Bandit accounting

In the comments to the last thread, Jonathan Pearce pointed out that the Guardian is a supplicant of the state whose income is largely derived from its position as the state's advertising agency for government jobs.

This reminded me of a suggestion of a few years back which the Tories made, namely that the government should set up a dedicated website for all state positions, saving huge sums of money and doing away with the inbuilt political bias of the current situation.

In response to this, John Band wrote a dismissive artice here, in which he pointed out that the costs were likely to be far more than the Tories anticipated.

For starters, the £5m a year cost is a gross understatement. In the private sector, market leading online job site Monster.com spends $187m on non-marketing non-wage costs to offer 12 million jobs a year. The civil service site would offer about 1.2 million jobs a year (20%ish turnover on 5.5ish million public sector workers); even assuming Monster’s size generates no economies of scale, then this takes the cost up to $19m (£10m).

Now, given that it costs the government £40,000 a year to run a blog, and given that Monster.com’s original setup costs have been written off, do we think that the real cost will be in the £5m bracket, the £50m bracket, or the £500m bracket...?

Now, it's hard to argue with the idea that the cost is likely to be higher than anticipated, but take a look at those Monster figures. $187m to offer 12m jobs a year. So each job is costing $15 or so to process, plus wages!!?! What does he think they are spending all this money on. It's simply not possible.

If you follow the press release, you will find that the actual figure is $187,204. There's no £000 in the column heading. John is out by a factor of 1000. Whoops.

To be fair, JB goes on to make some fairer points about access to the internet for some poor people, and as I've said I agree with his position that the state would cock it up. My solution would be to use Monster.com. It's free, it's widely used already, and there would be no question of political bias either way.

Comments

[Kit]

Why can't public service jobs be advertised via monster.com like any other employer?

[Bishop Hill]

That's what I said!

[Kit]

I knew that! I was really just emphasizing your point! Really I was. ;)

[DC]

1) I really don't believe that all those poor people without internet access go out and buy the Grauniad to look for a job. If that's the argument then they should be advertising them in the Sun or the Mirror.

2) Public libraries and Citizens Advice usually provide free access to the internet adn there's no reason you couldn't stick an internet terminal in the Job Centre.

At the end of the day most of the jobs advertised in the Grauniad appeal to the predominantly Labour supporters of the great state.

[Bishop Hill]

A very large percentage of jobs could go online. There may be some where the employee might be expected to be illiterate which could be done elsewhere.