Digital Recruiting

"Everyone in Second Life is a ****"

"Everyone in Second Life is a ****"

This is about the only thing I can remember from last nast night.

Two paracetamol and the remains of a shish kebab if you can guess the narrator:

a.) Tim Elkington from Enhace

b.) Craig Stead from JobsGoPublic.com

c.) Paul Harrison from Carve Consulting

d.) Ben "Blue" Nunn from Thirty Three

e.) The guy behind the bar

25m personal records lost by HMRC

I can not quite believe this on the BBC but HMRC posted a couple of disks with over 25mil personal records to the NAO.

They did not send it recorded delivery and the data has been lost.

Words just fail me ...

When you look at all of the legislation dumped on this industry about the nature of information collected and used - they can not even keep their own house in order.

NotsoFreerecruitment and why recruitment consultancies need to develop their own candidate attraction strategies

Picked up a post by Dom from OME today directing the reader to Louise's UK recruiter forum which is currently hosting an impassioned debate following the news that Reed's Freecruitment is, um, now not going to be totally free. (The first 500 jobs will be free, but after that you pay.)

My own view is that I am surprised it's taken so long for Reed to start charging. They're still offering 500 free jobs, and an unlimited posting restriction is going to help stop the multi-post phishing still undertaken by some agencies...

But whatever your standpoint, I urge you to put 20 mins aside to listen to the sound of communal recruitment consultancies wailing. You will not believe some of the comments on the site from certain rec cons, who seem to think that a free Reed is some kind of God-given right.

My favourite post is this nugget from 'Simon' ( no agency given - I wonder why?) with his somewhat impenetrable ( 'scuse the pun ) "wall" metaphor:

My company has also received the email..........
REED has allowed many small start ups to be succesful, but at the same time they have cleverly used those posting on their site to BUILD the REED website.

Its a bit like giving away free bricks so you can build a wall to keep the wind off, but you must take my bricks which are coloured yellow. People take the FREE bricks and benefit but then all the walls eventuallly meet and those who have been taking FREE bricks now find that they have closed themselves in and the only way out is to pay. The wall is owned by REED and has been built by those taking FREE bricks.

Many small agencies will go to the WALL. There will be many fuming and Angry recruitment consultants out there.

They have built up business and supported livelihoods now they are beginning to destroy and damage livlihoods

REED have given promises thast they WILL always be FREE,
I have a letter to prove it dated 1999.

Is betrayal a word that exists in business? perhaps not?

(Spellings are author's own)

Simon, if you're reading this please make yourself known?

Talking to Louise, interestingly Reed have so far decided not to comment ( at least, in their company name. ) I presume they're aware that this debate is happening?

Meanwhile, despite Simon's melodrama, the folly of not developing their own candidate engagement strategies could hit some of these agencies hard...  I am pretty confident in saying that the consultancies we have the privilege to work will be mostly unaffected by this because they have invested to ensure they're not held hostage to Reed  - or anyone else  - by developing a range of traffic driving measures and candidate focussed websites. Will Reed-gate force Simon and his tribe to do the same?

Paul Harrison, Carve Consulting

 
 

Wednesday 28th November 2007 - the answer

Basically it's been about 12 months since we started this ole DigitalRecruiting blog malarkey up, so we thought we'd have a drink and invite anyone else who has nothing better to do that evening to come and join us.

Don't be expecting hospitality, don't be expecting dancing girls / boys - it's just little ole us doing the face to face thing rather than the virtual rantfest.

Clearly along the way we may have upset some people, but our intention has always been to inform, discuss / debate and hopefully sometimes amuse with our musings those who might give a shit about the emerging digital recruitment world. So if we haven't offended you too much (or perhaps we have and you fancy some face to face drunken confrontation - just be warned we have Sinead running security) then come along and chew the cud over a beverage.

So be nice to see you - no worries if you're busy / really couldn't stand to be in our company. Thanks for reading the blog anyway and an especially big thanks to anyone who's contributed or added to the debate.

Oh - and on the 28th we'll be in Ember in Farringdon from 6:30. (Mr Alder may by you a beer, but don't bet on it!)

:-)

Football Crazy?

No time now to write a long post but I simply had to blog about this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/g/gravesend_and_northfleet/7089473.stm

Basically via the site My Football Club 20,000 fans now own and have a large say in running Ebbsfleet United. A large say that will even extend as far as team selection.

Genius or lunacy? Well only time will tell but I'd err on the side of genius at this stage.

If you want to read more about how mass collaboration via the Internet is changing the world this is a fantastic book / site - http://www.wikinomics.com/

From surfers to tea fans, Britain's blogging army is now 4m strong

We are not alone - very interesting bit taken from the media guardian

It really shows how interaction has become the key ...

This text is taken from The Guardian

The survey was commissioned by the online company Garlik, which aims to give citizens more power over how their personal information is used digitally. It asked a representative sample of 2,000 internet users about their online habits. Of Britain's web population of 26 million it found that 15% kept a blog. Of those running a personal website, almost one in five were blogging at least once a day - the high water mark for an internet phenomenon that is transforming the way people voice their opinions.

The rise of the weblog began 10 years ago as the pioneers started publishing lists of websites they had found. Over time the subjects bloggers wrote about broadened out to politics and culture.

"The line between a blog and a website has finally blurred enough it's often hard to tell if you're a blogger or not," said Jon Silk, of the PR firm Lewis. "Users of sites such as Facebook and MySpace are all bloggers."

Wednesday 28th November 2007

yeh - what about it? Well watch this space.

('tis the season and all that.)

Facebook News

Spotted this one on Jason Goldberg's new blog. Yet another mildly amusing Facebook inspired vignette

Get the tone right

Students are often a good indicator of things to come - especially in recruitment advertising

"Students appear to want their cake and eat it," says Phipps. "They appear to want to keep their online persona private but when you ask them whether they'd like instant communication with tutors or feedback on essays (via Skype or Facebook) the answer is always yes." - mediaguardian

Often you see that it is the tone of the interuption that is wrong ... not being interupted.

Anyway have a read about the research - it is interesting ...

Sound Familiar?

Interesting post here on the Adventures in Digital Marketing blog

Not written about recruitment communications specifically but perhaps something a lot of people in the digital recruitment industry can empathise with!