Digital Recruiting

Sponsored by Jobster?

More perceptive readers will have noticed the addition of the Jobster widget to the blog. I actually put it there to illustrate a point (although if you click through enough we might get some cash as well!). There were only four job sites offering some kind of contextual or preference based job feed via a widget that I could find, all of them american with little UK content. Jobster won my vote as it actually had some kind of geographically relevant jobs. Where are the Monster.co.uks and Totaljobs...surely missing a trick with so many UK blogs now out there!

Is this what it's really like?

This really made me laugh!

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

New year – new commitment to not undervalue what we can actually do for clients.

So, here we are in 2007 and it’s about time I pulled my finger out of my proverbial and contributed to this blog malarkey. Interesting that eventually our rag tag bunch has actually managed to do something constructive other than just getting another round in, but as with these things (and as I’m always at pains to point out to clients (and some colleagues) who think that blogging will somehow be the panacea to their graduate recruitment requirement) it’s a marathon and not a sprint, with some serious dedication and commitment required to make it work. Looks like my promise to work more sensible hours this year is going the way of most other resolutions.

Will be interesting to see how this thing evolves – will personally try and make an effort for it not to just be a hub of negativity, although it’s true that this very entity is of course borne out of our joint frustration at the abundance of charlatans, jokers and idiots that seem to clog our tiny niche / backwater of advertising. I’ll try, but don’t hold your breath – unfortunately I seem to be developing into a right middle aged grumpy old man with a significant propensity to rant at any given opportunity (at a Christmas lunch with a very lovely media colleague I had a feeling there was even a degree of Rant Bating being played out – of course I don’t like to let people down, especially when they’re paying).

Was pondering life the universe and everything the other day (as men tend to like to do with quite some regularity – you know, the kind of pondering that has you reaching to read the ingredients of a bottle of bleach or air-freshener) when I was thumbing through a back copy of NMA (New Media Age) – yup, the paper medium still has a big enough part to play in my life for the foreseeable. Anyway, came across an article about PPC (Pay per click advertising on search engines) being used as an aggressive PR tool to counter, or at least help manage, negative news.

The example given was about the exploding lap top story that was in the news a while back, and the number of searches looking for information on the story, or indeed probably just for the rather amusing footage, went through the roof. Anyway, someone at Hitwise worked with this and directed a major PPC campaign that at least offered those searching a clear link through to the Dell / IBM / Sony / whatever site where they were able to put it all in context and offer replacement batteries and frontline customer support. Brilliant.

And it got me thinking. When we started working with a large financial institution 2 or more years ago they had an issue about all press about their jobs telling you they were offshoring thousands of roles. We suggested countering this with a PPC campaign (which cost bugger all) so at least when people searched on related strings there’d be a link offered to a more positive recruitment result. Yet here we are, 2 years on and there’s and there's an article about such practice being deployed in the big world of proper advertising.

Now I’m not claiming to be an internet pioneer or any such nonsense (unlike many other laughable self appointed online gurus in our space), but it still amazes me just how much we undervalue our expertise and what we can and often do add in terms of solutions. Internally and externally the pressure is on for quick turn around and keeping it cheap (it is the internet after all), whilst talk abounds about developing and enhancing the employer brand. Couple of nice posters for the toilet and a new clever strapline – employer brand sorted!

Recruitment advertising has for years run itself down, devaluing consultancy and service in exchange for media commission, spot-buys and massive contract kick backs at the point of media purchase. Maybe not quite short sighted as it’s sustained businesses for a good few years, however with media now being bought differently and online driving down prices then it was never a particularly long sighted business model.

Prices have been further driven down by HR / recruitment teams / businesses  that don’t understand marketing or branding, together with ridiculously inept business / financial management pressure that looks at short term HR culls with no consideration of the massive long term costs of Recruitment Consultant reliance. All of this topped off with mediocrity of service and short-termism throughout the agency world, cutting off our own noses in the frenetic pitching drive to get that next high profile new business win (no matter the sustainability of the margin or any realistic consideration of the delivery requirement). Advertising agencies have over time become our own worst enemies.

Although when you look at the experiences some clients relay then maybe the monkey service they seem to get is symptomatic of the peanuts that many clients want to pay. What does DEFRA hope for when they proudly announce (Ri5 – 2-1-07) that in their tender the award criteria is quite simply “lowest price”? Have these people never bought a car, eaten at a nice restaurant or had a nice glass of wine and realised that you generally do get what you pay for?

If one thing is for sure, our new world emerging requires intelligent, insightful planning and execution together with ongoing follow up and review – and that can only come at a cost to those paying for it. These are real man hours of experienced professionals that can’t be covered somewhere down the line by a £5k spot buy that had previously hidden the true cost for the service. A colleague actually commented in a meeting the other day that getting paper media information would take a bit longer than online media as it “wasn’t that straight forward” – yeh right! ‘Cos considering the options and getting the costs across for 3 potential print titles just as you did last week and the week before that takes a whole heap of understanding the medium and shifting job seeking patterns.

So – there we have it – January the 3rd and I’m working just as hard as I was last year (have a nice honeymoon Ben) but have added a blog to my to do list, a blog in which I’ve already exploded onto the scene with an abundance of negativity and frustration. So is there any real hope of me putting an appropriate value on the service and consultancy that we offer and keeping the faith against client and intra-agency pressure? Probably about as much as me hitting 14stone by February, but the realist in me says 15stone by beginning March is doable – so maybe the strength to charge more appropriately for the intellectual capital and hours our work often takes isn’t too much to aim for, just with a pinch of recruitment budget realism.

:-)

Research - or not

Having worked in the industry for a number of years now, I lik to think that I know when someone is talking sense, or when someone/something is just a little bit 'wide of the mark'

Normally, I keep my opinions to msyelf (!!) and very rarely have cause to rant - but having just received a news alert, the need to vent some frustration once again arises...

And the subject?  Onrec's impending latest edition of the apparently 'can't live without' research document 'Top 100 UK online recruitment sites' - now in its 6th year.

Six years?  Oh my god.  Back in the day, when we were all a little naive/confused/scared, this report appeared and, based on the fabulous sales pitch, seemed like a great idea.  And it is, don't get me wrong, a great idea.  It's just that it's not worth the paper it's printed on.  It's not worth the disk space the pdf version takes up.  And it's certainly not worth the £60 Mr Hurst and his chums charge.

I get wound up quite easily by a few topics relating to the online recruitment industry in the UK - but nothing seems to make my blood boil so quickly as the mention of the dreaded Onrec 'Top 100 Online Recruitment Sites' report.

Research, in my opinion, is based on a clear and level playing field - one that is stated up-front, and one that incorporates all of the facts, and provides insight and conclusions that have been drawn based on the facts realised by the research that has been conducted.  So, when a recruiter decides to part with their sixty quid, they are enlightened slightly. Surprised somewhat.  They feel that they have had their opinion changed/altered by the facts that are presented to them.

The Onrec Top 100 report continually fails to achieve any of this. 

Yesterday, I thought they'd launched another version - the 2007 report - but then I realised it was just the questionnaire that they release and ask job boards to complete.

Once again, the questions have not altered.  Based on this, I assume the resultant report will be the same un-informative pap that has been produced in the past.  I defy Onrec to provide me with one 'satisfied customer' from this report.  I constantly bump into people - clients and colleagues in the industry - who express their total disbelief that this product is still being produced, and that anyone with an inkling of insight into the online recruitment industry find this in any way useful - other than as a directory of phone numbers for 100 job boards in the UK.

Why can David and his team not put in some thought to this years' document?  Why can't they make inspried, intelligent comments on the information they are receiving?  Other than a comment on the first page of the report which seems to repeatedly admonish OnRec of any responsibility relating to the information provided in the document, the report is of little value.

It does not mean anything. Who cares how many employees a site has - worldwide or in the UK?  How can that be a 'Top 10/Top 20' statistic?  No discrepect intended here, but how can eFinancialcareers be top of the 'Top 15 turnover' table?  I know the answer - Monster possibly did not provide this information, Totaljobs appear to have dissappeared.  And what about Jobsite, Jobserve, Hotjobs etc.  Oh, I know, these sites possibly didn't respond.  Not OnRec's fault, obviously - and no doubt this point is made in the document somewhere - once you've paid your £60.

But, by not inlcuding consistent measurables across all categories highlighted, the document is, in effect, totally useless.  My favourite one of these ridiculous features was the year when the website 'TopJobswithDogs' was featured in the Top 10 number of staff worldwide - with something like 5 staff.  What a joke.

So, I'll stop there.  But what is the point of my rant?  Well, isn't it about time that someone like an OnRec actually published some REAL research - some valuable insight into the industry - with some real expert commentary.  Are they afraid of what it will highlight?

There are people out there desperate to make this industry better - not only within the leading rec ad agencies, but also from a client perspective.  OnRec has positioned itself as the voice of the industry - why not put your money where your mouth is an publish some real research - carried out by experts - and start to put something back into the industry.  Certainly offering more than just publishing press releases and inspiring the industry with 'Hurst's Law'.

Come on chaps - isn't it time you stopped hiding behind the 'pay for it and you'll see' approach to this non-sensical 'research'  document (and I use the word 'research' in its loosest possible way) and show us all that you can do it properly.  You have the connections.  You have the profile.  Please provide us with some research that actually adds value, and isn't just a revenue generator for OnRec.

Rant over.  For now...

:-)

Imagine....

Just saw the the Imagine programme “www.herecomeseverybody.co.uk” on BBC 1 (a rare quiet night in!) and it’s stirred me to post.

The speed at which the Internet has evolved even in just the 10 months I’ve been at Barkers is incredible. It’s not even that things like Wikipedia, Youtube, Myspace and Second Life or concepts like the Long Tail are brand new, they aren’t. However the way their growth has accelerated and the fact that their names seems to now be ubiquitous is extraordinary. Seeing them all name checked on BBC1 on a Tuesday night just proves the point.

It also brought it home to me that this is only just the beginning and the web as we know is going to change beyond all recognition. In some ways this hardly seems fair on a lot of companies who are still trying to come to terms with the fact the Internet changed everything in first place!

Wikipedia, Youtube, Myspace and Second Life aren’t the real Web 2.0, this is just the overture. These brands in some ways are like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Signalling the start of the second coming and the end of the “old” Internet as we’ve know it!

This brings me onto my rant. I’m somewhat disappointed by the UK online recruitment industry’s reaction thus far to this phenomenon. Don’t get me wrong, the great and the good have all heard of it and you’ll struggle to go to a presentation these days where LinkedIn and My Space aren’t mentioned and mentioned enthusiastically.

However it’s very rare that you hear what the true implications for recruiting are going to be and how these emerging trends should be put to use in an appropriate way. I’m going to bold and say that is because most of the people talking about them just don’t understand how they work. Putting banner advertising in My Space, rushing to put “clever” videos on Youtube and developing recruitment pod casts no one wants to download is kind of missing the point.

I don’t claim to have all the answers but I do know one thing. We’ve always been told that word of mouth and referrals are the most popular way of finding jobs. Word of mouth and referrals are fuelling this phenomenon and that has already rewritten the rules for companies who make (or should that be made!) money out of music and journalism. Recruitment is next and unless we get our act together to stop just talking and start working out ways of doing, it’s just going to sweep on by past us. If we’re not careful our industry in the UK is going to be floundering in the technological version of the dark ages and we’re all going to be clinging tightly to our banners and job postings wondering where all the job seekers went!

So lets have some proper debate and some genuinely new ideas, they’re doing in the States we need to be doing the same here

Enter the Dragons?

Found these clips from the Canadian version of Dragon’s Den on Joel Cheesman’s blog. The last video is very entertaining viewing.

If I decide to become an entrepreneur I’m definitely going to the Canadian dragons rather than their more hardcore British counterparts. I’ve known job boards asked more probing questions just to see if someone should spend £350 with them, let alone invest two hundred thousand dollars!

The next big thing? What about the last big thing!

I seem to be continually asked what the next big thing for online recruitment is going to be. There seems to be an obsession at the moment from clients and agencies alike to be “cutting edge”, innovative and to be the first people to use a particularly innovation or technology in the recruitment space. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, the UK online recruitment market is about to under go an inevitable seismic shift as the true potential of emerging Web 2.0 methodologies are realised for recruitment. However I’m still amazed that in their rush to seize the digital high ground a lot of people still haven’t got the basic building blocks of their strategy in place.

Now I’m not talking here about companies and organisation that don’t use online recruitment at all or those who think that just by using job postings alone they are going to solve their recruitment issues. That’s a whole new blog rant in its own right! I’m referring to companies and organisation that spend reasonable amounts of money on their online presence but have no proper tracking or means by which to measure the return on their sometimes considerable investment.

The unprecedented growth in online advertising has in the most part been driven by the high level of accountability of the medium in other market sectors. Online recruitment though really seems to be missing out on its true power. Most job boards will provide basic statistics on everything from click throughs to “online applications” which some companies use to help their purchasing decisions. There have also been some recent moves to try to audit and standardised these stats; this is certainly progress but is it genuinely going to be that useful?

There is absolutely no substitute for using independent third party tracking that tells you exactly what you need to know about your online recruitment advertising rather than what someone else thinks you need to know or what your job boards want to tell you! The other advantages of using a third party tracking system is like for like measurement across all your activity including search engine keywords and the fact you can track all the way to a genuine online application on your own web site and sometimes beyond.

How’s it done? Well there are lots of options out there including third party ad serving via companies such as Atlas and Bluestreak, in built tracking within many ATS systems and tracking within multi posting tools such as Broadbean. Very often a combination of all these provides the best information.

So before you run away and build your own recruiters office in Second Life or create a podcast telling people how great your company culture is, invest some time and money in third party tracking for the presence you already have. It’ll pay for itself ten times over I promise!

Launching Today

So what's the story? Well five of us like minded Digital Recruitment professionals have been meeting regularly in pubs in around Holborn for years to discuss and rant about the industry we've all chosen to spend a combined total of nearly 30 years working in! Last time we met we talked about setting up a blog and a few weeks later here it is. The idea is really to spark some alternative debate round the online recruitment industry, please feel free to join in!

Matt Alder - Barkers, Alex Hens - 33, Sinead Bunting - Mediacom Career, Ben Nunn - 33, John Buffey - Barkers, Paul Harrison - Carve Consulting

Coming Soon

Welcome to the shortly to be launched Digital Recruiting Blog. Created by yet another set of self styled "Digital Recruitment Experts" we aim to bring you insight into and opinions on the UK online recruitment industry....oh and expect a bit of ranting along the way as well! Who are we? Well all will be revealed in due course..............