Digital Recruiting

Nice Viral - Little Gordon Ramsey

Was sent this by Samantha D on our team just now. Really nice example of viral marketing from our industry.

">Gordon

The Future of the Web - Kevin Kelly

While Matt and Paul have been off pleasure bent in Chicago, I've been attending a pretty impressive conference myself, via the web though.....

Not since the Web 2.0 video I blogged about last year, have I been so excited by an explanation, not just of the evolution of the web to date, but the next 5,000 days of the web....a real insight into the future of the media and communication landscape..

'Atoms' will merge with 'digital' to create one machine - The Cloud - which touches us all.

The trade off for the personalisation that the future holds is, we all have to be completely transparent, with our personal data......

He (Kevin Kelly) - likens Google to the alphabet and writing.....

Its a tad bit long, but well worth it. Very very cool. As he says, 'to share is to gain'.

">The Future

Onrec Day 2

Well that's it, Onrec USA is over for another year. Some very interesting content, some not so interesting content, some fantastically engaging speakers and some speakers who took themselves far too seriously and did nothing to dispel American conference stereotypes......it's not religion it's recruitment for God sake! ;-)

Overall I was very impressed and felt it was definitely worth making the trip. Continuing the video theme from yesterday I caught up with David Hurst, head of all things Onrec, to get his thoughts on how the event had gone

Perhaps the highlight of the second day for me was Digital Recruiting's Paul Harrison. I filmed his entire speech and will be posting it on YouTube in due course but for now here's a taster of him teaching Americans how to swear.......

I promised Louise at UK Recruiter I'd do a full event review for her so I won't steal my own thunder by writing much more. I'll just finish by saying that I was glad I went to Onrec and not "Label Expo" that was going on in the same building. An event which claimed to be the biggest gathering of global professionals from the Labelling industry on the planet!

Matt

Big Bang Rap

Now I know this has absolutely nothing to do with recruitment, but every now and then you see something that, although slightly corny, explains something complex, very well. 

I give you the 'Large Hadron Rap' - and no, that is not a typo..

Other people may already understand, but I found this quite fun.

Anyway, enjoy, and don't forget the chorus.  It's dead catchy!

Onrec Chicago - Day One

I'm currently at the Onrec conference in Chicago and thought it would be good to blog some videos from the event. Below are two that I filmed today on day one of the conference

First up I thought I should start by getting fellow Digital Recruiting blogger Paul Harrison to give his view on proceedings so far

Paul liked being on camera so much he decided to interview Mark Soper of Job Gravy who he met sitting next to him at the first session of the day. Despite the randomness of their meeting it looks like Paul got a bit of a world exclusive preview of Mark's new launch!

More videos and a summary of the conference tomorrow!

Matt

I've been tagged!

I just logged on to do a post about the conference I’m currently at and I’ve found out that Louise has tagged me. This it apparently means I’ve got to write 6 random things about myself and then tag 6 other bloggers. I don’t normal go in for all this nonsense but I’m going to do it just to prove Louise wrong! So here we go:-

1)      My first job involved spending all day cold calling factories in South Wales

2)      I’ve got a drama degree

3)      I’m grade seven on the piano but haven’t played for ages

4)      I once failed a stage fighting exam after accidentally being punched in a face by someone who ended up being in Eastenders

5)      I’ve met Peter Gold and he is real

6)      Louise has been waiting nine months for me to finish an article I promised her and this is obviously her revenge

Ok I now hereby tag the following

Howard Scott

Rachel Beer

Sinead Bunting

Alex Hens

Ben Nunn

Peter Gold

Matt

The day the bar in Online engagement in recruitment was truly lifted

(Oooo – Hensy – what you doing you fool?! That’s a bold headline to start a Blog post with. Stand by to crash and burn!)

Some of the eagled eyed followers of this blog (particularly those with nothing much on other than blog surfing on a wet Friday afternoon) might have picked this up from an approach that came in from Toby of The 7th Chamber through a comment on the previous post (have removed it now so as not to spoil this). It seems that, IMHO, someone out there has really got their sh*t together in terms of boldly trying to engage through and stand out in this online medium. And I very much applaud them for their efforts.

I was going to post my thoughts on the execution – but then I thought again (for now). So what I’m going to do is let you (in a Friday afternoon posting something fun kinda way) discover this for yourself. Then at some point next week I’ll re-blog about this, give my tupence worth and look forward to hearing any other opinions.

Meet Barnabas Smythe.  BS is king of the BS and he'll BS you under the table any day, any time ! But don't let that put you off  - if you fancy joining the best of the best of the BS then he's got some great opportunities available, Be it in a global company, diverse opportunities, or working in a cutting-edge market ! 

So if you've got what it takes then he'll want to hear from you ! Now where's my skinny-wet, extra hot, double-shot maya macchiato ?!

Find out more here

Let the browser wars commence – Google on the Chrome offensive

When Google means business the Internet world shakes – some with excitement, some with fear. Such is the outcome of the surprise launch yesterday of Google Chrome – a new Internet browser (like Internet Explorer, FireFox and Safari before it).

The wires were / are buzzing with the news – and you can find out about it directly from Google here   (cut up all nice and simple for the short attention spanned YouTube generation) and here (long winded in-depth rationale behind the project delivered in a quirky comic book stylee – probably more for the techy than the general user - worth a peek though, until you get bored).

You’ll read a lot about it over the coming days and probably months and years, but I thought I’d share the first take of my Developer business partner in crime when I asked for his opinion on the latest Google Beta fuss.  This is, of course, just a very initial personal opinion and doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinion of this blog, it’s contributors or businesses aligned to those contributors (read: please don’t take away my gmail account Mr Google sir or revoke my Office user license Mr Microsoft ;) – but I found this a good summary. Over to you Tony:

It's good, it's damn fast. Some benchmarks are showing that the javascript handling is 56 times faster than Internet Explorer, and over 10 times faster than FireFox. Makes it great for javascript heavy websites (think Facebook, Google Maps, etc)

The interface is snazzy, I quite like the minimalism involved. The launch came as a complete surprise - Google had managed to keep the development secret for two years, and actually launched the browser only a couple days after the first real leaks (the comic book) - so minimal marketing hype.

The dev communities are overwhelmed in general, all my tech sites are swamped in Chrome articles and links, and my Web Standard Group list has had tons of comments flying through it.

Amusingly, a crash report (and possible exploit) was released from the SecuriTeam guys in the first day - which again shows that the BIG guys are looking at it closely too.

Bit of a storm hitting the interwebs at the moment - very exciting though :-D

There are lots of privacy concerns though - the EULA essentially states that anything you do inside the Chrome browser could potentially become Google's property, which has raised its own little conspiracy storm of
its own :-D

Anything that takes a percentage from Microsoft is a win though, even if they take some Firefox users with them! Google is certainly got the clout to challenge them though, now that they've wedged themselves in the non-techy communities as a brand.

Good stuff! Bring on the browser wars!

Oh - it's only available for Windows at the moment, which is a bit
frustrating :-D

So there you have it. A techie’s take on what is probably the biggest techie news this year (This century? – discuss).

Interested in how other people are finding it (come on – some of you have gotta have downloaded it already and had a lunchtime play). It of course makes cross browser compatibility all the more longwinded to verify for those of us building and launching sites, but as Google always maintain – it’s all about making the web yet more accessible, faster and better (if only so you can click on more of the ads they’re serving you), so even with the fall out that will of course happen (just as the lovely FireFox was getting a foothold can they really go head to head with a opensourced Google beta browser?) this is something that will definitely shape the internet user experience significantly!

What do you think?

Employer Branding - setting the right expectations

It's late on Friday afternoon as I write / copy this, but it jumped out as so bang on that I couldn't help but copy it here.

I'll be upfront - this came from www.utalkmarketing.com (I like this site and really recommend their weekly newsletter) and was contributed by Nigel Cooper who seems to be a very very busy man (Divisional Managing Director of Motivcom PLC, Managing Director P&MM Travel, Chairman of Zibrant, Chairman of AYMTM and former Chairman of trade association Eventia).

Anyway - to quote that amiable bloke who won the last series of The Apprentice with the dodgy CV: "Now dat's what I'm talking abowt!" (please put as dodgy a wide boy London accent on that as you can - sporting a fat tie a definite bonus).

Nothing particularly rocket science in what follows, just nice to hear someone from outside of our niche market making sense of it all. And gives me further hope that the transparency that the web now offers will indeed increasingly lead brand guardians to finally realise that their Employer Brand is every bit as, if not more, powerful an entity (especially when it's not right) as anything they can cultivate themselves in their consumer focused marketing departments and therefore worth the time and effort to get right, beyond hollow senior management words.

Well - a man can dream can't he?
:) 

How to get staff to live your brand
By Nigel Cooper

Selling and marketing your product and service to the public is a major challenge which every industry sector faces, but how do you get your own employees to buy into your brand?

1. Aim to obtain 'buy in' from employees at all levels.

A campaign is only truly effective if the whole company identify with and live with the brand values. I think of the brand as the "soul" or spirit of the business. A brand should be an outward projection of the inner belief.

2. Research for best results.

If the ultimate objective of a campaign is to change employee attitudes and subsequently, their behaviour, research is essential to develop a solid understanding of what attitudes exist and reveal how they can be changed.

From concept stage through to final delivery, when looking to drive the behavioural changes that all projects depend upon, knowing your staff and what motivates and encourages them is what will drive the change.

3. HR people are not marcoms people!

This is not meant to be disrespectful to the global HR community, but companies employ marketing communications experts to market their brand and values to customers, so why not the staff!

Many employee branding programmes fail because the message is not compelling or personal enough or because they are under-funded and under resourced.

Take into account your audience age groups, and demographics where possible and find the right collateral, theme, and appeal which will grab their attention. 

4. Form working parties to define the brand.

Companies will need to form working parties across the business to define what they believe the brand should stand for. This in turn will effect the values that the staff and the company should live up to.

5. Apply internal marketing - the same principles and many of the same processes as brand marketing to customers.

The difference is that it is focused on influencing the attitudes and behaviour of staff. The core of a marketer's role is to be the guardian of his or her product.

This translates into understanding the needs and dynamics of the internal marketplace to ensure not only that the messages are delivered but in a way that maximises the chances of the benefits being realised. 

It takes real effort to change customers' or consumers' behaviour. Yet that same type of consumer probably works in your organisation, and when you are restructuring or introducing new working practices, the success of your project depends on changing their behaviour and that of their colleagues and managers.

Let staff own the brand.  They must be involved in establishing what the brand means today and what it is going to mean and in turn the values.

6. Set measurable goals.

How will companies be able to evaluate whether their internal staff branding campaign has worked?

Companies must have a clear sense of how many of true brand ambassadors they hope to cultivate, which key performance indicators they hope to achieve and the level of customer satisfaction or sales increase which is expected.

It's also key to set a realistic timeframe against specific targets along the way for your internal branding to filter through and take lasting effect for all employees. 

7. Incentivise and reward performance.

As I work in the business of performance improvement, you would hardly expect me to say anything else!

However I do see the amazing results that strategic incentive programmes can make to a company performance. This applies both to internal motivation, dealer or channel incentives and customer or consumer promotions.

The most effective solutions create push and pull through the products route to market. And don't assume this is all expensive, small tactical initiatives can make a huge impact.

Even something as low cost as £1 per employee can start to make an impact on how people think, a 99p Easter Egg on everyone's desk would be a great start and very low cost for any company.

8. Using events to create internal brand loyalty.

Working in the business of events, we at P&MM are often asked how much an event will cost so that the client can decide if they can afford it. 

Maybe the question should be: "What's the cost of brand reinforcement loyalty, motivation, initiative, enterprise and hard work?" Because that's what good events create.  Think of the buzz in the office the week after the office Christmas party or the atmosphere at the company conference.

Now imagine if it was like that every week.  Events don't have to be expensive, just well planned and thought out. If companies are bold enough to want to change the way their employees feel then what better way than to get them engaged in a programme of monthly staff events.

Bowling, cinema, theatre, football, theme parks, there's a lot that can be done with a little money and a bit of effort. The upside however could be that staff will feel that "this brand cares about me." 

9.  Achieve brand consistency

Customers need to see consistency of brands from marketing to sales to operations to delivery to finance – a complete experience.

This requires communication understanding and engagement. Understanding why things are important and what they mean to the business and the customer.

10. Make it sustainable.

Getting staff to live your brand is more than a one off campaign.  Align key people and processes to sustain the brand values and culture of the company.  An ongoing internal branding programme should be a key part of recruitment, learning development, staff training and ongoing communications. 

Pay...Go Dutch...or Expect it for Free?

I attended a breakfast seminar a couple of weeks ago held by the FT/exec-appointments.com. The topic was 'International Jobs – Strategies for Candidate Sourcing' and the presentation was given by the exec-appointments CEO, Betty Thayer. There was some great content in there on global talent management, talent being globally mobile, emerging markets and the rise of the Internet as a primary sourcing tool for global executive recruitment. All great stuff.

Now, as often happens at such things, something will be be mentioned or discussed which gets me thinking......

On this occasion, there was mention of how, in some countries, there are recruitment websites that have a candidate subscription model, you register your CV for a fee.....you pay to give them your CV. It was mentioned how Theladders was finding uptake of its 'premium' membership challenging in the UK market.

This brought me back to about a year/year and a half ago, when a German recruitment company was asking MediaCom to launch its services in the UK. They asked me for my tuppence worth and on investigation I discovered the German website/recruitment service was based 100% on job seekers subscribing to this site, paying money for connecting with a recruiter. Seemingly this model was incredibly successful in the German market.

I was at a bit of a loss. Recruitment consultants were ringing tonnes of professionals across many different industries in the UK trying to get them to give their CV to recruiters, arrange an interview, coach them through the process. All for free. Why on earth would I pay money to give a recruitment consultant (of types) access to my CV?

My thoughts, were that for this to be a successful launch, they would have to position this as an exclusive-club of sorts (people like feeling elite) offer fantastic added value (which I couldn't see from the model on show, what that would be) and really it would be more of a compelling proposition in the UK in an economic downturn, when the supply and demand dynamic shifted in the employers favour.

So, we are in the midst of a credit crunch and there is talk of things getting worse before they get better. Does this mean we will all soon be subscribing to the premium LinkedIn and Theladders services? Mmn...I'm not so sure. Unlike previous recessions talent and skill shortages exist, and talent is recognised, like never before, as being an incredibly important commodity to a companies success.

It's only really niche, exclusive type social  networking sites that I see as being capable of securing a paid fee from users. Think of asmallworld.com or the exclusive graduate/MBA professional networking site Doostang.com. 

Call it the cultural conditioning of growing up in the UK Internet recruitment market, but I guess I don't see the added value or exclusivity from premium subscriptions on such sites....not yet anyway.