Recruiters reports clash again over IT&T jobs market

Stan Beer
Monday, 12 May 2008 17:35

IT People - Enterprise

"Historically, the report that we produce is directly related to the number of positions on the job board at the time," says Best People Solutions principal Richard Blahn. 

"What you can see from the graphs in our reports is that yes it will fluctuate and you will get that seasonal downturn around the Christmas and January period. Also with last year being an election year that probably hit a bit earlier and from what we found lasted a bit longer. The new Government obviously had to get embedded, projects were put on hold, and now, looking at the figures especially for the ACT, those projects are just coming back on line."

As far as job boards are concerned, Olivier believes that sourcing jobs from the three largest jobs boards provides a larger and and therefore statistically more reliable sample. However, Best argues that taking jobs just from Seek, the dominant jobs board in Australia with a claimed market share of 65%, is in fact more accurate because it avoids duplication of job ads.

"We only count the jobs on Seek because to be honest anybody advertising an IT position and using a third party job board is pretty much going to be 100% on Seek," says Blahn. "What you'll tend to find is that the advertisements get duplicated (on other job boards) which gives a false reading."

Robert Olivier agrees that seasonal adjustments to jobs figures are less pronounced in months like March and April, than the traditional December to February period. However, according to Olivier, the firm's raw figures for April are even worse than the seasonally adjusted ones.

"Our raw IT figure (for April) was down 5.21% and seasonally adjusted was down 1.92%," says Olivier. "There's no argument about the duplication (of jobs across diffrent jobs boards). That's why we choose and index and we tend to encourage people not to quote overall growth numbers of ads. There was always duplication in print and there's even more duplication online.

“By using three job boards you're spreading variations. If those other boards are not as significant, then sure that's going to reflect on our overall figure but at least we have a sample of three rather than a sample of one.

"The weakness you have with Seek's own research is the same weakness you have with Best's figures is that you're looking at a sample of one. Ask an economist whether that's healthy and they'll tell you no. CONTINUED