There has been a really active post on the discussion board over the past two weeks entitled CV Library – Fact or Fiction?. I’ve been very surprised at the amount of controversy this post has caused. What it has highlighted is that recruiters are a cynical bunch (actually, that’s no surprise to me!), who ARE interested in job board metrics and that not all job boards are working off the same system (which again I already knew).
CV-Library have posted a response on the forum but it also prompted me to give Lee Biggins (MD of CV-Library) a call to see what reaction they’d had directly. This is what we talked about.
I asked Lee ………
What is your initial response to the post on the UK Recruiter Forum
Our initial reaction was actually very positive, it’s great to see that so many people have been comparing us alongside the top job boards and that recruiters have become so interested in our stats, although when I read through all the replies, it has certainly highlighted that we clearly needed to sort out the figures once and for all! The team here at CV-Library have been very focused on servicing our clients, winning new clients and ensuring our service is constantly improving – we really have just been getting on with things and you could say we have been a little naive with our stats.
Do you actually know how many unique visitors you have?
The stats previously quoted were unique visits not unique visitors, which are more commonly recognised throughout the sector. CV-Library will shortly be adopting this industry standard.
Since our quoted figures have been highlighted on the forum we have investigated how to measure our stats to conform to the industry standards. We now have a correct figure, which we will be releasing in due course but right now I can tell you they are well in excess of a million.
Audit (why have you not had one, do you plan on having one)?
CV-Library are very client driven, and as clients have never requested our unique user figures in the past, we never felt it necessary. We are now looking at an ABC audit within the next 12 months. Traditionally CV-Library has always offered demonstrations of the database to all recruiters before taking any payment. A "Try before you buy" This obviously proved to recruiters that CV-Library’s advertising could be verified with a snapshot of the service being offered. We have never had any major complaints and we pride ourselves on this.
So has there been a mistake in the numbers published?
Not a single client has ever queried our figures directly to us – again maybe naivety on our behalf; however as previously mentioned, we have always been very client / candidate focused. Unfortunately we did happen to make a mistake with one particular figure that was featured in an advert recently. job searches were quoted as job applications, which indeed would be a very far fetched number to quote!!
So, thats a pretty comprehensive response, however, feel free to continue the discussion on the forum or here on the blog.
I wouldn’t say that the Unique Visitors metric is an industry standard for recruitment so much as it is a commonly accepted standard for all websites in any industry
I have a couple of points to make here.
1. Whilst the stats provided by many sites can be misleading, those for CVLibrary, at the very least demonstrate that they are sitting at the top table of the most successful generalist job boards in the country. They are there on merit, and, aside from Jobserve, are the only major job board still to be independently owned.
2. The rates that CVLibrary charge, are an absolute bargain, when compared to other similar sites.
3. The depth and spread of their CV database is the best in the country (not in every single sector, but as a generalist site).
4. CVLibrary insist that every client experiences the site before commiting to signup.
I am speaking from personal experience, and have not been paid for this advert.
Stephen O’Donnell
I take it they are a client of yours at 1Job Steven….
That aside, look lets face it they recently lost a lot of credibility by making a lot of unsubstantiated claims that were simply not true – Its that simple.
It doesn’t matter if it was a school boy error or something more serious in an attempt to deceive by making false claims the bottom line is that credibility was lost. If they can tell a few porkpies over traffic levels, what other claims are false?
The only way out of this hole now for them is to have a professional audit by abc which like it or not is the recognised industry advertising audit standard in the UK and then they can prove their market reach based on that audit. Until then anything else they claim may be taken with a pinch of salt – frankly if a site has over a million unique visitors a month which is what CV Library are now claiming they should jump at having an audit done not say “within the next 12 months”
They are not “sitting at the top table” as you put it. They are a second tier cv search site based on their recent actions. If they want to “up their game” they need to behave in a more professional way. Also, they are not the only independently owned site anyway and ownership has nothing to do with advertising standards. You don’t see the likes of Monster, Jobsite, TotalJobs, Jobserve or anyone else for that matter making bogus advertising metric claims on this scale do you?
At the end of the day Steven, they may well offer a cheap price and they may well offer good value and a trial to prove it but they made a serious blunder here and it’s a lesson for all sites – Don’t make claims that you cant substantiate!