Top execs using work hours to search for new jobs

Thursday 3pm peak hour for skiving

London, UK - February 19^th, 2009 – According to research released today by the executive career service Experteer.co.uk, the busiest hour for online job searches is 3pm on a Thursday. The results suggested that most of the job hunting is done during work hours, with employees making the most of free internet in the workplace. The research is based on the search records of over 600,000 active members of Experteer across the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland.

The study of job searching trends across Europe found that most job hunters are using their mid-afternoon coffee breaks to scour the internet for job opportunities, with 3pm being the most popular time of day almost universally in Europe. Germany is the only country where most searching is done only slightly earlier, immediately after lunchtime at 2pm. In the UK, almost a quarter (24%) of job hunters look for jobs online after their lunch break, between 2pm and 4pm BST. The morning is consistently a quieter period across Europe, with only 17% searching between 9am and 11am BST in the UK.

Peak day and time for searching for jobs according to country:

The study found that even in the economic downturn, job seekers prefer to keep their weekends free for personal time, with Saturdays and Sundays remaining the least popular days for job hunting across Europe. Less than one in five searches is done at weekends in the UK (15%), Germany (15%), France (18%) and Switzerland (18%), and less than a quarter in Italy (23%). Considerably fewer searches are also done on Fridays in all of the countries, suggesting job hunters are busy planning their weekends or tying off the working week.

Experteer’s study has also found that executives in different European countries spend varying amounts of time online in each job hunting session. Job hunters in the UK tend to spend an average of 4 minutes on each session whilst those in Italy spend just less than 5 minutes searching for jobs online in each session . This also varies according to the time of year, with job hunters spending considerably less time searching at the end of the year. Longer search time was recorded across Europe in Jan, suggesting job searchers are more active in looking for a chance in the New Year.

Torsten Muth, Managing Director of Experteer.co.uk, commented: “Our research suggested that execs tend to use their 5-minute coffee break at work to browse online for job opportunities, which doesn’t strike me as the most effective approach. We still see plenty of executive roles in the market, although people might not have expected this in the current economic climate. Execs just have to spend more time to look further for the most suitable next move, as there are still plenty of excellent opportunities out there.

We also advise our members to spare more time during the evenings or weekends to look for the executive opportunities, when they are not under pressure or time restraints. Rushing through job ads at work will only increase people’s stress level, especially when they are worried about being seen to be looking for another job.”

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