Digital Recruiting

“When agencies don’t get it”

I tell you what – it’s enough to make an entire section of this small industry of ours paranoid. It would seem, from a reliable source, that during a recent training session provided by a leading industry luminary to a major publisher, the audience were informed that “agencies don’t get it” and although we’re “easily influenced” they’re best of “going straight to the client”.

I of course can’t deny that isn’t the case in all instances, but there are a fair number of us working with our clients and media partners to further the Digital cause and build expertise and centres of excellence in executing recruitment solutions within this emerging medium.

The reality is that the agencies (or at least those who have invested the time, money and resource to learn over the past few years) do ‘get it’, and are not that ‘easily influenced’ – as you will no doubt see from some of the opinions and views shared elsewhere in this blog. Not to mention that, just taking the combined TMP & Barkers client spend alone, there’s a big slice of the agency side of the industry that have quite established teams of professionals with a proven record of not doing too bad a job of “getting it”, at least for those clients who are interested in having “digital got” for them.

After the “feeling” (read: angry outbursts and disgruntled comments) generated by my previous post maybe the odds are really stacked against us agencies and the writing’s indeed on the wall (as so many old hands have feared and prophesised for at least 5 years now), but I truly don’t think so. 

I’d like to think that there’s increasingly a place for us to add that all important value and actually assist clients in making sense of the recruitment market and the myriad of candidate engagement channels on offer to them (whether on or offline).

The recruitment marketplace is more confused / confusing than ever, so I’d argue there’s even more reason for an agency / client relationship to help ensure the greatest bang for their buck and the most appropriate response for their rupee. To unlock cost and time efficiencies in any kind of marketing engagement you still need to know where to have your message, what it needs to be saying and how it should be saying it.

If agencies could sustain themselves when there was just the choice between the Times, Telegraph or Guardian (and I don’t believe it was just because they had a mac and a bromide machine and the clients didn’t) then surely the agencies’ future is bright, but it really falls to the agencies themselves to put in place the resource and expertise to understand the options and deliver.

Even, what may be seen by many to be, this late in the virtual day there is still time for agencies to resource to the correct levels in the necessary aspects of the Digital environment and start adding Digital value to their client relationships – clearly a market segment that cannot be ignored.  It is probably true – a disconcerting number of agencies may not ‘get it’ – but to tar all of us with a single brush is just wrong.*
*(although if you truly believed my previous post was tarring all media colleagues with the same said single tar brush, which I emphatically re-state it was not, then I do see that perhaps this is some form of wonderful ironic justice coming back at me and my agency peers ;-).

Here’s to the future then, and a grown up industry where real value and insight is tracked, measured and valued, with people judged by the reality of their delivery rather than hollow words and sound-bytes.

So what do the rest of you think (from both sides of the fence – or indeed the 3rd side too, that of clients, yours is the insight that really matters most at the end of the day anyway)? It’d be great to hear from you, so please join the debate – go on, it won’t bite.

:-)

McDonalds put faith in staff to act as brand voice

Three cheers for McDonalds who are putting faith in their staff to act as the voice of the McDonalds brand, as PR Week reported recently.

Nick Hindle, McDonalds PR Chief, said at the PR and the Media conference that

"Clear messaging is delivered by people, not corporations. We need to inform and empower staff. They are the ones who talk about McDonalds on a daily basis. They are far more believable than a corporation."

He goes onto say:

"You don't manage your brand these days, you influence it... We should give staff the confidence they need - some will talk to the press, some will blog, some will talk to their mates down the pub. It requires a lot of bottle to give up control, but the upsides are significant."

This will be highly familiar to anyone who has read Naked Conversations;  ( book,  blog ) Basically, the premise is we're entering a new era when marketing won't be broadcast based ( i.e I, the brand, speak when I want to speak), but conversation led - that is, I the brand talk to you the consumer when you want to listen.

The point is that brand conversations are happening anyway; as a corporation, you can either try and control it ( no chance ) - or you join it, and you let your people speak.

Consumers / Candidates are incredibly savvy these days, and can smell didactic corporate-comms a mile off. So if you want to engage the two C's, what other choice have you got than to let your people talk? (Naked Conversations envisages a time when consumers will be distrustful of brands that dont have a staff voice.)

All of this is particularly important for recruitment, of course. I'd bet my house that everyone who reads this blog has been guilty at some point of producing recruitment marketing that had precious little to do with the actual experience of the vast majority of employees. That was possible when the method was broadcast (print ads, brochures, web 1.0) and when those employees don't have a voice. But employers trying to project a false / romanticised   image in the era of blogs, myspace and twitter however are going to be in big trouble (and with good reason).

So well done to the McD people.. if you have the cajones to do it, then perhaps other employers (with less to lose, frankly) will follow suit.

Paul Harrison

A Blog is a Blog is a Blog, that's why it's a Blog!

Without doubt this blog has taken off quicker than any us ever imagined it would. The traffic is growing week on week and I think I can speak for all of us when I say how grateful we are for all the positive comments we’ve received about it. I’d also like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has got on their high horse and posted a comment…..long may it continue. I for one have really enjoyed the debate we’ve had so far and I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s contribution regardless of whether I’ve agreed with your point of view or not. I’d also like to say a big thank you to everyone who has either blogged about us or linked to us.

There have however been three or four incidents now in the last few weeks that have stirred me to write this.

The point of any blog is to get people talking passionately about something they are interested in, something that other people can then comment on, perhaps take exception to and certainly debate within the same forum. The fact that the main authors on Digital Recruiting compete with each other aggressively on a day to day basis in business, makes the co-operation and sharing of information that we have on this blog even more interesting to me.

Recently though we have started to get some negative feedback from people we have apparently “upset”. Interestingly this feedback has come either via a third party or offline (i.e via phone calls or face to face). I’m all for debate and constructive criticism but would rather that it happened on the blog itself….that after all is the point!

Digital Recruiting isn’t Onrec, it isn’t Ri5, it also isn’t a vehicle to be nice about everything in the industry for the sake of “growing the market”. What I hope it is becoming is a centre for sensible informed debate. I think it is great that there is now a place where we can talk about some of the things that aren’t so good about online recruitment or that we would like to change. By finally getting these things out in the open we can start to all make things better and “grow the industry” that way.

I think we need to mature as bloggers and blog readers and take note of what they do in the US. If someone feels affronted by something that has been written about them there, they just blog back and move on. Today’s exchange between cheezhead and the jobster blog about vertical job search engines is a great example of this!

For those who haven’t then please read the disclaimer on the about page. We are just expressing our opinions not planning some evil conspiracy to “pick on people” or “tar everyone with the same brush”. Digital Recruiting is a place for everyone who reads it to express their opinions; it’s as simple as that. The editorial policy (if that is the right word in the context of a blog!) couldn’t be simpler. Anyone can post in the comments providing what you write is in someway relevant to the debate. If anyone wants to get up on their high horse proper and write as a guest author all you have to do is email [email protected]. Providing what you’ve got to say is interesting and debate worthy then we’ll publish it.

The debate we have been having …

I was talking with a friend from the media earlier today and we were discussing in great depth how an agency had screwed them over. Personally I was shocked when I found out what had happened – maybe I have spent too much time in the nice world of digital (I have only worked in the recruitment side for a few years).  It was the same story that I came across when I first started in media.

On the back of this it has really made me think that it is important to have this debate – it has been going on for a very long time and I think you will find the rest of the media world has grown out of this stage.  Believe me, go and spend some time in the non-recruitment sectors and you still might see the odd temper getting raise but you see a far more professional working relationship.

I am not going to bother going into why this is still going on … the blog is not big enough but it did make one thing really come out in my mind. Here is a list of some of the tactics I working with people on when running media planning/buying training.

1. Do your homework (find out prevailing range of prices being charged)
2. Work out the best balance between long-and short-term buying
3. Allow plenty of time for to-ing and fro-ing
4. Keep ‘em guessing - always have a “Plan B”
5. Tell ‘em only what you want them to know
   e.g. target audience(s)
6. NEVER, NEVER confuse “cheap” with value-for-money

It is that last point really. 

I think a lot of the time people forget that our aim is to get the right people into the right job at the right time for the right price.  So shall we start sorting out these engagement issues and start focusing on what we are should be doing.

Maybe we should look at how manufacturing organisations work with both product design and component organisations to deliver their solutions!

A good bit of six-stigma quality being introduced!

We have got to change it – this debate is great but how do we moving things forward?

IDEAS PEOPLE

Response - when media reps talk with forked tongues.

OK OK.

All getting a little out of hand here. I never wanted this to be a them and us discussion, but can see where I was perhaps wrong to think it probably wouldn’t develop otherwise – to be honest I intended it as more of a “can’t we all please work together on this” type piece and I hope that re reading the original  post makes that clear.

I’m sure most readers will appreciate that naming and shaming, as I’ve been asked to do by someone, just ain’t possible or particularly constructive. Let’s try and be grown up about this and see it for what it is.

If, as media, you want to give your inventory away then so be it (I understand the economics of establishing candidate and vacancy critical mass and ongoing growth, I really do). It’s my client relations that are of paramount importance to me – and if there’s one thing I hate more than anything it’s being made to look that we might have been trying to screw clients over, because we’re not. And that’s what this is about.

Striking deals and getting best value for money is an integral part of our symbiotic relationship. The vast majority of our dealings and relationships are great, it’s just galling when so much hard work and effort (on both fronts) with established media is wasted, all be it on (thankfully) few instances. Keep the faith people – we’re all reading this blog because we believe in what we do.

Perhaps I / agencies are ivory towered, perhaps I’m personally naive to think that we can be grown up about this, but you know what – I’m going to keep looking for and working with those people / media that I can build long lasting and mutually respectful relationships with. For me this is long term and I’ll stand and fall by the service, understanding and value I (and my team) bring to our clients’ table in helping them resolve what digital recruitment means to them and how best to exploit it.

I’ll state again – “we’re all pulling the same way – we want the clients to go online and have a great experience and for that to be the start of a beautiful and long lasting and fruitful relationship.” You agree – then great, let’s keep talking and working together. You disagree – then fine, it’s a free country, just as long as you, as Media Owners / publishers (not media reps who, perhaps I should have been more clear showing my understanding, are in reality just the messengers) are aware of how that’s perceived both within agencies and in the wider client marketplace.

All friends again?

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery...

..but this is ridiculous.

'Listening to the conversation' should be a part of any cogent social media marketing strategy (Factiva have produced a good white paper on this subject - free download here ) so we track mentions of Carve, our clients, and some worthy competitors using a variety of tools including Google Alerts, Technorati and Sphere   

Anyway, we received two Google alerts for our client itsalesjobs.com  -  triggered by their domain name, which led us to the following pages:

• http://www.admiz.com/view_project.php?sb_id=1087
• http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/PHP-NET/Clone-itsalesjobs-com-web-site.html

So what we're basically looking at here is someone wanting an exact replica of the site - a rip off - to presumably launch a competitor service. And look at the prices being quoted! The winner bidder appears to be AplusEsolutions in Pakistan, for around US$280  - at 8US$ per hour...

Has anyone experienced anything like before? Is there anything you can do to stop it?

Meanwhile, I'll see if AplusEsolutions will do us a clone of ebay for less than 300 notes.. :)

A Night Worth Networking

  Just wanted to say a belated thank you to Louise from UK Recruiter and Dan Mcguire from Broadbean (looking like Blind Date contestants with their name badges on in this picture!) for inviting me to speak at the Recruiters Network last week. I thought it was really well organised and attended. Well worth making a note of the next one for those of you who couldn't make it.

It was also good to meet fellow bloggers Stephen Fowler and Mike Taylor....you never know this blogging malarkey might just catch on!

Finally a special mention must go to Joe Slavin from Fish4, not only for being a great person to do a joint presentation with, but also for stealing the show by falling off the stage in mid speech!! I can't wait to see the video!

Matt

When media reps talk with forked tongue

It’s very much a cut and thrust business out there – we know that. As competition increases on a daily basis for active and passive job seekers eyeballs alike, so too does the race to try and ensure that each site has the most appropriate and largest selection of vacancies available (both real and recruitment consultants’ – sorry, I mean direct and recruitment consultants’).

We, as I’m sure is the same of all my peers, strive to get the best value for money for our clients – and often that means pushing our media sales colleagues for deals and inventory lists that can entice clients to get on and realise the benefits of a particular site. But we’re all pulling the same way – we want the clients to go online and have a great experience and for that to be the start of a beautiful and long lasting and fruitful relationship.

But something that doesn’t really help is when we’re made to look like fools (many readers who know me will probably comment that I don’t personally generally need too much help on that front anyway).

If you’re gonna deal – then deal. If you’re gonna play all hard, tough and immovable then do so. But if you believe what you tell us – that agencies have an important part to play in your business acquisition and delivery to the direct client market place – then tell us what really is your best price (when pushed). Two things really annoy us agency types – when you’re all full of yourself and tell us one thing and then crumble  when in front of the client, and when you cut us so far out of the deal that if booked through us you tell the client that you’ll increase the charge by 15%. Because if you believe what you tell us then that’s a very strange way to prove it.

Anyone else had similar experiences? Or from a media perspective, am I just sitting in my ivory tower and simply not getting the reality of where you're coming from? Be very interested to hear from anyone on this.