Digital Recruiting

Technology is great – but let’s not forget: it’s all about the HI!

HI? Of course an informal way to say hello (which I naturally extend to you), but in this instance I’m using it in the context of Human Interaction.

I spend a disproportionate amount of my life peering into this screen (mine as I write this, not yours as you read this – that would just be too Matrix!). Not as much as many I’m sure, but a damned sight more than is probably healthy. So as much as I can I try and force myself to think hard about the human aspect of things I’m involved in the delivery of – whether the candidate reading an advert / web page or navigating a site, an applicant completing a job application, a recruiters logical workflow whilst reviewing / processing response to a campaign etc etc etc. Unfortunately it’s all too easy in our world to look around and see glaring examples of where this hasn’t been considered at all – certainly not beyond a passing “and this is where on screen 8 of an undisclosed number of screens we’ll ask them to load a CV if they want to”.

But I heard a tale from an ex-colleague recently about a job application experience they had which just goes to prove that it’s as much a task for “Recruitment Professionals” to take on board as it is for a developer or web builder or creative or indeed anyone else in the recruitment communications industry.

Having applied to an ad with their CV to a recruitment consultant’s email address (as instructed) they waited. And waited. Nothing. Not a peep to even say the CV was there. An auto ack would have been simple and served a purpose (using technology to enrich the candidate experience whilst minimising the effort) – but that was clearly a step too far. So as the closing date neared they tried to call. Consultant not in (are they ever?), so left a message and sent an email asking just for confirmation that the CV had been received. A day passed. Then a weekend. Then another day or two – still nothing.

Anyway – I could go on, but am sure you get the picture. In the end having squeezed out a response that the CV had indeed been received and was being “considered”, there was then more of this silent treatment over the next week or two in terms of “thanks but no thanks”, “we’re still considering” or even “you’re crap – sod off”. It’s amazing and horrifying at the same time. Through all this process, managed by a consultant who would either be on a retainer for their “efforts” or else expecting a nice fat fee at the end of their “work”, the difference some Human Interaction, electronic based or personal, would have made would have been immense. And we’re not talking about a junior role here (perhaps for a £12k admin role this might be more excusable – although I personally think not).

So where am I going with this? Well just that in a career where I’ve been pretty lucky in having many of my career moves find me, this was a confirmation as to how job seeker experience, Employer Brand and Product Brand are inextricably linked. In short, this candidate certainly won’t be in a hurry to buy any of these guys financial products in the near future – and pretty unlikely to apply to them again.

Of course – this can always be fobbed off as a supplier delivering sub standard service etc etc, but if the HR / Resourcing team and the wider business truly appreciated the importance and impact of their Employer Brand then 1. why run down your internal team to the degree where you have to outsource in the first place 2. where are the checks to pick up how your activity is actually managed / the hard and fast SLAs that set out how a candidate should expect to be treated when being engaged by your brand?

I very much appreciate that it’s a full on board room battle to get Employer Brand and recruitment and retention the kind of business critical recognition it deserves – over an above the annual CEO statement that “people are our greatest asset”. I’d say today we’re in a better place than ever before to generate and track the MI (management information) to prove the bottom line impact and value of getting this part of the business right – but to do that you have to invest in the people who understand it and ensure that it penetrates every level of your business and recruitment process, with the technological investment to make this as efficient and effective as possible.

Cheap gets you employee churn (poor hiring decisions & poor retention of good people). Cheap gets you outsourced second rate service (which actually costs you more anyway). Cheap gets your business a greater marketing spend to try and repair the highly personal negative experience you delivered to disgruntled applicants. Cheap isn’t really cheap at all – and it can only ever be short term.

So next time you’re undertaking some recruitment activity, or planning it on behalf of a client – stop a moment, put yourself in the candidates’ shoes and think, “are we making sure that in this process we really do deliver HI?”

Innovation - lifeblood or more "pearls" before our industry?

So in the run to Christmas I may have had the need to visit some e-tail outlets. Time poor / inspirationally barren – who? moi?!

Anyway – something struck me on one particular site. Hadn’t been there for a good while (maybe even 12months previous) – but I went back and forth to it a couple of times over a few days. Didn’t purchase. Indecisive? As if!

Anyway – I then get an email from this site offering me a 20% discount incentive to convert my browsing to purchasing (which I did – Tight? Never!).

Coincidence? Now I’m not certain, but I actually don’t believe so. It would make perfect sense that they had a means of tracking my activity as a one time customer (most likely Cookie based), and rather than pestering me all year round and risk my annoyance followed by a swift request to be removed from their database for ever more, they wait for me to return to their virtual shopfront again – and then, when I’ve identified myself as a “ditherer”, use their intelligence to incentivise my repeat business. Impressed? You betcha!

And it got me thinking – it’s a whole virtual world of wonderment out there, and yet are we guilty of dragging our feet too much in the recruitment world? Imagine a facility that really knew who was back browsing your site and alerted relevant recruiters when a relevant candidate was coming back into a position where they could be more open to influence by particular elements of the employer brand / proposition. But then I got to thinking - does it really matter how pioneering solutions providers are – I’d be interested to hear how many of the “other than run of mill” facilities UK plc recruiters actually use. My money says that like with most of us and our use of Microsoft packages – they probably only harness a tiny fraction of the power it offers.

So are there any readers of this blog from one of the plethora of ATS providers who can / are willing to comment on how their systems are used? Perhaps I’m very wrong and actually an encouraging percentage of recruiters are working their systems and facilities effectively and efficiently – communicating with their candidate base and embracing new innovations to facilitate better employer brand penetration. Or is the “talent pool” more of a “talent swamp” were interested potential employees are left to fester with little contact or hope of being engaged – until next time they happen upon the employer again (probably on a job board) and realise on trying to apply that they actually have a candidate account from which to apply already?

Go on – stop me from being such a cynical bugger in 2008.

:)

From award winners to the day-to-day - hoping there's always something in common

I’m writing this post on the train on the way into London to one of our industry’s annual big events - the RAD awards (long story as to why I wasn’t in London anyway – suffice to say rubber gloves and mop needed for family duties!).

Now having heard at the end of last year how much Sinead & John (Buffey) enjoyed, and were very positive about, being a part of the whole judging process – together with the RADs steering team really making a concerted effort to enable the awards to reflect the direction that the Digital component is taking Recruitment Advertising (a shame to say it’s not vice versa - yet) – I’m quite excited to see the standard of work and what has won through. It’s always a good bash whatever, but I do really enjoy the opportunity to get inspired by seeing some of the best work from our peers and betters, something I just don’t seem to have enough time to do in my day to day.

But the journey has got me thinking about something that I picked up from within my agency last week. I was perusing a national newspaper web site – as is my wont – when I happened to spot one of our client’s logos. Just sitting there. Now it jumped out to me, which was great, but I quickly realised that the only reason it did was because it was a logo I knew. So I clicked on it – and through I went to a job description. Fine? Not really. What particularly alarmed me was that the job wasn’t even one that you’d associate with this particular client (I would guess some clients are that well known that in the right sector the logo alone is enough to get relevant traffic generated).

So why am I blogging about this? Well it struck me that applauding the great and the good is absolutely healthy and to be encouraged, but at the same time we have to remember just how easy it is to get it completely wrong too. Now I’m not interested in pulling apart how that banner got there – whether it was the site “doing us a favour and filling space” or someone having a bad day and firing across a logo rather than a made up banner - but by having a simple reveal of job title, location and then the logo (if nothing else it’s nice and colourful and helps ensure it’s viewed as a real job) the space suddenly becomes something infinitely more fit for purpose.

So whether creating the slickest of campaigns, the best brochures, the sexiest websites or placing simple job ads on a couple of contracted sites, let’s hope we all remember to check ourselves and ensure that it’s all about being fit for purpose. And if it’s fit for purpose in regards to getting the right candidate’s attention and selling them a job to apply to, whatever the budget or scale, then it’s definitely fit for purpose for the client and their recruitment requirement.

Here’s to an enjoyable night – and not too painful a morning recovering.
:-)

Happy Birthday to us - a very nice evening thank you

I can say without fear of contradiction that those of us who attended our first birthday drink on Wednesday night would have all had much bigger and messier nights, but for me last night’s gathering was everything I might have hoped it would be. Good company and a bit of impassioned discussion and debate over a few beers.

Have to say though that for me there were, for me, a couple of stand out elements to the night (to add to Mr Harrison’s recollection :)

Awards: Now after I was criticised last year for daring to comment on this blog about what I saw, in my very personal opinion, were some very strange judging decisions that saw a hardly viewed at all dancing faeces on youtube scooping best work of the year at the last RADs, RBI undertook a period of consultation and have reviewed not just the overriding format, but also clearly given consideration to the skillset they need to have within the invited panel. With the increasing prevalence of digital execution and creativity within recruitment activity it’s absolutely crucial that this is reflected in the judges background – because, as recently discussed on this blog in regards to some other curious award decisions in the NORAs, there actually are some fundamental elements in digital execution that should make something good or not so good. Elements that are all too often  are clearly ignored / not appreciated / forgotten in the judging process.

Anyway - both Sinead and  John (Buffey) had recently completed a gruelling couple of days (and to be honest I never realised what hard work it was trawling through the great and the not so great this industry produces) participating in the RADs judging. Now a large element of any creativity judging is, of course, subjective, but I was heartened that both were so positive about the rigorousness of the process this year and in agreement that the panel had indeed, for them, sorted the wheat from the chaff. It’s great to hear that two people steeped in digital delivery being given a clear opportunity to inform and educate a judging panel so that a healthy debate about appropriateness and effectiveness rather than “spin” can ensue – exactly how it should be. I’m looking forward to January (thanks for the invite Gemma ;). Of course if it’s all pants then John’s the skinny blond fella and Sinead the raven haired Celt sitting next to the dance floor.

Second life: of course this was always going to raise it’s head – but when you get some passionate visionary types together (not necessarily including myself in that grouping) it actually becomes clear where this kind of environment can indeed add value to the recruitment process and employer branding activity. For me, with the current “let’s be really honest about how many people are really on it and using it” user levels as they are, then online careers fairs are more about the PR than delivery, and that PR ship has now surely well and truly departed – but when you really consider how you might engage with an audience through establishing some best-practice skills evaluation with potential training benefits offshoots within this virtual world then you start to get the idea of just where the real potential lies. Exciting – no, really!

The next big thing: now it wasn’t that we sat about talking about what might be “the next big thing” – that would just be silly – but instead I had a very interesting conversation with a gentlemen about what he and his team have been doing of late. Am not going to name check – not my place to steal anyone’s thunder (and was getting a little lubricated at that point so not sure how secret squirrel they are about it all), but my god I think they’re onto something. Something that just could, leveraged as effectively as they seem to be in a position to do, actually change the face of recruitment (certainly within some sectors) rather than, as most other solutions seem to do, just doing the same old same old more “efficiently” / cheaper.

When it would seem most solutions providers or media companies in this environment has been busy banging their drums or going for short term growth and looking for the moderately big short to medium term pay off, it’s wonderful to speak with people who are actually playing a long game and going about their business quite modestly but with some great visionary plans to revolutionise all elements, from income models to candidate evaluation. If you don’t do a lot of business with them – I don’t / haven’t – then you might be forgiven for thinking (as did I) that their primary market offer is what they’re about. How wrong. They’ve far from been sitting back content to build enough unique users to then be bought up by some big media operation desperate to jump on a passing digital ship.

So when, as so often happens, someone asks “what’s going to the big noise in recruitment over the next couple of years”, then just be honest and say “in a rapidly shifting market it’s not that clear” – because the wonderful thing about working in the digital world is that most often innovation comes from places you really wouldn’t have thought to look.

And John (Whitehurst) – get well soon mate (assuming that you are indeed ill and not just in hiding in case the TMP avatars were on the prowl ;-).

Job board traffic statements – what price integrity?

So here’s the thing. I recently became aware of how some job boards (well one, but I'm not trawling through every audited traffic statement to check all - at this stage) seek to massage their figures in a manner that is really sticking in my throat. So I’ll ask this question:

When you read about a site’s Unique Users and Page Impressions do you too take that as a face value statement of the overall traffic that comes to the site and has the potential for coming across your job? An indication of the audience that you’re paying for access to?

I did – fool that I am!

Now of course those of us who’ve been dabbling in this world for some time know full well that the UU & PI figures have long since proved any significant value in terms of predicting potential success of a job board and its audience and therefore plays little if any part in online media planning today. The insistence of placing such importance on such a measurement comes from days past when all a media planner had to understand to assist in / justify their planning was ABC & VFD figures. It also panders to the egos of grown men boasting about how big their share is to an, unfortunately, sometimes not very educated / savvy buying audience. But for me this isn’t about how useful the UU and PI figures are – this is about the fact that when any metric is presented, especially when presented in a manner that’s making the most of its independent verification, it needs to have integrity behind it.

So when I discover that a job board is also counting the traffic visiting sites they’ve established that are, in my understanding of it, closed to advertising my vacancies on, then I start to get very annoyed and feel pretty cheated. And, just to clarify further, I'm not talking about a job board with a network of sites which have specialist niche job boards attached that are counted as part of the overall network UU & PI figures - I'm talking about direct recruiting entities for direct recruiting activity (be that client or agency) that I could only appear on were I recruiting within that organisation.

Now I don’t want to get into the game of naming and shaming (been there and scrapped over that one before), and I don’t particularly want anyone else to (but it is a free blogosphere – well kinda). I’d rather see if anyone else has an opinion on how sacrosanct you view the integrity of audited statements and whether you feel at least a little narked that you too may have been taken for a ride by someone hoping you wouldn’t turn to the 'network domains' element of the ABCe audit report either.  Then perhaps if enough people are at least a little miffed by this practise and the people responsible are reading this they’ll get the message and next ABCe audit they’ll do the decent thing (no matter how painful in terms of shedding some reality on their figures) and only count sites that are truly reflective of the audience I, or my clients at least, believe they are buying into when we're quoted their figures.

I know things are seldom absolutely black or white, but am I really being ridiculously naïve? again?! Or perhaps it's just all a misunderstanding and when the mistake is realised there'll be quick moves to correct the over-submission of domains error.

:-]

Something new from the Telegraph - how exciting.

Would like to thank Kork from MAD.co.uk for sending me this press release (very finger on the pulse Mr Desai – or is that me having mine no where close to it? Probably! ;-)

JOBS.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK LAUNCHES ADDED VALUE OFFER ON CROSS-PLATFORM RECRUITMENT ADVERTISEMENTS

From June 1 recruiters will be offered a free advertisement in The Daily Telegraph with every online single job posting purchased. This is the first in a host of new initiatives from Jobs.telegraph.co.uk, to invest in and expand its online advertising offering to clients, capitalising on the success of the website which was re-launched last July.

Advertisers will be offered a free 6 x 1 advertisement in The Daily Telegraph jobs supplement, worth £660, as part of the Telegraph Media Group’s re-launched recruitment advertising rate card. Jobs.telegraph.co.uk is also building a dedicated online only Recruitment sales team in order to provide the knowledge and expertise expected by their clients in this fast moving market. This will be supported by increased investment in online marketing.

Nigel Leigh, Product Manager for Jobs.telegraph.co.uk, said: ‘Although recent research has shown that online advertising spend is surpassing print and television advertising spend we believe our clients are best served with cross-platform solutions which is why we are launching this initiative’. Jobs.telegraph.co.uk focuses on six core recruitment markets  - engineering, manufacturing, construction, sales, oil & gas, and utilities & energy. Each sector has its own dedicated webpage within Jobs.telegraph.co.uk.

Alex Foster, Classified Sales Director, Telegraph Media Group said, ‘For quality of response The Daily Telegraph has always been market leader in these sectors, due to strength of our readership and our understanding of our customers needs. This development is a natural continuation of both’.

So, buy online & get press free – times, they are indeed a changing my friends.

I think this is a move that has the potential to disturb quite a few if they choose to admit it (publisher and job board competitors alike - quite probably some agencies too), but this is surely just a natural next step, the perfect embodiment of a national multimedia publisher further bringing together their offering and maximising what is in fact their main point of difference – access to on and offline job seekers, both passive as well as active.

From the candidates’ perspective then I think it’s probably only positive, and for the Telegraph it is clearly aimed at re-enforcing and raising their recruitment brand, giving their online recruitment offering that boost through a distinctive point of difference that I think they’ve been looking for to help it compete more successfully.

Interesting move – perhaps sometimes the boldest changes are the ones that in retrospect were the most obvious, just for legacy reasons the hardest to face up to. What do you think?

Gossip - and a greater question to ponder

I’ve heard a whisper. And I guess blogs are as good a place as any to see if there’s any truth in that whisper – especially when the whisper (true or otherwise) gets me thinking about raising an important question. (Fingers crossed the right of reply that a blog offers is enough to prevent any posting being litigious, here we go).

Anyone else heard that Jobs Reunited has just made its sales staff redundant?

If there’s no truth in the scurrilous rumour then I of course apologise to anyone employed by the site. But whether this is or isn’t true leads me to muse as to whether the explosion of this and that careers site .com or .co.uk is so fragmenting and confusing the candidate and, importantly, client market that the industry is in fact in danger of once again becoming it’s own worst enemy.

Now with a pretty mediocre economics degree I understand that this is just market forces playing out and therefore an understandable and expected part of life. There are only so many people that will make £millions from establishing and sticking with a niche offer long enough to flog it on to a traditional media desperate to once again try and get a bit more of “that online action” (or at least show their share holders that they are) as they watch their bread and butter revenues evaporate before their very eyes. Them and some established online players who I guess are far better placed than I to evaluate the true worth of an established candidate / market presence over a starting from scratch and taking the smaller guys head on approach.

It’s just that even with a dedicated online media team behind me the number of sites available to try and all vying for client spend (whether vertical, horizontal, verti-zontal or hori-tical) are just mind-boggling for us – and it’s our job to try and be all knowing. And there’s more coming to our attention every week. Even with the predictions of massive continued movement of spend online surely we’ve reached / are reaching the point of over saturation and there’s a market led cull on its way? I’ve been asked about when the market will reach tipping point for clients to migrate their spend more comprehensively online – I think that before that we’re approaching a different tipping point altogether.

Don’t get me wrong – most, well many, of the “newer” sites have very credible offers and seemingly the potential candidate traffic too. If it were my money then I’d probably give them a pop. At the right price then why the hell not. All you exponents of digital recruitment know that in a candidate driven market it doesn’t take a lot to provide a decent ROI. But it isn’t my money – and my client’s budgets are limited, often very modest with it, and they’re predisposed to being conservative (perhaps me too with my arse / the future of their online confidence and therefore spend on the line). 

I’ve got my own thoughts on this (of course – when don’t I ;-) but I thought rather than pile it all into one posting I’d see if anyone has any comments they’d like to make on this. I’ll continue writing on this now (offline as it were) and then come back and post my thoughts on the matter in a few days.

So what you heard and what you think? Anyone out there?

:-)

Yet more whitenoise - thanks for that

OK – so we all know that this particular blog isn’t a fan of the (in our personal opinion) too hyped, too mis-sold, too inadequate NORAS product. Well it seems on reading this industries press release machine (ONREC) that there’s a new addition to the “planning your online media spend can be easy – but don’t look at what we’re offering too closely” brigade. Welcome www.whatjobsite.co.uk “a website dedicated to helping small and medium-sized employers with online recruitment.”

Now I know there’s a (probably quite good) case against us specialist and passionate online media types over complicating our own lives by considering all feasible options to the detail that we do (clients tend to hold us accountable for our advice and consultancy don’t you know). But when I see something out there professing to be another great panacea then you’ll have to forgive me for approaching with just a little cynicism. And yep – what d’you know? It seems that making the right decision ain’t actually that easy.

Apart from a ridiculously oversimplified search (whether that’s the straight search or the “advanced search”) there’s no advice or assistance given (at least NORAS does that)  – it’s just a listing of publisher provided details (as far as I could be bothered to wade through). And do you really need that advice? I’d reckon so – search on “Advertising, Marketing & PR” and everyone and their brother seems to come up in the 5 pages of results. Everyone that is, other than a glaring MAD.co.uk omission (and probably many more – who knows). Perhaps MAD aren’t really that relevant to that type of role anyway - what do I know (jobswales and welshjobs.com was there though – so that’s nice, isn’t it).

So clearly we’ve yet another site / product launched that professes to be all things to all people but actually turns out to be no particular use to anyone. Certainly no where close to delivering on it’s own hype.

If you wanted a list of how many options you have then the afore mentioned press release channel has 4,255 listed job boards (not that that search is any better / worse – although a search on marketing did at least bring up Mad.co.uk). Seems like just another way of someone (Karl Schweppe in this instance) pouncing on a confused and crowded market and flogging a second rate product / service / website on the back of it. Difference is, this time all it will waste of a clients resource is their time – the focus for revenue generation here I guess is the media. Here’s hoping that those media colleagues who have paid for inclusion or advertising have it on a PPC basis.

Really Appalling Decisions

OK – so we’ve had the piece contributed on this blog about whether the RADs are truly a celebration of the widest spectrum of the great and the good within our little niche industry. Think we broadly agree that’s a no then (although am still waiting for someone to fill me in on how you’d measure success effectively enough to give awards for media planning). So what about how well the RADs actually judges creativity within the digital arena. I think Ricky Gervais summed it up best when he coined the phrase “are you having a laugh?!”

So, Best Website. I’d imagine that if I’m reading this whilst sitting in a Stafford Long office I’d still be pinching myself. On the other hand – if sitting in the Empower side of JWT SC/EC then I’d be pinching myself too – but of course for very different reasons. What Severn Trent have is quite a nice and slightly quirky site (in as much as it has some drawings rather than rubbish people shots). Better than run of the mill? Definitely. Significant issues with the navigation where it’s trying to be too clever and actually restricts the user journey? I reckon. Terrible execution of the people profiles section? You betcha. Worthy of an award for leading creativity? Are you having… well you know.

And then we have the abomination that was that prick dancing around a launderette in a particularly un-engaging, not funny, ridiculous viral video effort. Sorry – I say effort – I of course mean THE BEST THING OUR INDUSTRY HAS PRODUCED ALL YEAR! I’m nearly, but not quite, lost for words.

Bold use of a new medium – shocking abuse of the once good name of the RADs if you ask me. The world of social media is a dangerous one to try and penetrate – and admittedly there are few advertisers (recruiters or product) who have the balls (or budget) to give it a decent crack, so I’m not diss’ing Work for getting Unilever to give it a go – but giving something a go with a pretty lame scripted piece of tripe underpinned by an equally lame and un-engaging (and with very little of a recruitment message I could see) website is just not, cannot be, should not be the best work of the year.

However, all you “you’ve gotta measure it to prove it” junkies – word of warning. Figures are only any good in context. I’d imagine that Work put together quite a compelling case as to the success of this which led the judges to comment “effective use of the YouTube Channel” (as compelling as you can do when the video only seems to have gone live October 25th). But let’s look at some metrics that the judges may not of been aware of / had the time to research:

Since being placed it’s only generated 563 views so far (successful online videos of a truly viral nature generate hundreds of thousands, even millions of views – I’d bet several hundred of these views came through the judging process and after the awards). Oh – and this is the best bit – just the 1 comment, from a guy who only registered 2 months ago, has watched only 11 videos and has this listed as his only favourite. Anyone else thinking NickDes1 just maybe works at Work? Conspiracy theorist? Moi? Surely not!!!

So – “effective use of the YouTube channel” – effective in gaining some major industry accolade that’s for certain, but other than that I reckon that execution was as effective as me loading up the edited highlights of my Christmas morning footage for my family to view.

Let’s be honest – this is just one step on from the delivery driver toilet roll advertising of 2-3years ago that gained an award having appeared outside of someone’s Dad’s takeaway. So Best Innovation – OK, maybe, to be honest I haven’t seen the work from Barkers or aia, but Best Work of the Year? Forget having a laugh – you’re taking the piss out of us all!

:-[

Monster faux pas?

This came from a recent press release on ClickZ all about Monster's New Year cross channel advertising campaign and made me laugh a little.

"A job search is not always the most positive experience for people, so as a brand, we always try to take the positive and optimistic approach,"

Having seen the TV advert (very stock shot and American IMHO) I think he means that the driver for people conducting a job search often isn’t for positive reasons, so Monster are looking to promote moving for the right reasons rather than the negative “my job is sh*te” or “please somebody, anybody give me a job!”.

However - perhaps he does know exactly what he’s talking about – in which case perhaps he should try Jobsite or TotalJobs and see if they provide a more positive job search experience for him.

:-D