thoughts on online recruitment and stuff

new home for the blog

We have bitten the bullet and finally migrated across from typepad onto http://netnatives.wordpress.com/ – seduced by the smoother app intergrations and increased functionality.

The only annoying aspects were that we will lose all of our lovely comments (my fault) and that all of the posts seem to have been posted on the same day (again, I hold my hands up to this one)…Still this feels better and we have a lot more to say and do here.

I have also moved away from it all being mostly about job boards (although I will always have  more to say on that subject matter) and to cover online recruitment as a whole. And I have linked it more directly to the http://www.NetNatives.co.uk business – because, well because Net Natives is an online recruitment business and that’s what we know and do…

So please come on over and join us on the new http://netnatives.wordpress.com/ site.

Thanks and over and out for Typepad...

Will it ever be the same again? No.

Will it ever be the same again? No.

An interesting proposition from Bill Gates, 

"The only companies that will succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does."

I really don't think that the recruitment industry as a whole has grasped how much change is going to come in the next few years. But it is certainly the employers who are antiquating their products right now.

Through financial necessity and improved online services, employers are no longer reliant on recruitment companies to recruit their hires and are going directly to the source themselves - online. Invariably employers are finding the majority of the right talent through job boards and online tools and have begun to question what value recruitment companies are adding in a world where they have access some of the best talent themselves.

Compound this with more people have been looking for work than ever before and not many have had a pleasant experience from the recruitment companies themselves. The knock on effect will continue to be tremendous, with those new employers becoming the hiring managers of the future.

It's obvious and a little trite to say it but the only recruitment companies that will survive will be the ones that really add value. That value has to be providing candidates that employers would not be able to find themselves. The directly sourced, true passive candidate will nearly always need to be approached discreetly by someone with market knowledge and experience. Whoever provides this type of talent will always be in demand and rightly so.

There is still a need to manage, filter and match the massive response levels for online applications which is time consuming for the client. Some recruitment companies are creatively offering this service in "unbundled packages" = cheap recruitment. But, if I were the client I would question the mercenary nature and the companies' long term plan for these services? "So you mean we could have done this before but you didn't tell me?" Nice.

There will be (and already are) some successful online recruitment companies but their model is based on competitive service and price from the start. Already adding value and providing effective response management and not tainted by being seen as a traditional recruitment company.

Will all traditional recruitment companies then become hybrids of response management and head-hunters? I doubt it, which profitable recruitment business would wish to cannibalise their fees?  Which reasonably sized succesful recruitment business could effect such a seismic change? My thoughts are that there is certainly going to be a lot more treading on toes between the services offered by the consultancies, agencies and online recruitment companies. An increase in the success of the niche recruiter and growth of the dedicated online recruitment business.

And job boards? I am going to come on to them later, I think. I have spoken about it in the past but I think that there are some new developments that will be potential game changers and would like to throw them out there to see what people think.

As always, interested to hear the feedback and thoughts. There are some interesting debates going on within the Recruitment Futurology Group, feel free to get involved.

An interesting proposition from Bill Gates, 

"The only companies that will succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does."

I really don't think that the recruitment industry as a whole has grasped how much change is going to come in the next few years. But it is certainly the employers who are antiquating their products right now.

Through financial necessity and improved online services, employers are no longer reliant on recruitment companies to recruit their hires and are going directly to the source themselves - online. Invariably employers are finding the majority of the right talent through job boards and online tools and have begun to question what value recruitment companies are adding in a world where they have access some of the best talent themselves.

Compound this with more people have been looking for work than ever before and not many have had a pleasant experience from the recruitment companies themselves. The knock on effect will continue to be tremendous, with those new employers becoming the hiring managers of the future.

It's obvious and a little trite to say it but the only recruitment companies that will survive will be the ones that really add value. That value has to be providing candidates that employers would not be able to find themselves. The directly sourced, true passive candidate will nearly always need to be approached discreetly by someone with market knowledge and experience. Whoever provides this type of talent will always be in demand and rightly so.

There is still a need to manage, filter and match the massive response levels for online applications which is time consuming for the client. Some recruitment companies are creatively offering this service in "unbundled packages" = cheap recruitment. But, if I were the client I would question the mercenary nature and the companies' long term plan for these services? "So you mean we could have done this before but you didn't tell me?" Nice.

There will be (and already are) some successful online recruitment companies but their model is based on competitive service and price from the start. Already adding value and providing effective response management and not tainted by being seen as a traditional recruitment company.

Will all traditional recruitment companies then become hybrids of response management and head-hunters? I doubt it, which profitable recruitment business would wish to cannibalise their fees?  Which reasonably sized succesful recruitment business could effect such a seismic change? My thoughts are that there is certainly going to be a lot more treading on toes between the services offered by the consultancies, agencies and online recruitment companies. An increase in the success of the niche recruiter and growth of the dedicated online recruitment business.

And job boards? I am going to come on to them later, I think. I have spoken about it in the past but I think that there are some new developments that will be potential game changers and would like to throw them out there to see what people think.

As always, interested to hear the feedback and thoughts. There are some interesting debates going on within the Recruitment Futurology Group, feel free to get involved.

twitter has stolen my blog

I have become a little complacent with my blogging recently. 

What with the twitter account and the Recruitment Futurology Group on LinkedIn, I seem to be a bit pre-occupied to be able to dedicate my thoughts to the blog. Plus I seem to have been a bit busy with a new company launch to really get much traction onto these thoughts. I think that a few other people are having the same issue.

But then should blogs be infinite? Should they not just be relevant content? Why should blogs have to be updated every so often (yes I know about SEO and brand, etc), but I mean should there not be cases when a blog has a finite use, rather than become and ongoing process of opinion?

I am going to write a few more posts on what I think is going to happen to the industry over the next few weeks/month and then will re-assess my thoughts on this subject matter.

I am only going to write up what I think is valid and will add value to the audience. And have loved the feedback so far.

(although still need to check the draft button before I press save).

Also feel free to join the LinkedIn Group and get involved in the debates there...

social media and recruitment

This is just a small post this one, but one I thought would be timely considering that the focus for the onrec conference is social media and that there is a new social media in recruitment conference soon to be held.

I think it is interesting that for each of these conferences there will be no external industry guides to provide some factual ideology and thoughts. I would have thought that a sensible debate on the legal raimifactions needs to be addressed - by experts, not salesman. There has already been a case of Bank refusing to allow HR to use social media for recruitment due to the legal implications. The obvious problems of perceived discrimination and privacy violation are likely to rear their ugly heads.

Also was interested to read in the FT yesterday that 60% of Twitter users fail to tweet again in the following month. If that's the case, where does that leave the next big thing?

Lots of "experts" seem to be coming out of the wood work for these conferences. Not sure how we have all become experts by being merely early adopters, identifiers and users. I can't talk, I have just finished a detailled social media strategy for a large college. But there are many issues around social media and it is easy to represent yourself online when YOU are the brand not a transient employee.

Would be interested to know people's thoughts in this one. As always comments are warmly welcomed.

joining up job boards and face to face events - extend the brand

The constant theme in these posts is that recruitment advertising is not going to come back as it was before, what is needed now is to look at alternative ways to increase revenues from a decreasing space.

I hope I have added food for thought with previous posts about lateral revenues, outsource and out-placement opportunities and headhunt services.

In my first post I touched on online recruitment fairs. I want to return to this in more detail as an excellent opportunity to extend the job board brand and add more recruitment services.

In the past 7 years there has been exponential growth in two areas of the media space, recruitment advertising and events. Yet for the most part these two areas have been largely distinct. Mostly because, as a job board owner, you would not want to alienate your major client base, the recruitment consutancies and agencies. However, now that they have left you, why not look at ways to capitalise on this opportunity for targeted direct employers.

Virtual Recruitment Fair software, which simply plugs into your current software and CMS is already out there and keeps on improving. Some publishers have trialled their own version, Trinity Mirror is running something at the moment (the service, I think, misses several tricks and has terrible user experiences, but at least they are trying to increase yield and their service). Adicio were at the Onrec Conference and they demonstrated that they are pretty much leading the way with their plug in virtual fair platforms.

But why stop at virtual? What more can be offered? Job boards are increasingly the brand that job seekers and direct clients are turning to in this climate rather than the recruitment consultancies. Am I missing something, but why isn't there a job board that is currently delivering compelling recruitment fairs that engages the job seekers and employers online but also delivers a powerful face to face experience, with all the additional opportunities that can bring? An event that adds value to your audience and extends the brand. Particularily when most job board owners are media companies that also own event businesses!

Jobserve is trying something similar with jobservelive. 

Personally, I would have had more niche events, that were sector and geographically specific, with a less confusing mix of attendees and exhibitors. And would also have joined up the virtual with the face to face more effectively, through micro site creation and relevant job listings and application processes on and offline to track the success. But it is still an attempt to look at online recruitment creatively.

And there are many other ways in which job boards could create effective on and offline events which add value and increase revenues. There are various options, but it's mostly common sense, boiling down to the relevance, resonance and return on investment for all involved.

And why does it just need to be a recruitment fair, what other face to face experiences could be considered? What other ways can you extend your brand and services?

As always these are just some thoughts and ideas, if you would like me to expand on these points, feel free to get in touch. I am always interested and appreciative of feedback and comments.

I have had a couple of requests to build a forum for this discussion, so have put something together called very grandly Recruitment Futurology on LinkedIn. Feel free to join up, it is a place for Job Board stakeholders, online recruitment specialists and HR professionals to share ideas on new ways job boards and online recruitment can be effective in the new economy.

job boards providing outplacement services

I want to talk about outplacement services within job boards, so please permit me a small "I told you so" moment. At the beginning of 2008, when I worked for a job board software provider, I suggested that during the last down turn in the economy for recruitment industry (2001, I was a Director at TMP-now Hudson), the businesses that thrived were the outplacement firms helping clients who were making redundancies. “Let’s look at outplacement job board solutions for our clients”, I said…

Fast forward less than a year and within the last month and we now have monster evolutions and IrishJobs.ie looking to provide these services. I am not just telling you this story as a case of I told you so, but this is another interesting new development in the merger of recruitment services and job boards, which I discussed before.

 

 

In the cases of IrishJobs it seems that they are really just re-marketing their traditional job board service replacing the emphasis - similar to what Jobsite announced today with their new redundancy advice site. Monster is partnering with an outplacement company in the US so neither are really changing their busniess model, but why should that be the end of the service?

 

 

When positioned correctly, job boards can be the brand that candidates and employers identify with and place their ongoing trust in - unlike most recruitment companies. These are places that dedicate themselves to their sectors and niches, which can add value through content, branding, jobs and all other recruitment services.

 

 

Why couldn’t outplacement be a part of those services as well and add value to your clients and your industry at large?

 

 

On a simple level, just because your clients’ aren’t hiring, couldn’t they been seen to be doing something by promoting themselves positively on your site whilst you work to help the industry through promoting "soft services". "As a leading client in xxx industry, we have partnered with xxx job board to help continue our support of our people and the industry…etc, etc." I mentioned this brand affiliation in an earlier post about lateral online recruitment revenues.

 

 

Marry this with simple outplacement services (CV builder, career advice, etc) and you have an rudimentary online outplacement service or partner with someone such has been done with and Monster Evolutions.

 

 

But this would just be the start, why not create a true online outplacement service that actually adds value? Why shouldn't you start to build business models whereby you can take the CVs of recently redundant and place them through online services within your network of prefered clients?

 

 

As always, I am always happy to discuss in more detail and very interested to hear your feedback.

 

How can job boards attract the good passive seeker in this climate of uncertainty

What's the silver bullet for attracting the passive job seeker online? Now more than ever, there is a distinct difference between the active and passive job seeker and I want to talk about some ideas for how job boards can attract and sell the concept of “passive” seeker sourcing and headhunting services through their sites.

 

I thought about this a lot after digesting the most recent NORAS results (job seekers turn to the internet shock, again!!!), the focus and terminology, as always, is on “looking”. Nearly all of the emphasis in job board technology development and sales strategy in the past 10 years has been placed on the active seeker. That's fine when the market is buoyant - when, by increasing eyeballs onto a site you increase applications, job alerts and CV registrations - using these stats to drive advertising. And as I have said before, the job boards have had it relatively easy for the past 10 years, so not needed to change this model.

 

But how do you address the fact that not all of the best people will now be actively looking and your current business model focus is on the increased numbers of active seekers? I discussed before thoughts on the future of online recruitment and mentioned that we will begin to see a return of the traditional recruitment techniques in recruitment consultancies. Any decent headhunt business will point out that a lot of good talent will not be looking as actively as before for fear of the unknown in this current climate, happy to stay where they are, unless directly approached.

 

 

I think that there could be 3 immediate ways in which online recruitment could focus on increasing and monetising their passive candidate intake.

1. Create a discreet headhunt specific part of the site. Create a part of your site that is entirely discreet, where potential candidates can register to be headhunted for specific, relevant jobs, a “make me an offer” section. Candidates create an anonymous CV that highlights their skills, experiences and job demands. These guys can be promoted to a select band of DIRECT clients, who have paid through for this VIP service, to then contact them directly with their highlighted job (again opportunity for double dipping revenue options). I can see this working best for the niche legal, finance, etc sites.
2. Improve your relationship with your database. I am registered as a candidate with a number of sites to see how they work, I am always sold to, never advised. I would strongly recommend understanding your database and start to add value to them. Provide salary surveys, industry content, update on news, build trust (not just sending them emails which are not read). I would look at ways in which I could find out as much as I can, are they still looking, would they consider a move for money, what are their fears and concerns? Make some phone calls! That way if you can get to a point where you can know which jobs could be highlighted to whom at which point, not just blanket ads. Add value.
3. Effective in-contextual advertising. If have you have a job board linked to relevant content, this is a massive way of charging premium and really drawing in the passive candidates. If I am reading an article about recruitment aquisitions and a recruitment director role appears - I am more likely to view it, because of the relevance to me, the reader. I know that many of you reading this will say you are doing this (Emap, CMPi, Haymarket, Guardian, Haymarket and the rest), but I don't think that you are not doing it well enough. It needs to be manual, it needs to be sold, not promoted via an xml feed, it needs to be RELEVANT to the reader otherwise it is just another ad. I know this is not always possible with daily updates, but it can be done when sold at a premium for weekly positioned ads against content that resonates. 

And I know all about the likes of jobfox or jobster screaming that one day we will all create active profiles to be hunted. But there are many reasons why it hasn’t, and won’t work in the UK, which I am happy to talk about over a beer or two, but too much to go into now.

 

Again, as ever, hope this has posed provided some thoughts and your comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated. And happy to link up with anyone and talk about this in more detail.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemediafigures

 

www.mediafigures.co.uk

The future of recruitment; where do we go from here?

Simple points reiterated; recession and a massive decrease in employment growth means that…

1. Employers are finally able to take a breath and look at strategic recruitment and recruitment strategies rather than ongoing reactive growth.
2. Recruitment budgets are being cut from advertising and consultancy fees.
3. Suppliers will have to become creative to match this change.

This is going to completely change the recruitment sector so this is the first of a mini series with my thoughts on how I think this will affect us all and ideas for change, firstly, this is what I think it could mean for the online recruitment industry…

• Job boards offering more recruitment services, not just through technology with price per placement but full “human” response management, blurring the lines between recruitment companies, advertising agencies and job boards. If I were a media owner with a portfolio of sites this is what I would explore immediately (Emap, Haymarket, Incisive, Centaur, UBM, RBI, step forward).
• Merger of the niche job boards to survive, either by acquisition or through centralised affiliation selling, creating gateway technology to host each others' jobs.
• Centralised out source of job board sales selling via networks to media houses (why doesn’t RBI already offer this service and re-sell other job boards?).
• The growth of the corporate job board built to compete against the job board sites (tesco.jobs anyone?).
• Rise of the widgets for aggregators, with targeted jobs placed on blogs and other social networks (www.jobamatic.com becoming the norm and provided by the aggregators).
• More focus on the employer brand and employee communication driven via job boards and social networks.
• Rise of the flat fee/low touch online recruitment service selling across networks of job boards.
• A welcome return for recruitment companies to actually provide real recruitment, with more demand for traditional search services regardless of the level.

What will hold the industry back from moving forward and taking this next stage effectively? The right people.

Despite what many may think - selling recruitment advertising is different to recruitment services and any company that will want to go through this route will need to carefully consider the strategy and who will implement it for them. All previous hires have been based on ability to sell ad space and increase revenue from that point of view, but this new world will require different skills.

 

There are big steps to take and the right strategy needs to be implemented thoughtfuly..

Please feel free to let me know your thoughts and whether you think this is all nonsense.

Recruitment advertising - how to sell when the client says "we're not recruiting"

Recruitment sales has had it pretty easy - there I said it. I am not saying it has been all rosy (I should know, I launched a "not very successful" job board for a legal publisher a few years ago), but the sector has benefited from year on year growth since its inception.

We all know now how this has all changed and changed dramatically.

But why are most job boards still targeting their teams on just call numbers? Yes, it is a "numbers game", but will 100 sales calls a day work in this environment when it is easy for the client to say "we are not recruiting"?

The last blog, I looked at creating lateral advertising opportunities, I want to look at some potential ideas for managing, targeting and rewarding online recruitment sales teams to succeed in this market. As before, these are just ideas, with no agenda, merely putting thoughts out there for feedback.

• When anyone makes any call, find out as much information as possible - who else are they using who signs off the budget, what roles/sector are difficult to hire, when is the next review, etc. focus the information for the next call.
• Sell to your strength, know your key markets which roles are hard to fill against your portfolio. Don't just point to massive application rates. call with a case study.
• Sell that case study effectively to the competitors of your clients.
• Why just sell ad space sell recruitment services - what are the cyclical timings for recruitment services (grad campaigns, summer placements, major project works) 
• What rewards and incentives are you setting your sales guys? Can you be flexible in offering days in lieu, mornings off for most client wins or any other stat that you want to focus on?
• If you have a print brand, are you doing enough to effectively cross sell campaigns across both platforms
• Again cross platform sales across various niches?
• Get campaigns working, review amend track. Account management should mean manage the accounts.
• Can you offer clients reward/loyalty points for annual contracts?
• Can you offer brand affiliation spots across the site?
• Hunter/Farmers - should your key sales people be doing the numbers or would be more effective to create some dedicated telesales teams, with the strategic clients and deals focused by the "big guns"

Finally if there are no jobs, with that client that only means no jobs now - keep in touch with updated newsletters, relevant industry trends, add value.

The list goes on and on and most people are doing this and more, all I am saying, early in the morning (well it was when I begun this), is that there ways and means of focusing your sales and helping to focus the mind of the clients (agents or direct), by doing more than just selling ad space - I'm afraid that those days are gone for now.

We all know now how this has all changed and changed dramatically.

But why are most job boards still targeting their teams on just call numbers? Yes, it is a "numbers game", but will 100 sales calls a day work in this environment when it is easy for the client to say "we are not recruiting"?

The last blog, I looked at creating lateral advertising opportunities, I want to look at some potential ideas for managing, targeting and rewarding online recruitment sales teams to succeed in this market. As before, these are just ideas, with no agenda, merely putting thoughts out there for feedback.

lateral ideas for making money out of job boards in a tighter market

"It's not the strongest or most intelligent that survive; it’s those that are willing and able to adapt and change."

How many times are we now going to hear this quote now that we are so close to Darwin’s anniversary? Today I am going to appropriate it to use specifically in the context of Job Boards and how to increase revenues in this tightening market.

By the way, this is my first foray into blogging; those of you who know me know I love to put the world to rights (ideally in the pub), I am viewing this as a natural, viral extension to that process. Please know that there is no agenda, I want to open up the discussion and get feedback and constructive ideas. Feel free to link to me www.linkedin.com/in/stevemediafigures (well, OK a small agenda).

Simple fact is that with fewer jobs available, employers and recruiters are cutting back on recruitment and advertising. Yet most job boards are receiving and reporting record numbers of users, visits, time on sites and applications.

Here are my thoughts (online not in the pub for the first time) on how to help increase revenues without impacting on the integrity of the job board.

1. Lateral advertising opportunities – with more people spending time on your site what opportunities are there for NON job advertising? Why stop at job ads when you have such a relevant and captured audience who are open to suggestions? First of all I would look at relevant higher education training courses and other “employment” related opportunities. But why stop there? Become ‘demand led’, don’t think about what you are and can offer as a job board, turn it around and think about what else your audience wants or needs. By thinking laterally maybe you could open up both B2C and B2B opportunities (amazon.co.uk, lastminute.com, anyone?).
2. Brand affiliation – whether they are recruiting or not, why not create space for your current customers to sell their services. This is different from point 1 (which could be anything from training courses to Waitrose), here I mean your current employer clients who are not recruiting. If I have a construction job board and Balfour Beatty are not hiring, I would be looking at ways in which I could still incorporate their services onto my site (content, microsite, etc). This would help  drive their brand affiliation with their audience – your audience, who are not just job seekers, but also valuable & relevant customers, business partners or affiliates. You could educate your clients to this opportunity and provide a platform to do so.
3. Get paid when people leave your site – if your site is driving NIL results, why not get paid when the job seeker leaves your site. I am thinking of a “reverse aggregator”, i.e. in the www.workcircle.com mould, where a PPC model could be implemented. It’s scary, but if someone is leaving your site anyway, why not get paid for the privilege and help them with their journey? Another option is looking at what www.JobG8.com and map out more of the job board market.

Of course you can also look at online recruitment fairs, micro sites for campaigns, response management services, etc, but I want to focus on simple ideas that shouldn’t impact on your technology capabilities or cost yet could have a direct impact on your revenues.

I am sure that some you are already thinking in this way, but whether you are or not, I refer to good old Darwin’s quote, “it’s those that are willing and able to adapt and change…that will survive”.