7. ESS WEBSITE

The ESS has had its own website since 1995; in October 1999 it was completely overhauled and many new services added. The number of visitors to the pages (in Slovene) increased considerably; in 1999 there were around 100,000 visitors, in 2000, 232,678, in 2001, 464,255, and in 2002, 631,865. On average, the ESS website was visited by 1,726 visitors a day. During this time they accessed 7,514,069 pages. An average total of 20,548 pages were accessed daily, which means that each visitor accessed an average of nearly ten pages. The average duration of each visit was almost eight minutes.

The most frequently visited categories, by visitor, to the ESS web pages were as follows:

1.      Jobsearch;

2.      News;

3.      About ESS activities;

4.      Search the ESS web pages;

5.      Presentation;

6.      What’s new.

Within individual sections, some sub-sections stand out in terms of number of visitors. In the About ESS activities section, the following sub-sections stand out in particular: Scholarships and loans, Public tenders by the ESS, For the unemployed and For employers. In the Jobsearch section, the sub-section that stands out is Current vacancies (in 2002, the ESS published data on 29,292 vacancies); Search jobseekers and I register as a jobseeker saw a slightly lower number of visitors. In the About us section, the most frequently visited sub-sections were Addresses of ESS Local Offices and Regional Offices, Legislation and ESS Organisation.

Jobsearch section

In order to ensure direct and automatic link-up between employers and jobseekers, a great deal of attention was given to the development of interactive programmes in the Jobsearch section. By 31 December 2002, 12,364 jobseekers had registered with the e-Job Exchange, which allows jobseekers to enter data, i.e. advertise themselves to future employers, and allows employers to carry out a search of jobseekers. At the end of 2002, 2,119 employers had registered to search the jobseekers database. In 2002 they sought new staff for 3,551 different vacancies (employers can repeat the search for workers for the same vacancy several times).

The number of jobseekers registered with the e-Job Exchange in all ROs considerably exceeds the number of vacancies. Due to the large number of registered jobseekers, employers have a considerable number of opportunities to find suitable candidates in this way. At the end of 2002, over 1,300 jobseekers who registered with the e-Job Exchange were residing abroad; at the same time, Slovenian employers advertised 100 vacancies abroad.

 A comparison between the educational structure of jobseekers and the vacancies advertised in 2002 in the e-Job Exchange category shows that this option was mostly used by better-qualified jobseekers and that most vacancies advertised by employers seeking staff could be described as demanding.

The Current vacancies section provides the service of subscribing for information on vacancies by email. Jobseekers are able to define the criteria (area, education level, professional title) under which the programme will automatically search for suitable vacancies, sending them to the subscriber’s email address on a weekly basis. According to the records, an average of 16,982 email messages on vacancies were sent out per week in 2002.

e-Exchange of Zois Scholarship Recipients

Since 2002 the ESS webpages have included the e-Exchange of Zois Scholarship Recipients, which replaces the presentations by Zois scholarship recipients, with the additional option of permanent and current offers to employers by Zois scholarship recipients to carry out research studies, graduate and Master’s theses, perform work experience or work for them; employers also have the opportunity to publish their requests for Zois scholarship recipients. The e-Exchange of Zois Scholarship Recipients can be used by current and past Zois scholarship recipients under the age of 35.

ESS web pages in English

Because of its many international links, the ESS has also set up web pages in English. These are not identical to the Slovene pages, of course, but were still visited in the second half of the year by 6,940 visitors (8,932 in the first half). In the second half of the year they were visited daily by 38 visitors (49 in the first half of the year); in total, 56,225 pages were accessed (87,540 in the first half of the year). This means that, on average, visitors accessed 308 pages (483 in the first half of the year) and the average duration of a visit was 17 minutes. The most visited pages were those relating to employment and unemployment trends and current news; visitors also showed interest in the most important development documents in the areas of employment and relating to the ESS.