Effectiveness Survey

Survey highlights

  • Online recruitment was responsible for 69% of university appointments
  • jobs.ac.uk is over four times more effective than The Guardian, THES, Nature, New Scientist combined in attracting and placing candidates in academic and research posts
  • jobs.ac.uk is three times more effective than national print media in attracting and placing candidates in all university jobs

jobs.ac.uk is over four times more effective for academic and research appointments

  • jobs.ac.uk is over four times more effective than The Guardian, THES and the national journals combined in appointing candidates to academic appointments (35% compared to 8%)
  • Over 1 in 3 university appointments (academic and research) have been recruited from jobs.ac.uk

" We always receive good responses from adverts placed on jobs.ac.uk, which, together with the responses on our own website, form the majority of our applications for vacancies advertised."
academic and research appointments Enlarge graph

Online recruitment was responsible for 69% of university appointments

  • Online recruitment sites (comprising the universities' own recruitment pages, jobs.ac.uk and other online recruitment websites) attracted 69% of the applicants and appointments
  • The universitie's own recruitment pages were the most effective source of university job appointments (48%).
  • jobs.ac.uk was over twice as effective as other recruitment websites combined in attracting candidates who were appointed to university posts
Online recruitment Enlarge graph

jobs.ac.uk supplied 15% of all appointed university candidates

ajobs.ac.uk supplied 15% of all appointed university candidates Enlarge graph
  • jobs.ac.uk supplied 15% of all appointed university candidates (from administrators and research assistants to technicians)
  • jobs.ac.uk is three times more effective than The Guardian, THES and the national journals combined for all university appointments
  • jobs.ac.uk is almost twice as effective in placing candidates in all university posts as local print media

" The response to our adverts placed on jobs.ac.uk is excellent. We have found that we receive a high number of good quality candidates, in particular for Research roles. We have also noticed an increase in the number of applications submitted for non-academic positions."

jobs.ac.uk recruited 31% of all academic staff

jobs.ac.uk recruited 31% of all academic staff Enlarge graph
  • jobs.ac.uk recruited 31% of all university academic staff compared to 8% from other media

jobs.ac.uk is the most effective recruitment media for managerial appointments

  • jobs.ac.uk is over three times more effective than The Guardian, THE and the national journals, in attracting candidates into universities' professional and managerial posts
  • jobs.ac.uk is almost twice as effective as local press for managerial appointments
jobs.ac.uk is the most effective recruitment media for managerial appointments Enlarge graph

10 Universities kindly gave us their recruitment data on 63,000 job application forms and nearly 3,000 jobs. Our thanks go to:

top ten clients

How can our survey help you improve your recruitment strategy?

Monitoring your recruitment data can help your university save money by targeting the most effective advertising sources and helping your overall recruitment strategy. A few tips we have learnt along the way are:

  • Assign a unique reference number to your advert for every place you send it (eg. JAC123 for jobs.ac.uk or GUA123 for The Guardian).
  • Ensure your application form lists individual media sources. A blanket 'online' category is not specific enough when there are so many major jobs boards operating online.
  • Encourage people to fill out the "where did you hear about this job" question accurately - be clear as to why you are collecting the data and that they don't think it is a test of how widely read they are!
  • Make sure recruitment data is stored on a database or in central records.
  • If you haven't got an applicant tracking system(ATS) consider employing a temporary member of staff every quarter to enter all the details onto a spreadsheet or database and produce reports.
  • When analysing recruitment data, feedback information to the departments advertising the jobs and help them make better informed decisions the next time they advertise.
  • Encourage your staff to recommend jobs to their friends and family. You could do this via your internal newsletter and website.

If you would like to participate in, or receive further information about the recruitment effectiveness research we are doing at jobs.ac.uk please feel free to contact us by telephone: +44 (0)24 7657 2839 or by email