Australian Computer Society’s (ACS) latest report paints a favourable employment picture for IT professionals.  By and large, IT professionals are faring well with  24.7% of respondents experiencing some form of unemployment at some stage in the last five years – down from 29% of respondents in 2007.

An interesting finding from the ACS report is how IT professionals rate the effectiveness of different channels to find jobs. Respondents were asked to rate, on a scale of 1 to 4 (1 being the best),  the best source of jobs from four choices – recruitment agencies, newspapers, networking/word of mouth and the Internet. Judging from the graph below (the report does not provide respondents exact numbers or percentages) the Internet ranked highly as a channel for finding jobs. It’s interesting that word of mouth and networking are rated low by a significant number of respondents, while recruitment firms are ranked higher.

A similar study in 2008 by Hudson found jobseekers in Australia, on average, use more than five different channels to find a job. With the majority using popular channels like job boards, print media, recruitment firms and corporate websites.

Obviously, other channels to find jobs exists.  Social media alone offers a world of new possibilities. Factor in different types of professions, industry sectors and regional variables, and it’s not difficult to imagine that numerous channels for finding jobs, those not identified by existing studies, will exist.

In the recent Sources of Talent  report 20 different channels to find talent was identified. It would be interesting to see how each channel performs from the perspective of a job seeker. As information on employment opportunities become pervasive and easily accessible, job seekers’ behaviour will increasingly be scrutinised (at least by me).

(Note: SEEK’s Satisfaction & Motivation Report and CareerOne’s Hunting the Hunters also provide useful information on job seekers’ experience).

Part of the reason why the vast majority of recruitment advertising delivered low result is because the demographic data required to plan proper targeting strategies seldom exist. Say, if one doesn’t know the makeup or the supply and demand dynamics of the PHP community it will be difficult to plan and pull off a successful recruitment campaign. 

Instead, blame is often laid on the middleman (e.g. job boards, print etc) when essentially the problem is planning and targeting flaws as a result of poor availability of data. Any amount of advertising on job boards is not going to work if the demographic one targets do not frequent them. Paucity of data is the main culprit.  

Numbers do not explain everything but they allow us to form perspectives and can help in the shaping of effective targeting strategies. Any day, it’s better than guesswork.  

ACS is one of the leading professional associations regularly churning out good data on the IT industry.  If you are in the business of hiring IT professionals, at the very least peeking at their comprehensive compendium (pdf) will assist in forming clearer perspectives, which can be valuable in planning targeting strategies.