Abstract :-

Recruitment is one of the remarkable functions in Human resource management due to its importance and relevance for being successful in achieving pre-desired goals via suitable and appropriate employees. Newspaper job advertisements have become popular recruitment method due to its inherent advantages compared to other recruitment methods. The survey of newspaper job vacancy advertisements as a recruitment method in Sri Lankan context attempts to verify trends of Sri Lankan newspaper job vacancy advertisements in terms of eleven newspaper job advertisement characteristics; job category, size, appearance, etc. The Sunday Observer is one of the prominent medias for job vacancy advertisement that is being used by several organizations in Sri Lanka. In that case, source of data collection for this research relied on the Sunday Observer vacancy advertisements. Through analyzing 800 newspaper advertisements during the period of 06 months in 2014, it is identified that majority of job advertisements are reported in the field of marketing related advertisements, second highest demand found to be in accounting related jobs and next, jobs on operations management. Majority of job advertisements are neither picture oriented and nor colored advertisements. Sample statistics says, most of organizations have reluctant to reveal remuneration packages in their advertisements but they interest to publish their advertisement as open advertisement. The findings of the study is empirical significant for existing literature in Sri Lanka context while practically significant for top management, human resource managers/decision makers of corporations and general job seekers for their job related decisions.

Keywords– recruitment methods, newspapers, job advertisements, analysis