Monster plan to counter fall in jobs vacancies

ONE of the leading online recruitment agencies has come up with a novel idea to help fill 500 jobs on Monday, June 9, 2003.

On that day applicants will be given free access to the Monster.ie’s website through designated internet cafes located in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. The company has devised this novel plan to help counter the fall in jobs vacancies.

Alan Townsend, group managing director, said his site now carries about 3,000 job vacancies against 4,500 18 months ago, reflecting a softer jobs market due to the slow down in the economy.

In the current environment Mr Townsend said the jobs market is stagnant. “We are not seeing more opportunities being created,” he said.

In the current difficult climate the real “challenge is to keep employment levels as they are and that in itself would be an achievement over the next 18 months,” said Mr Townsend, who is former managing director of HMV in Ireland.

A major radio and press campaign is underway in the run up to Monday free day on line for companies and job hopefuls.

The key, said Mr Townsend is to attract as many candidates and companies to the site on Monday.

It costs 300 for a job posting on Monster.ie and for a day the opportunity is being made available to all companies to post jobs for free.

The idea is to get as many vacancies up for as many people to look at as possible.

Monster.ie said it had been looking for some kind of initiative to highlight the fact that there are now more jobs than ever on line and to try and get across the accessibility of the internet for people.

Online Monster.ie gets 20,000 site visits in Ireland and it is hoping to generate 60,000 on Monday and to fill 500 jobs.

All going well Monster.ie hopes to double the number of jobs on its site on the day.