hundreds or candidatures from around the world. Some recruiters say it’s unmanageable.
An advantage of recruiting through press advertisements, which are more costly than career advertisements on the internet job boards, is that a recruitment vacancy in the press is less focused and addresses itself not only to the executive who reads the paper but to his entourage – wife, family, friends….
Finally, the motivation of a candidate applying for a job via the internet is often different. The internet applicant applies for a position with a few mouse clicks, attaching his CV and clicking send. For important positions where the personality and the motivation of the individual are of key importance, internet applications are often seen as lacking in a personal touch.
