Onrec Conference Morning Session

Getting up to the conference today was something of a trial, the usual train was delayed which left me struggling to get there for the 8.00 start but, thanks to the fastest cabbie in the world I was there bang on time, only to find 2 of my clients, also coming up from Brighton, running late.. James from Madgex got their stand up in record time and AI Digital were cleverly screened by the Onrec team while they were setting up. I think we got away with it.

Now there is no denying that the newspaper event is smaller than last year, in the current climate there's no huge surprises there. Having said that we have some great names along, having walked around the event this morning and had a brief mingle the feedback was pretty much the same from everyone.. “It's a bit flat.... well, very flat”

Andy Flint kicked things off this morning talking about ABCE and what they are doing now, the link between NORAS and ABCE was made a bit clearer. Andy then went on to talk about the online audiences. Some interesting stuff about the online network 3 selling more 3g dongles than phones now. The really interesting stuff was about content vs ad spend, content is delivering traffic but not driving ad spend. Empowered consumers are dictating the shape of the web and it's up to advertisers to work out how to talk to people how don't adopt traditional media habits.

The ubiquitous Luke from Google was up next. The theme of some challenging and depressing times was at the fore. 3 million unemployed by the end of the year etc.. Never a good one to hear. We all discuss it but it's a bit harder to hear at a conference isn't it?

Luke's point about being in a digital age rather in the age of newspapers is interesting. 1 in 3 consumers posting comments online shows a huge growth in engagement. Youtube hogging 10% of bandwidth internationally and 15 hours of video being uploaded every minute shows that people are looking at UGC almost more than anything else. How does this relate to recruitment? Well the relationship model is the way forward for jobs boards to engage, Luke cited Bravenewtalent as offering something new with it's connection and relationship strategy.

Recruitment from a google perspective was interesting user queries for job related terms were indexed since 05 to today over time they noticed query growth was pretty constant at around 50% year on year until last year. Last year it leapt to 65%, showing a larger audience to directly engage with through search. Acceleration toward digital media is pretty huge, unfortunately the number of jobs online is a lot smaller. This means the cost per candidate / click is tough. From the middle of last year the CPC has gone down and engagement is cheaper due to the number of people out there and less competition, Luke suggested recruitment CPC was down by maybe as much as 30%. Though not in all areas. There is growth in certain areas, public sector, grad and finance, were the areas listed with public sector taking the biggest leap unsurprisingly. Admin is up but that's tough to quantify, admin's a bit generic. By far the biggest leap was in tradespeople, more specifically plumbers..

Defining brand and brand image was a strong point Luke focussed on. Direct company searches and searches for the recruitment area of corporate sites is on the up and is, long term a huge area of competition for publishers, job boards and what we understand about recruitment.

Contextual targeting was interesting, interest based advertising and behaviour of users seemed to be the way forward for google and for everyone looking to maximise advertising spend. Insights, Keyword tools, Innovation (relevant innovation that is!), looking after each visitor is paramount.

Unfortunately I had to miss Steve Playford off the blog, no reflection on Steve, he had to use my laptop though and I had to move a few things about. I'm getting a copy of the presentation and hopefully i'll get it hosted online and post up a link and a quick overview.

Paul Harrison was up next, good to see him, we've not had the chance to catch up in ages. Paul's got a great business with Carve and has some great insight into social media. Finding solutions that match, needs, likes and loves is the key to making advertising work.

Hand picked jobs for me - was Paul's idea for creating something which really delivers on what the candidate actually wants, theladders was cited as being a great example of this.
Event based publishing - much like the old days of particular days in papers offering specific types of jobs, a real call to action that offers a great reason for candidates to open ads for handpicked jobs.
Twitter is pretty amazing - looking initally at how publishers could use this, the takeup has been great. Twitter based recruitment events for employers are being adopted by some Deliotte and the Audit Commission are great examples. Twitterjobsearch is a great opportunity to engage.
MREC – Mobile Recruitment, has it finally arrived? The experience has been very poor so far though since the inception of the iphone this has all started to change. The rise of apps and being able to engage whilst on the move offers so much in the way of reaching candidates.
API / Mashups – Making demographics etc open to all allows people to build API's etc to engage with their audiences where perhaps they don't already. The info allows people to target a whole new audience through existing content therefore expanding reach. JGP's google map integration and Linkedin's fortune 500 news feeds were great examples.
Communities and Peering – What's the value of job boards for engaging talent? Contreversial considering the audience but communities and peer groups perhaps offer more to recruiters than simply feeding lists of jobs. Content, information and relationship sharing offers much more opportunity for engagement with relevant candidates who are targeted than ever.
Free Ninety Nine – Dialogue and community with talent through new tools, video, podcast, debate online, alumni groups etc. This should all be offered free as it helps you understand exactly how it is you could be working for.
User Generated Content and Crowd sourced classified – Increasing inventory, content and a reason for people to revisit, we all know what UGC is and how it is relevant, it all hooks into the free content mentioned before and the community side of things. The Crowd sourcing of classified is an interesting one, it revisits some of the stuff touched on before about pulling in content from competitors and running it along your own content, Luke suggested doing this through the adsense package. If it drives revenue then why not?
Farmers and Hunters and making buying easy – The toolkit for salespeople is challenging now, salespeople as farmers rather than hunters has been the trend for a while. Having a new set of tools that offer something that makes buying easy and more quantifiable is key.
Social Shopping – or “Burn the Boat that bought you” - New audiences and revenue streams are key, perhaps the old methods used to drive key revenue streams are going to die off, dare we say print is dead? Try and find something new that offers a wholly new platform for revenue, much like people suggested Craigslist was a flash in the pan were almost all print owners who saw their advertisers disappear in droves.

The final point was use social media and web 2.0, it's not there to hurt business, it's there to help.

The discussion panel touched on the damage that can be done by not keeping up and not realising where the online evolution is taking your audience. If job boards fail to evolve and grow with the rapid changes of the internet will they simply die? Worrying for those who are developing new sites now with little or no new innovation. Luke suggested this may be wrong thinking to an extent and getting the basics right for candidates may be the more important thing when there are so many new candidates out there who are probably not as tech savvy as those of us in the industry. There was a hell of a lot more covered, far to much for me to run through here but some comments on the future of ad agencies and recruitment consultancies were really cutting through a lot of what we have all been thinking.

All in all a good morning session, I'm off for a pint and to steel myself for hosting the afternoon session.