Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

Does online recruitment benefit from a recession?

I have just spotted an article from back in April that starts "I have suggested in the past that the online recruitment industry will benefit from an economic downturn ..."  the author goes on to say that as more people find themselves out of work, many for the first time, they will turn to the internet (cv databases/job boards) to find work.  The speed of response of these methods as recruitment tools will bring the industry back to it's feet quicker than traditional methods would.  The old reduced time to hire/reduced cost argument for online recruitment.

However, I'm not sure that this statement bears any scrutiny. Yes, online recruitment can reduce the cost to hire, but it has been doing that, in a fairly across-the-hiring-world type way for about five years.  Right now, in the main, job boards and CV databases are suffering due to lack of actual vacancies and are certainly not being helped by the number of applicants applying for a gazillion vacancies in one go.

The online recruitment industry is certainly still developing and becoming more complex/sophisticated but it's pretty established as a means to attract and engage jobseekers.  I'm not suggesting every hiring manager/recruiter in the UK uses job boards or CV databases, but they would be getting there with or without a recession.  The popularity and interest in social media sites as recruiting tools was already ramping up before the recession hit so I think that growth in this area is just a continuation of a trend. 

Recruiters may well benefit from the tools provided by online recruitment when things do start to pick up.  However, I doubt that suddenly we'll see a huge new interest in online recruitment. It was already there, people who were recruiting could see why it worked, people who need to recruit in the future will give it a go and see why it works. 

I know there are loads of other issues in here (redundancies within many online recruitment channels, impact of general decline of print advertising vs online, ongoing role of ad agencies, issues around high costs of integrating with multiple posting tools) but this is a quick reaction to what I think was one of those things that people, often who are deemed as experts, say and other's just accept.  In this instance I thought the author was wrong.

Not enough time to do your job

We've just relaunched our job board (catchingly entitled UK Recruiter Jobs) and I sent out an email to all the lovely rec to recs we list on our site saying they can have a free trial of the site.
 
I got a response back from one saying:
 
I'm manic and simply can't spend time inputting jobs.
 
Eh?  So you are too busy to do your job?  What are you spending your time doing?  Finding vacancies?  Interviewing candidates (oh, you can't be you aren't advertising your jobs anywhere)?  Yes, I know there is more to placing candidates than just bunging jobs on job boards (ie, checking your own database, getting referrals, headhunting, etc) but honestly! 
 
Well that’s the choice I guess – 3 minutes of input for multiple candidates that you can place and get paid for…or not!
 
Rant over.

Bill Boorman's Internet Radio Talk Show

Bill Boorman has today launched his new internet radio talk show.  

It's a weekly show (12 noon for UK audiences and then again at 6pm for the US/International audience) where Bill will be chatting with experts about the recruitment market worldwide.  Today's (which you can hear via the website) focussed on how to make the most of the upturn. His guest was the lovely Alan Whitford and he took calls from a number of other recruitment suppliers (Kunal from PanEight Consulting, Shane from Intelligence Software and Mike from Web Based Training) plus a really switched on recruiter (Greg Savage from Australia). 

The basic crux of the conversations were around how important it is to build relationships in the current market (with candidates AND clients) and how to use technology appropriately.  Bill did a great job of keeping it moving along although I found it a little difficult to keep track of who was speaking (even with the mix of quite different accents).
 
I think that this is a nice move by Bill.  There is certainly an audience for all things technology and as Animal has shown in the US a recruiting radio show can be superbly received.
 
I understand the first show had 50 live listeners which I think is a good start.  I wonder how many were actual recruiters (lots of fellow Twitter "suppliers" seemed to be listening) and how he will increase that figure.  I personally think that it would be difficult for your average recruiter to stop work for an hour (even once a week) to listen to a radio show.  However, as I say it seems to work in the US. 
 
The International show at 6pm today has guests of Bill Vick and Doug Bugie.  Both nice high profile in the US (and Internationally).

June Networking Event

Last Thursday saw our latest networking event.  It took place in central London and we had a great turn out on the night. 

At this event we introduced speed networking - which seemed to go down really well.  If post-event feedback is as good as it was on the night we plan to run speed networking sessions at future events.

If you want to see the photos they are available here.

Our next networking event is on the 5th November (in conjunction with the NORAs awards), however, might wait until a little closer to the time to start promoting it!

Finally, one last mention of our sponsors (VAT PAY, 1Job.co.uk, Intelligence Software and HB RIDA) whose involvement  ensured the first drink of the night was free.

Twitter vs Blogs

A little while ago I posted on Twitter how bad I felt at my lack of blog activity.  I got a nice, sympathetic, response with a number of people saying they are having trouble finding the time to blog in recent weeks/months.  Mostly I think I'm blogging less as I'm more busy in other areas; focus on our guides, UK Recruiter Plus and other calls on my time (despite now having a team here my workload seems to have increased).  However, I do wonder if I blog less as I tweet more. 
 
Today I posted this on Twitter: is it just me? Whilst at my desk I'd much rather read an interview with someone than listen to an audio or watch a video.  It was prompted by seeing a link to a video interview between Mike Taylor and James Caan.  Previously I might have written a blog about the place of videos in learning and development for recruiters.  It might have included my thoughts on video CVs and I know I'd have felt I ought to dig out some stats on preferences for video vs audio vs written.  That would have taken me a good half hour to write (and then another 10 minutes to find an appropriate photo!).  It took me about 20 seconds to post it on Twitter.
 
If I'd have written this as a blog post I might have got a few comments.  My Twitter post got 6 immediate responses and a re-tweet (if you don't know what that is you ought to take a look at our Twitter guide!).  The problem is that it's not easy for me to now share those comments with you without cutting and pasting them here:
 
BraeScotland No I am the same .. I switch all the sounds off from all the office computers .. drives me mad!
Mr_Linkedin I would always vote for the video personally, followed by the audio - unless its something you have written of course Louise!
BillBoorman Thats your learning style. Good marketing delivers the same message written, audio, visual and demonstrated. One option e ...
grahambunting It's perhaps an indication that you have a preference for communication through the visual channel :-) I enjoy listening
SussexMatt I think it depends on the speaker but generally I'd rather read then watch/ listen, maybe we are just old media
WendyJacob In my lunchbreak at work yes - at home no.
 
(the issue of comments is something that Jason Alba recently mentioned in a blog post too)
 
The other problem is that of coverage and longevity.  I have 542 Twitter followers; I'm guessing the only people who will EVER see that tweet are those who were online in the 30 minutes or so following my post.  The blog gets around 4,000 unique visits a month.  Posts from it are picked up in Google searches and sometimes re-posted or linked to elsewhere. 
 
Finally, of course, no matter how succinct I am sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough.  I couldn't have managed a mini-slating of The Apprentice in less than the 980 characters I used.
 
For me the answer is going to be to continue to Tweet and Blog.  Although the only way to achieve the second goal may be to physically lock myself to my desk 4x a week for 30 minutes!

PS, you can follow me on Twitter here