Digital Recruiting

RECaid Free Training - 18th February 2010

Support for job-seekers in recruitment advertising. For those people in recruitment marketing who aren’t working at the moment but who are keen to keep their skills up-to-date, help is at hand. RECaid, the recruitment advertising charity, is organising a series of free training and development sessions designed to support job-seekers in our industry. 

The first of these training events will run on the morning of February 18th and will be hosted by Global Radio. This will involve a series of three back-to-back sessions designed to help job seekers improve their interviewing skills, widen their industry knowledge and build their digital design and writing skills. The outline below should help you decide whether they’ll benefit you - or someone you know.

Planning Your Job Hunting Process – Frank Hutton The founder and Managing Director of Ad Lib, a specialist marketing, creative and media recruiter, Frank will focus on taking a planned approach to finding your next job. Having recruited for a wide range of recruitment a recruited for a wide range of agencies at all levels across creative, account handling, digital and production. He has been in demand as a speaker and seminar leader. He was an early supporter of RECaid and continues to care passionately for the Recruitment Communications industry. dvertising agencies at all levels across creative, account handling, digital and production, he’ll draw on this expertise to show how you can stand out in a tough market. A former board director with Riley, Frank combines a huge breadth of industry knowledge with a real passion for recruitment communications. 

Best Practice in Website Design – Tsz Wu In the first of two sessions mainly designed for creative and project management job-seekers, Tsz will focus on helping people build their website design knowledge and skills. Tsz is a founding partner of Pink Squid, a recently launched digital creative consultancy, as well as former head of digital design at TMP, work communications and Barkers, plus a long-standing member of the CIPD judging committee. As such, he can draw on a wealth of web design and development experience to help designers make the jump from print to digital. 

Copywriting for search – Andy Rigden In the second of the creative sessions, Andy Rigden, Joint Creative Director at Bernard Hodes will help copywriters and project managers get to grips with the basics of SEO copywriting. He’ll focus on helping people understand the basic principles and the differences to writing for print, as well as providing an introduction to some of the most common SEO writing tools.

If you want to book one of the 30 places at each session, please contact John Whitehurst on [email protected]. The sessions will all take place in the Global Radio boardroom at 30 Leicester Square, London, WC2H 7LA.

Tuesday 9th of February, we're holding the first annual inter-agency pub quiz to support RECaid at the Hoop & Grapes on Farringdon Road

On Tuesday 9th of February, we're holding the first annual inter-agency pub quiz to support RECaid at the Hoop & Grapes on Farringdon Road. Full details will be distributed shortly, but this is to please ask you to sound out people in your agency about getting team together and ask you to publicise the quiz. Agency can have multiple teams and freelance teams can also welcome, so please encourage as many friends and colleagues as possible to be involved. Please let us know if you want to enter a team and for more information you can see the RECaid inter-agency pub quiz on linkedin. 

Bring on 2010

I think 2009 can go down as a very strange year, at times it has been very upsetting to see so many people loosing their jobs.

But at the same time I have seen people working together and the industry innovating to move through 2010 and to hopefully change for the better.  

I have got to say I have been personally amazed how people have worked together to support people and the industry, RECaid are working with NABS to provide training and careers support throughout 2010.  You will hear more in the next couple of weeks. 

Away from the recruitment specific support, anyone can take advantage of the emotional and financial support, as well as professional and practical advice.  Check out the personal support and career management services. 

The RECaid Treasure Hunt; Thursday, 12th November, 2009

Follow the trail of Farringdon's secrets and watering holes - two hours of light mental and physical exercise with socialising thrown in.
Compete for prizes against teams from recruitment comms agencies and media.Help raise money for this worthwhile cause, in support of industry colleagues who have fallen on hard times.Thursday, 12^th November, 2009 (from 18:30). £100 per team of 5 (including drinks, refreshments, and treasure).The RECaid Treasure Hunt has been devised by Ri5, and tested and declared fair and fun by experts.To enter please contact Karen Williams ([email protected]) with the name of your team.  Your £100 entry fee will be exchanged for further instructions and incentives.The RECaid Treasure Hunt

RecAid tops £10,000

The wet weather did nothing to dampen the spirits at the Paramount Club last Friday night, when over two hundred people turned out to launch RecAid.  Steve Halford chaired a lively auction, with holidays, drink and a cricket bat signed by the England team among the items for sale: the bat is now very probably priceless.  Andrew Wilkinson, Mark Horley, and three Simons (Barrow, Bolton and Howard) also went under the hammer for varying sums; we will attempt to bring you news of how wise and valuable these investments turn out to be. Full Story on RI5

The RecAid total now stands at just over £10,000, of which £8,000 was raised at the Paramount.  It's a great start but there's a long way to go.  Already there are plenty of ideas for other events and many offers of help, as well as donations arriving at the RecAid website.

To donate online Just giving RECaid

Fancy getting your Chief Executive to do your ironing? Or have a Creative Director paint your house?

Now’s your chance. On Friday 17th – tomorrow night – some of the biggest names in the industry will auction off their services in aid of RecAid, the fund set up with advertising charity NABS to help those hardest hit by the downturn in the recruitment advertising industry. Simon Howard, Andrew Wilkinson, and Simon Bolton are amongst those taking part.

Other Auction prizes are:

Fully paid weekend in Classic British hotel worth £500
Cases of wine   worth £200
Premier League football tickets worth £1,000
Week golf holiday including £250 flight vouchers worth £ 1,500 
All inclusive Safari Holiday worth £3,000
Signed Chelsea football worth £400
And many more….. 

Plus lots of Raffle prizes too!

To bid, you have to be at the fundraising party to launch the fund, which will take place at the Paramount Club in Centre Point from 6.30pm to 1am.
 Tickets are a donation of £10 (feel free to give more if you’re feeling generous). As it’s a member’s club, you need to reserve your place to get in - go to www.recaid.co.uk and click on the link to make sure your name is on the door.

RECaid Help for the Recruitment Advertising Industry

RECaid
Help for the Recruitment Advertising Industry

RecAid was launched in July 2009 by a group of senior managers and leaders from across the UK’s recruitment advertising industry. 

Formed in response to the plight of former employees of Barkers, the world’s oldest advertising agency, which went into administration the same month, it is designed to help people from the recruitment advertising industry who find themselves in financial difficulty.

The immediate aim is to raise £100,000 to help those who were hit when Barkers went into administration. Although the company was bought out of administration, saving many jobs, up to 250 former employees of the company lost their livelihoods and the redundancy pay that they were promised, leaving many facing severe hardship.

The fund has been launched in partnership with NABS, the National Advertising Benevolence Society, which will oversee the management and use of the fund. However, the fund will be specifically for the recruitment advertising industry. See www.nabs.org.uk for more information on the work and remit of NABS.

PARTY AT THE PARAMOUNT ON 17th JULY

To raise money, we will be holding an event at one of London’s most exclusive clubs, The Paramount at the top of Centre Point, on Friday 17th July. 400 people will be able to attend at £10/head, all of which will go to the fund, plus the proceeds of raffles and competitions to raise money on the night. It will be a night everyone in the industry will want to attend, so book your place now.

http://www.recaid.co.uk/

Publishers spend too little on content

Interesting analysis of the US newspaper industry's cost base by Moody's Investors Service (though most of the rest of the report is unsurprising).

Written by Moody's vice president and senior analyst John Puchalla, the report contends that publishers spend far too much on producing and delivering a printed paper rather than on creating its content and selling it.

Here are the figures behind what Puchalla calls a "structural disconnect": only 14% of cash operating costs, on average, are devoted to content creation, while about 70% of costs are spent on printing, distribution and corporate functions.

The remaining 16% of costs are related to advertising sales, a first-class example of devoting too few resources to the principal revenue driver.

Puchalla sees this as a legacy of the industry's vertical integration and the result, of course, is that the high fixed costs - combined with high debt among many newspaper companies - is squeezing cash flow as revenue declines.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/jun/05/us-press-publishing-newspapers

Interesting Article On Newspapers

This was in the FT yesterday ... Future of Newspapers some very interesting points ... have a good old read.

Advertising not a "good model" for Twitter

Twitter, the microblogging website, is focusing on creating value for consumers and companies before attempting to increase its revenues, but doesn't think traditional advertising will be a "good model", says co-founder Biz Stone. WARC