Interesting, if a little testing, times are all around us right now. As anyone in the digital recruiting space knows there are a vast number of candidates going for every job out there and competition is fierce. For the most part, I have avoided this so far though.
I guess I have been in something of a privilaged position in that I know a huge number of people in the industry and there has been a lot of interest in working with me since things with Onrec came to an end. To date I must have met with 13 different individuals and businesses to discuss the potential of working with them and what I can bring to the table, O.K, as of now I'm not working but I don't see that as a massive issue, I've got to spend some time evaluating the offers and opportunities out there and work out what it is exactly that I want to be doing right now.
Having said this there is another side to the whole thing. I have a very good friend who worked on product side advertising who is having an utter nightmare, though he was good at his job, so were the other 6 people at his company who also got given the "heave ho" earlier this year. His job hunt has been an horrendous experience, since losing his job back in Jan he has been to more interviews than you can shake a stick at and has had countless companies ask him for a sales strategy presentation which they have just kept and offered little feedback from. This does appear to be a little bit of a trend right now. i have heard from several people that this seems to be the tactic used by a number of companies to get some new ideas and benefit from candidate experience and their desparation to get a job.
Now I'm not pointing fingers and this is nothing I have seen personally but I have spoken with a number of people who have been made redundant recently who have said the same thing. clients ask for a sales strategy, marketing plans, management structure planning etc at interview stage, the candidate sees little if anything back from the client and the company implements the idea and promotes internally. I seem to remember Jo Courtney saying that she had a similar experience when asked to put together a social media strat for an employer.
Now is this a true reflection or does it say more about the frustrations of candidates not being able to walk into jobs like they used to? Personally I'm not sure but I really do feel the frustration of those who are jobseeking right now.
Personally I believe the world is offering some great opportunities to those who are willing to take a bit of a risk and either work for themselves or get in on the ground floor with some of the more exciting and innovative startups out there.
Bottom line, for employers: don't waste people's time, for candidates: don't lose hope and try and see where companies are looking for something new from candidates and for those with new ventures, take advantage of the vast amount of experience that is available now that you may not have been able to even speak with in the past!
Showing posts with label online recruitment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online recruitment. Show all posts
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Social recruitment and referral networks do they really work and can anyone do anything really new?
I met with 2 guys yesterday, they've decideed to enter the world of online recruitment with a new referral and networking model, they ran through what it offers and there were some neat little tweaks and variations on a theme that's already becoming established but the whole thing left me thinking.. are we on the verge of another brief dotcom boom and bust for the social media and referral industry?
The world and his dog wants to do something with social networking and referrals (for christ's sake I even toyed with it!). There is not a day goes by without soemone telling me they are launching a shiny new facebook, myspace, secondlife, bebo, whatever application or explaining a clever new way for referrals to empower candidates...
There are some great sites out there but all these social applications? I'm yet to see any stats from anyone telling me how much their app is used, how much traffic it generated and whether they recovered the costs of building it. With more and more people entering the market how long before the consumer says "enough is enough, I came here to network and meet people not find a job". To me it's a little like the equivalent of going to the pub and having a recruiment consultant constantly interfere with your conversation by suggesting job hunting tips or trying to get you to register (which has on more than one occasion happened to me).
Referrals? How well is the referral market going, again it's not something NORAS is going to start showing stats for equally Hitwise and Comscore can only show us traffic, how well are these sites doing and how satisfied are the clients that use them?
This all sounds horribly negative but I think people in the industry have to be aware that there are market leaders out there for a reason; careful planning, good market knowledge, an understanding of their audience, good looking, well optimised sites run by people who have been in the industry for a while and who understand it's pitfalls and above all; investment. Try and do it on a shoe string and it'll die quicker than Posh Spice's self esteem.
Have a look at zubka Jobtonic and Jobster to get an idea of what the market leaders are up to, if you think you can do soemthing as well and make it work then good luck, give me a call, I'd love to have a look around it and offer any (hopefully) constructive criticism if you'd like it.
The world and his dog wants to do something with social networking and referrals (for christ's sake I even toyed with it!). There is not a day goes by without soemone telling me they are launching a shiny new facebook, myspace, secondlife, bebo, whatever application or explaining a clever new way for referrals to empower candidates...
There are some great sites out there but all these social applications? I'm yet to see any stats from anyone telling me how much their app is used, how much traffic it generated and whether they recovered the costs of building it. With more and more people entering the market how long before the consumer says "enough is enough, I came here to network and meet people not find a job". To me it's a little like the equivalent of going to the pub and having a recruiment consultant constantly interfere with your conversation by suggesting job hunting tips or trying to get you to register (which has on more than one occasion happened to me).
Referrals? How well is the referral market going, again it's not something NORAS is going to start showing stats for equally Hitwise and Comscore can only show us traffic, how well are these sites doing and how satisfied are the clients that use them?
This all sounds horribly negative but I think people in the industry have to be aware that there are market leaders out there for a reason; careful planning, good market knowledge, an understanding of their audience, good looking, well optimised sites run by people who have been in the industry for a while and who understand it's pitfalls and above all; investment. Try and do it on a shoe string and it'll die quicker than Posh Spice's self esteem.
Have a look at zubka Jobtonic and Jobster to get an idea of what the market leaders are up to, if you think you can do soemthing as well and make it work then good luck, give me a call, I'd love to have a look around it and offer any (hopefully) constructive criticism if you'd like it.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Multiple Posting
Had an interesting lunch with Dan McGuire from Broadbean and Tim Suggitt at Aktor the other day at the ever excellent Smiths Of Smithfield (thanks Tim), over a pie and a (unfortunately) non alcoholic drink (hey, we are all busy people!) we had a great chat about multiposting and where it's going at the moment.
It's great to see that Dan is still not a man who claims that his business is the "be all and end all" of the multiposting world, rather he has a view that the rest of the market need to be carefully watched and understood and where posssible worked with. A refreshing position and one that will stand the ever popular Broadbean in good stead. The only questions I think will arise will come from the relaunched and spruced up Conkers, John Cassidy certainly has big plans for 2008 and Conkers has been around long enough to know how to make the system work.
All this still begs the question of what happened with the other players in the UK market? Idibu look like 08 will be their UK year (from what I hear), Jobmate have been quiet since the acquisition (where are you David??), Networx have something in the space but it's not a true multiposter, very much in the same space as easywebresourcing from what I remember. Ebods was around for a while as was postingpal but I'm not that aware of them anymore.
Dan's quest for global domination through marketing seems to have done the trick for now. The rise of conkers in 2008? Watch this space. New players in the UK market? could be interesting for all? ATS systems making multiple posters redundant? It's a long way off but I would think everyone in that market must look to ATS and wonder if, longer term, it will kill their business?
Having had a good look at ATS over the weekned I put some thoughts together that when read back were rubbish, I'll have a rethink and get something up ASAP.
It's great to see that Dan is still not a man who claims that his business is the "be all and end all" of the multiposting world, rather he has a view that the rest of the market need to be carefully watched and understood and where posssible worked with. A refreshing position and one that will stand the ever popular Broadbean in good stead. The only questions I think will arise will come from the relaunched and spruced up Conkers, John Cassidy certainly has big plans for 2008 and Conkers has been around long enough to know how to make the system work.
All this still begs the question of what happened with the other players in the UK market? Idibu look like 08 will be their UK year (from what I hear), Jobmate have been quiet since the acquisition (where are you David??), Networx have something in the space but it's not a true multiposter, very much in the same space as easywebresourcing from what I remember. Ebods was around for a while as was postingpal but I'm not that aware of them anymore.
Dan's quest for global domination through marketing seems to have done the trick for now. The rise of conkers in 2008? Watch this space. New players in the UK market? could be interesting for all? ATS systems making multiple posters redundant? It's a long way off but I would think everyone in that market must look to ATS and wonder if, longer term, it will kill their business?
Having had a good look at ATS over the weekned I put some thoughts together that when read back were rubbish, I'll have a rethink and get something up ASAP.
Monday, 19 November 2007
Reed.co.uk
As many of you will have seen last week (particularly those working as rec cons), Reed.co.uk is moving over to a charged model for people posting over 500 jobs per year. Over on Louise's UK recruiter blog / forum the fire has been raging and recruiters seem particularly unhappy about the whole thing, one even claimed that small firms would "go to the wall!" Something of an overreaction IMHO.
Lets face it Reed.co.uk were always going to do this in some way and it was only a matter of time, personally I think it's a good thing, it may move consultants away from the "post everything, even if it's not a real job" mentality (though of course no one would ever consider posting a fake job on a recruitment site!).
Reed allowed emplyers to flood the site with a huge number of jobs and it led to the argument every salesperson working on a recruitment site has heard hundreds of times... "why won't you give me a free trial when I can post jobs for free on Reed?".
Now maybe recruiters will start to value their job postings a little higher and think a bit more about what they put on the site, how they word job specs (because there are still some horrendous examples of job postings out there even after all this time) and how they monitor the response.
Personally I say well done Reed.co.uk for taking the step!
Lets face it Reed.co.uk were always going to do this in some way and it was only a matter of time, personally I think it's a good thing, it may move consultants away from the "post everything, even if it's not a real job" mentality (though of course no one would ever consider posting a fake job on a recruitment site!).
Reed allowed emplyers to flood the site with a huge number of jobs and it led to the argument every salesperson working on a recruitment site has heard hundreds of times... "why won't you give me a free trial when I can post jobs for free on Reed?".
Now maybe recruiters will start to value their job postings a little higher and think a bit more about what they put on the site, how they word job specs (because there are still some horrendous examples of job postings out there even after all this time) and how they monitor the response.
Personally I say well done Reed.co.uk for taking the step!
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
A Niche within a Niche?
When is a niche a niche too far?
There has been a proliferation of niche sites over the past few years, once everyone realised that it was unlikely they would be the next Totaljobs or Monster without a massive budget they thought that niche sites would be their saviour. To an extent, they were right.
Niche boards have proven to be the great internet success story of recent years with the acquisitions programs that a lot of media owners have undergone proving that a small site (relatively) can be worth big bucks. You only have to look at DMGT to see the value they place on the world of the niche.
The question has always hovered in the air though.. How niche can you go? In the finance sector there seem to be many different avenues such as PFjobs passjobsonline, Etaxjobs etc, does this go too far though? With a cusory glance through job board listings I found 38 sites who are selling into the finance sector. The world of sales has gone even further, the niche within niche within niche has definately happened to sales. We have Sales and marketing sites, retail sales sites, new media sales sites, print media sales, FMCG sales, the list goes on, that coupled with the sheer number of sales recruitment agencies must be a baffling amount of information for the candidate to face. Rich Purvis made a good comment on this and thought that richardpurvisjobs.co.uk would be the final niche.
Maybe things have fragmented a little too far but has this stopped acquisitions still going through and new launches coming from established players? No certainly not. I remember Paul Stephens at totaljobs telling me a few years ago that the smaller niche's would consolidate and there would be the big generalists like totaljobs and a few players in the niche market owned by bigger media companies but not that many fragmented sites and no need for niche after niche being launched. Paul is now running new niche launches for the group.....
Well what am I trying to say about all this? I guess the final analysis comes as a word of warning to people entering the market. If you're launching a niche site then why are you doing it? What is your market? Who is your competition? How long have they been there? Finally and most importantly what is your strategy, becoming market leader or selling when you can, if you're trying to build a site with an exit strategy then are you really building something unique enough and valuable enough in an overcrowded market?
There has been a proliferation of niche sites over the past few years, once everyone realised that it was unlikely they would be the next Totaljobs or Monster without a massive budget they thought that niche sites would be their saviour. To an extent, they were right.
Niche boards have proven to be the great internet success story of recent years with the acquisitions programs that a lot of media owners have undergone proving that a small site (relatively) can be worth big bucks. You only have to look at DMGT to see the value they place on the world of the niche.
The question has always hovered in the air though.. How niche can you go? In the finance sector there seem to be many different avenues such as PFjobs passjobsonline, Etaxjobs etc, does this go too far though? With a cusory glance through job board listings I found 38 sites who are selling into the finance sector. The world of sales has gone even further, the niche within niche within niche has definately happened to sales. We have Sales and marketing sites, retail sales sites, new media sales sites, print media sales, FMCG sales, the list goes on, that coupled with the sheer number of sales recruitment agencies must be a baffling amount of information for the candidate to face. Rich Purvis made a good comment on this and thought that richardpurvisjobs.co.uk would be the final niche.
Maybe things have fragmented a little too far but has this stopped acquisitions still going through and new launches coming from established players? No certainly not. I remember Paul Stephens at totaljobs telling me a few years ago that the smaller niche's would consolidate and there would be the big generalists like totaljobs and a few players in the niche market owned by bigger media companies but not that many fragmented sites and no need for niche after niche being launched. Paul is now running new niche launches for the group.....
Well what am I trying to say about all this? I guess the final analysis comes as a word of warning to people entering the market. If you're launching a niche site then why are you doing it? What is your market? Who is your competition? How long have they been there? Finally and most importantly what is your strategy, becoming market leader or selling when you can, if you're trying to build a site with an exit strategy then are you really building something unique enough and valuable enough in an overcrowded market?
Monday, 12 November 2007
New players and blogging motivation..
Well, Monday has dragged itself around again, I was thinking about not blogging today until I read this
this on digitalrecruiting and I thought if 4 million others can be bothered then so should I.
There have been some interesting developments in the ad agency / recruitment technology space, well from people I know that is.
Really good to see Rich Purvis has struck out on his own with Crunch DMC , he has some great clients coming on board already and certainly has the knowledge and experience to turn the business into something great.
Also Tim Suggitt over at Aktor is bringing their platform to the UK, they sit somewhere between multi poster and advertising agency and offer a pretty broad range of servces. How they will fit into the UK recruitment community is yet to be seen but the early signs are apparently very good. Not sure what the other general multiposters will think, I'm sure we'll hear from Dan at Broadbean and a few others in due course.
So the week ahead is a busy one as usual, alongside work I'm slowly learning HTML in my spare time as well as devouring every blog I can lay my hands on, so expect to see more industry comment and info as I wrap my head around blogging a little more.. have a good day.
this on digitalrecruiting and I thought if 4 million others can be bothered then so should I.
There have been some interesting developments in the ad agency / recruitment technology space, well from people I know that is.
Really good to see Rich Purvis has struck out on his own with Crunch DMC , he has some great clients coming on board already and certainly has the knowledge and experience to turn the business into something great.
Also Tim Suggitt over at Aktor is bringing their platform to the UK, they sit somewhere between multi poster and advertising agency and offer a pretty broad range of servces. How they will fit into the UK recruitment community is yet to be seen but the early signs are apparently very good. Not sure what the other general multiposters will think, I'm sure we'll hear from Dan at Broadbean and a few others in due course.
So the week ahead is a busy one as usual, alongside work I'm slowly learning HTML in my spare time as well as devouring every blog I can lay my hands on, so expect to see more industry comment and info as I wrap my head around blogging a little more.. have a good day.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
Well, I've been reading everyone else's blogs for a while now and thought it was time I got one of my own. (I know, it's bandwagon jumping, next thing you know I'll be attending careers fairs on second life).
With the proliferation of online recruitment blogs what can I bring to the market, well, hopefully different input to some of the others out there. I get to deal with a broad spectrum of people in my day to day work, everything from new launches (wild ideas and good ideas in almost equal measure), to new technology and advertising agencies.
The big story (again) this month appears to be social media.. It's almost turning into a jaw breaking yawn to hear yet more people talking about it but at the end of the day I don't think the recruitment community is under any illusion that the way candidates are found will eventually change, it would just be nice to see someone tell us EXACTLY how, speculation is rife and there are more facebook apps than you can shake a stick at kicking around, which will win and work? Only time will tell.
The Godfather of Social Media recruiting, Jason Goldberg, is still touting it as the future and jobster certainly looks good, how it all makes money in the long term is something I'm a little unclear about but let's face it people said exactly the same thing when RBI invested as much as they did in the launch of totaljobs.
Personally I find that social media apps for things like facebook and myspace smack a little of manipulating the network which is a dangerous thing to do, if people get annoyed they vote with their feet and move to the next big thing.
I like the idea of networking specifically to find a job and if sites are growing up to do this and engage the audience directly then more power to them.
In general recruiting is changing, job boards are evolving and the Paper CV is dead, be careful what you put on your facebook / myspace, you never know who is looking!
With the proliferation of online recruitment blogs what can I bring to the market, well, hopefully different input to some of the others out there. I get to deal with a broad spectrum of people in my day to day work, everything from new launches (wild ideas and good ideas in almost equal measure), to new technology and advertising agencies.
The big story (again) this month appears to be social media.. It's almost turning into a jaw breaking yawn to hear yet more people talking about it but at the end of the day I don't think the recruitment community is under any illusion that the way candidates are found will eventually change, it would just be nice to see someone tell us EXACTLY how, speculation is rife and there are more facebook apps than you can shake a stick at kicking around, which will win and work? Only time will tell.
The Godfather of Social Media recruiting, Jason Goldberg, is still touting it as the future and jobster certainly looks good, how it all makes money in the long term is something I'm a little unclear about but let's face it people said exactly the same thing when RBI invested as much as they did in the launch of totaljobs.
Personally I find that social media apps for things like facebook and myspace smack a little of manipulating the network which is a dangerous thing to do, if people get annoyed they vote with their feet and move to the next big thing.
I like the idea of networking specifically to find a job and if sites are growing up to do this and engage the audience directly then more power to them.
In general recruiting is changing, job boards are evolving and the Paper CV is dead, be careful what you put on your facebook / myspace, you never know who is looking!
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