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29/10/2007

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John Whitehurst

I find most of the awards a waste of time ... sitting through an event earlier this year i noted with a number of other people the amount of campaigns that were winning but had actually failed to reach their original objectives.

The problem is - you can say what you want to say on the entry and it is not really checked.

In this case - who was on the judging panel? how was it looked at?

the navy site is amazing and their whole campaign is probably the best integrated online recruitment campaign of the last year.

the only way i can see WMP winning is if the judges took account of the different scale of budgets between the two accounts.

that still does not make it the best site - i never thought i would say this in my life - the navy rocks at the mo.

Louise Triance

Ben

I've suggested to Stephen O'Donnell at alljobsuk.com that, as the organiser of the awards, he might want to comment on your post.

However, I thought I'd answer John's questions about the judges. They are listed here http://www.alljobsuk.com/awards/awards2007/Norajudges.shtml

As one of them (for six years now) I have long wondered if we ought to be giving "supporting evidence". In fact we have a judges "meeting" later this week and that topic will no doubt be on the agenda.

Finally, and I'm not sure if I'm really meant to say this, I agree with you both that the Royal Navy was the better site (I even mentioned it in my blog post about the awards: http://ukrecruiter.typepad.com/uk_recruiter_blog/2007/10/national-online.html).

Kind regards
Louise

Ben

Hi Louise - thanks for that - I agree.

I didn't want to pick on the site in particular - there always has to be a winner, and usually a fair debate has taken place, but I just believe that we should definitely be able to understand why a site has been selected.

These awards are quite visible, and so it makes sense to explain why a particular site was chosen.

I'd also be interested in Stephen's comments - I'm sure there were very good reasons why that particular site was chosen, but in the interest of educating and growing market understanding and appreciation, supporting comments would go a long way.

I look forward to hearing more about the judging process for these awards,a s i think it will definitely add value.

Cheers Louise

Alex

In this still evolving field it’s a crying shame, but the fact of the matter is that so many people look to those who offer themselves as “leading lights” to point the way in matters such as best web practice. And it’s for that reason that I get so uptight when sloppy work (my personal opinion) is held up as best in class.

Ben was very nice in his evaluation of the West Midlands Police site – I’m really not a big fan for reasons already stated and many more he was too polite to draw extra attention to. It’s not all that terrible, and certainly out of those listed as finalists I think a good 2nd for what they tried to do, but it’s not the best site of 2007 by a long long shot (or, for that matter, can the pfj site surely be considered a better site than the McCarthy one?).

Now there’s no monopoly on the ability to evaluate leading web site design or web build best practice – but web site evaluation simply is NOT a purely subjective thing. There are fundamental elements that have to be right – or at least hold together well – for something to be even considered award worthy. Many of us spend a lot of time and energy learning lessons from our peers and betters in this and other sectors about usability and engagement of users within the digital medium. And I’m sorry to say, but I can see nothing in the NORAs judging committee’s collective decision making that indicates an appreciation of some of these key fundamental elements.

And please save your breath trying to hold me up as some kind of sore loser. Anyone who knows me at all knows I’m not – this is plain and simply based on the fact that the Royal Navy site is a far far better site than the Police site.

I’m just at a loss – the NORAs judging criteria says nothing about budget consideration (as John mentions) – so how else can you mark it down? It, quite simply, kicks the police’s butt. So let’s look at the judging criteria in full:

1. Ease of use, design, layout & speed.
Fair enough – although all of this as a single measure?? Surely this is really the nub of what makes a leading website? And what about elements such as appropriateness to the target audience?

2. Volume of available vacancies.
How is this a grown up metric to evaluate a site against?! What about graduate sites that would only have one programme to apply to? What about an organisation that doesn’t have hundreds of vacancies – does that make their site rubbish? I mean by all means evaluate the Job search delivery mechanism – god knows there’s plenty of rubbish out there – but “volume of available vacancies”? c’mon!

3. Volume of claimed visitors.
I have my own reasons to suspect that this information might not have actually been sourced – but again, what has this got to do with the best website of 2007?

4. Available facilities for jobseekers.
Are you talking interactive bells and whistles? OK – again – what about appropriateness? What about how engaging they are? How well delivered? Let’s hope that you didn’t give any points for the chat room facility on the police site that was clearly never enabled.

5. Prominence in targeted market.
How the hell are you judging this? Just too woolly a metric for an award judging.

Perhaps you can indeed ask your co-judges for some kind of response Louise – but for a collective that claims to have “established the authority and credibility to preside over these awards” I think there’s a big question over that credibility without some real insight into the how you can possibly justify that decision making process.

I await with baited breath.

Stephen O'Donnell

Hi guys.

I've read your comments above with interest, and agree with much of what you have said. As founder of the awards, I wanted to set out a transparent process which would recognise the achievement in online recruitment from a candidate's perspective.

As chair of the judging panel, I can't give my personal scores in all categories, except to say that I am a big fan of both the Royal Navy site, and in particular the McCarthy site. McCarthy came a very close second, and as such, I felt merited a special mention amongst this year's winners.

I really want the awards to have credibility, particularly as they are awarded from a candidate's perspective. The judging process is deliberately unscientific, but I take your point that we could be more focused on what precisely we are judging.

I am very open to suggestions on how to improve the NORA's, and will certainly implement any measure that will add to their integrity.

Please feel free to email me direct on [email protected]

Ben

Hi Stephen - thanks for coming back to us on this, and nice to hear the intent with which the awards were created.

Absolutely happy to have some input on what might help to add a little value to the process - if that's alright with you.

Maybe nearer the time that you are looking to run the next set of awards, we can have a bit of a catch up.

In no way do I want to prescribe what is right or wrong, but would absolutely be keen to help develop the quality of insight people can get as to why a winner is a winner!

My email address is [email protected] and let's catch up nearer the time perhaps.

Cheers

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