Americans hitting second-tier job search sites a lot more

It’s not surprising that Americans are hitting the category that online ratings company comScore calls “career services & development” more than ever. Many mid-level job sites like SnagAJob have had 30 to 60 percent growth between June 2008 and 2009.
But a new report from comScore reveals a mixed bag of results that varies wildly from site to site. Top-ranked CareerBuilder, as well as the third-place Monster, both had no growth in the past year, according to comScore. The total sector has only grown 10 percent since last June, before the barrage of layoffs that threw so many out of work.
CareerBuilder, Yahoo! HotJobs, and Monster are the top three sites, with 21,704, 17,861, and 14,472 unique visitors respectively in June 2009. Yahoo’s 2009 number is 23 percent higher than last year’s. But CareerBuilder’s traffic is actually 1 percent less than June 2008, and Monster’s traffic has only grown six percent.
The ten percent growth for the sector cited in comScore’s press release mostly came from Internet users hitting not just the top sites, but also visiting second-tier sites Indeed, Job.com, SnagAJob, Simply Hired and JobsOnline. All of these sites experienced 30 to 50 percent growth, with 2009 traffic up to 8,046 for Indeed, a 59 percent rise over last year.
One thing comScore’s data doesn’t do is break out how much of the traffic across multiple sites are the same people. You can’t get the size of the sector by adding up the sites’ individual stats. Unlike search engines, where users show a loyalty to one site, many people visit multiple sites during a job search. ComScore’s stats suggest that a small fraction of Americans seeking new work are hitting more sites in the process, looking at SnagAJob as well as CareerBuilder. The most common job categories searched are customer service, warehouse, and sales.
Accoring to comScore, 34 percent of  the Internet’s estimated 193,896,000 American users hit one or more job sites in June. That’s up only a small bump from last year’s 31 percent figure. The burning question seems to be: Why aren’t more unemployed people using these sites? “Job and career-related resources continue to be one of the fastest-growing categories online,” comScore senior vice president Jeff Hackett said in the prepared press release. Ten percent growth doesn’t feel all that fast.