Johnston Press creates jobs after investment in digital recruitment business, says MD of recruitment advertising Joe Slavin
An upturn in the economy and has led to deeper investment from Johnston Press into recruitment services as part of its digital drive, according to MD of recruitment advertising Joe Slavin.
Relaunch: Johnston press is investing in recruitment business
The publisher’s Jobs Today platform relaunched in May using platform provider Madgex, signalling a major upgrade for its previous four-year-old site. The new platform comes around two years after launching its Smartlist packages, in which Jobs Today staff compile lists of suitable candidates for jobs for recruiters, and its services are now being driven by editorial content across the Johnston press portfolio.
“The timing is perfect – great job market and now on a great platform that’s ready to face off against the future,” Slavin told The Drum. “Job boards have changed a lot over the last 20 years, but the reality is it hasn’t made recruiters lives that much easier than in the old days when they just put up a sign in their window or an ad in the paper.
“We know the tool, we know the tricks, we know how to filter candidates, so because that’s what we do for a living we launched the Smartlist. It’s a very different approach to the job business than we’ve had before. Traditionally, a business like ours came from newspaper or online adverts. This is a much more enhanced service, and it’s going better than we thought.
“We have also wedded the news content more with the jobs content and we imagine that will help make us look more appealing to Google, and that we will do better now in Google results than we have in the past.”
Slavin – who was previously CEO at Fish4 - estimates at least three years of growth and stability in the recruitment market, and the site is currently pulling in around one million unique users each month, although he admits the figures are modest when compared to established recruitment sites such as Monster. The launch of the new platform-friendly website has prompted mobile traffic to increase from a quarter to 40 per cent, and the number of applications received has gone up by a fifth since the site changeover.
The service is also driving internal recruitment, and the publisher is advertising for an additional 15 people to join the recruitment team’s number of 80.
The investment in the digital product comes amid a heavier digital drive at Johnston Press. At the beginning of the year, the publisher brought in Jeff Moriarty, formerly of The Boston Globe, as chief digital and product officer, and digital revenue across the company grew by nearly a fifth in 2013.
The publisher has struggled in recent years with heavy debt commitments and has cut jobs in a bid to slash costs. However, senior executives at Johnston Press are optimistic that a recent share issue – part of a £360m refinancing package that will see BSkyB take a 1.6 per cent stake in the company - will allow the publisher enough breathing space to invest money back in the business.