The survey entitled "The Online Recruitment Benchmark Programme" has also revealed that only 12% of companies have said they would cut their budget allocation on online recruitment. Just 9% have indicated an intention to cut the number of jobs they will place with recruitment websites. Of employers not currently using the Internet to recruit, only 17% said that they prefer to use traditional methods when recruiting, while over a quarter (28%) are either considering using the Internet in the future or haven't thought about it yet.

According to William Reeve, Forrester's group director of European Data Products, " In order to grow to become a truly invaluable tool for UK employers, recruitment sites must listen to what current users are saying, both candidates and employers -- and act. The UK Online Recruitment Benchmark Programme has already revealed that candidates demand three fundamental criteria when hunting for jobs online -– locality, industry specialisation and personalisation. Now a third of employers are saying that too many inappropriate CVs and unsuitable candidates are disadvantaging career-orientated sites. Therefore, it's not surprising that more than three-quarters (78%) are not using the main feature offered to employers -- the candidate database. Online recruitment sites must act in the short term and evolve their offering to provide a more tailored focus. In the longer term, recruitment sites will need to provide both candidates and employers with a unique, specialist offering focusing on a particular industry or a particular type of candidate." To complete its study, Forrester polled 7,000 UK Internet users and 200 employers in February and March 2001. The company also interviewed the users of seven of the UK's leading online recruitment companies.