An end to paper advertising for medical sales jobs

It’s a conundrum I still can’t work out. It’s a bit like people buying CD’s for £14 when you can download them for half the price, it’s like people just can’t get out of the habit even though there appears to be only a cost and no benefit.

When I began as a new medical sales recruitment agency 7 years ago, everybody advertised on the Daily telegraph once a week. I used to spend around £1000 per week for a few centimetres in the back of the paper. At the time, there were advantages over the industry magazine. Advert for advert it was cheaper and the response wasn’t too bad, maybe 20-40 CVs for my £1000. Perhaps the most attractive part was that I could send over the advert Tuesday, then it would go in Thursday and responses would be coming in by Friday morning. To the contrary, the magazine was more expensive, and adverts were submitted 3 weeks before publication, thereby becoming out of date before it went out!! Response was comparably poor, often receiving less than 10 CVs for a £1200 advert, although a great proportion would be experienced in medical sales. There was a feeling that the magazine was a must to see yourself in colour up against your competitors.

Internet advertising in the form of jobs boards is a totally different entity. One can advertised 100s of jobs at a fraction the cost of paper. Advertising is ‘real time’ and ‘constant’ and not governed by publication dates. Candidates are sent job alerts instantaneously and can respond to new jobs at a click minutes after it has been posted. Response rates are many times stronger than paper, with a £300 per month package often producing upwards of 50 CVs per month, with increasing numbers of experienced medical sales people using the internet.

So is there any case at all left of advertising medical sales jobs on paper? Some say that the industry magazines go to the right people and are therefore better. However, if you are a recruitment consultant looking to make vacancies, all that really matters is how many ‘place-able’ candidates can you get, and at what cost. Is there really anybody left who wouldn’t search for medical sales jobs on the internet?

If you have any views, mail us info@ukcareers.co.uk , we may publish your thoughts.