RCEuro Member Blogs

Recently re tweeted, Greg Savage's views on his blog ‘Kill off the bikers. Fire unprofitable clients now!' posted earlier this year on The Savage Truth, put me in mind of my own experiences working with customers that  made me no money and worse still actually harmed my business.

Leap of faith

Building a business of choice is the name given to one of my business development programmes. But this was more a statement of intent than a snappy course title. Many years ago, when I first took that leap of faith to start my own business along with my small team of trainers, I was excited, full of enthusiasm and believed that what we had to offer was the best thing since sliced bread - if only I could get people to see that too! As a young (er!) entrepreneur I had every confidence that we would be successful – but paradoxically lacked confidence in the very same! When our first few customers took their leap of faith in us and put their managers on our (then, as we believed,) cutting edge leadership programme and sent their recruitment consultants to develop their key skills with us, I was thrilled but more than that grateful! Appreciative of the belief these early customers showed in our abilities, thankful that they were actually giving us money to do what we loved to do anyway! To be truthful, our first few clients were people we knew really well and those who were already advocates of our work, so it was the second wave of customers we were actively seeking, in other words the nirvana that is new business!

Ignorance seemed like bliss

 

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London, 6th October 2010: Finalists for the Marketing & Advertising Recruitment Awards 2010 announced

A month of community voting has concluded with 38 individual recruitment agencies from across the UK making it through to the judging panel, that will now select a winner from each of the 10 categories. 

Winners will be announced at the Awards Presentation Gala to be held at the Jumeirah Carlton Hotel, London, on 2nd December 2010.

Simon Lewis, editor of event hosts, Only Marketing Jobs, said: 

“The competition for finalist places was fierce, with many categories being determined by a handful of last-minute votes. Some of the recruiter campaigns for votes have been exceptional, indicating how seriously these inaugural awards have been received. Congratulations should be extended to all participants, with additional thanks directed to the marketing community for voting in their 1,000s.”

Tickets for the Awards Presentation Gala can be purchased by contacting Only Marketing Jobs on 08452 011552. Discounts available for good bookings.

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Here is our first Blog Report from Mike Taylor's Mobile and Video in Recruitment Conference in London today.

You can follow the Twitter stream via the hashtag: #MVIR, the live stream can be seen in our home page article about the conference.

The morning saw a wide range of content and views about the use of video in recruitment. Do you create and post video on YouTube? How do you 'control' what your employees, ex-employees or candidates say in the videos that they make and post to YouTube? Luke McKend spoke about the impact of YouTube and how an employer can build its brand and promote its vacancies on the site.

Nick Price of Working Films showed what companies could do using professionally prepared and produced video to build a brand and promote careers in the corporate environment, while retaining the spontaneous feel and content from the participants.

Kes Thygesen gave us a nice history of the use of video online, from the first webcam focussed on a coffee machine through to today where there are a number of video based applications for engaging with and interviewing candidates. This approach may take the one-to-one direct interview that can be done with Skype Video or ooVoo through to the approach that OVIA has developed. Dimitar Stoyanov explained more how the OVIA video interview platform can add value and save money in the interview process, with any time any place pre-structred interview approach.

Gary Robinson stepped in for Felix Wetzel of Jobsite to set the scene for afternoon sessions on mobile, delivering some real life traffic and statistics from the Mobile in Recruitment whitepaper which was published in conjunction with alltetopbananas.com.

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Web-based service SignatureSense.com is gaining momentum in the recruitment industry by allowing contracts to be signed online, by all parties, in a matter of minutes.

The conventional approach to signing and returning contracts (a combination of post / fax and email) is often the ‘bottle neck’ in an otherwise efficient placement process.

Larger big-budget agencies have been using “electronic signatures” to sign contracts for years, however SignatureSense’s low monthly fee for agencies makes this modern business practice available to even the smallest of companies.

Alan Whitford, industry veteran and founder of RCEuro.com, the Pan European community site for recruiters, commented on SignatureSense:

“I think that this offering should be a ‘no brainer’ for recruitment businesses, where the time lost in the administrivia of contract administration can lead to lost revenue and poor client service. The electronic signature ‘wrapper’ is ideal for confirming NDAs, Terms of Business and Contractor Agreements, all in real time. We will certainly be using the service for our future agreements at RCEuro.”

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Smart Resourcing 2010

Susan Bor, Director of Group Resourcing, RBS

Getting fit for the future

The 2nd session this afternoon talking about being ready for the future.

Started presentation with intro to the department, her journey and the overall size and scope of the business.

ROI of her department, returned £26million to the business. Now an efficient department.

Support the candidate experience. As recruiters, we have to change the way we engage with the candidates, where and when they want.

Her move to the next level of readiness and capabilities, both for individual recruiters, the overall team and the technology that supports it. Recritment 2.0 approach:  Build better career portal, integrate 45 microsites, integrae a CV/profile builder, revamp collateral to reflect current values of the company.  Added video clips to website of real candidates and real employees.

Bullets from the presentation.

• How to get the 100% top performers recruited into every role
• Cut agency spend, promote your brand in the recruitment arena
• Have really great recuiters
• Improve line manager's recruitment skills
• Measure resourcing functions and ROI with detailed analytics and quality metrics
• Understand that candidates are also customers - HOORAY!, we have been saying this for 10 years now.
• Create a brand that is engaging, compelling and engenders candidate confidence

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Sitting at the Smart Resourcing 2010 Conference, organised by Recruiter Magazine, in London.

We will blog a few highlights, rather than a cohesive article; think of this as Twitter but with more than 140 characters.

Roundtable after lunch, led by Vikki Gartside, Head of Resourcing at Asda

Expansion of in-house recruiter's role across the employment life cycle - how far should it go?

Measurement, Influence, accountability are all responsibilities of the recruiter.

Nice slide of the Candidate Journey, all recruiters should know about all the different elements of the candidate through employee life cycle - and where a recruiter could add value, e.g. learning and development.

Open floor for the tables to discuss the topic, then will have a wrap up session.


Table Points
1 Some recruiters in teams want to do it and have enthusiasm to go full cycle, but some recruiters not want to go as far, so should have a blended approach

2 External Recruiters table; Challenge is to understand the value for the resourcer of working with the functional areas - build trust and loyalty and knowledge of the function in order for the team to improve the relationships with functional heads

3 Depends on the capability of recruiters and level of experience. This requires a business partner level of recruiter to go this route.

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London, 6th September 2010: The inaugural Marketing & Advertising Recruitment Awards 2010 is now at voting stage, with 65 recruitment agencies battling it out for 11 converted categories.

Following a torrid couple of years marketing professionals across the UK now have the chance to nominate who they consider the best recruiters in the business.

Marketing professionals who have experienced working with recruitment agencies, perhaps looking for marketing jobs or hiring marketing staff during the recent economic challenges, are urged to participate in this nomination process, where community voting directly determines which agencies make it through to finalist stage.

Simon Lewis, editor of MARA hosts, Only Marketing Jobs, commented: “This is the most exciting phase of the Awards to date, and why, in the main, we established them.  Since 2008 the marketing industry has had a rough ride and we believe these Awards offer something tangible for the UK marketing community to participate in, recognising the sterling efforts of many recruitment newcomers, as well as recognised brands.  Recruiters with an established, loyal following, will be rewarded for their adaption to an evolving staffing process.”

The 11 award categories are: Best Newcomer; Best Small Agency; Recruitment Innovation; Best Candidate Experience; Best Client Experience; Best Regional Agency; Best Niche Agency; Most Effective Social Media Strategy; Best Overall Agency; Best Marketing Strategy; and Personality of the Year.

Voters have until 1st October 2010 to nominate. See all nominees and vote .

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You grow up most of your life hearing your parents and partners, teachers and TV stars, mentors and managers - remind you that failure is not an option! The fear of failing is scary. It is human nature to be successful.

But atimes, one may have to fail (probably a few times) to get things right. And the same goes with introducing social recruiting into your hiring strategy. One of the reasons that deter some UK companies from social recruiting, is the thought of failure.

It is possible that you have ticked all the right boxes and eventually created a social recruiting strategy, but somehow along the way, the integration into your existing hiring process and the implementation of the so-called social recruiting 'to-do lists' goes awry.

Don't despair. You may not be alone. Many companies will have to redefine their recruitment processes and refine how they manage their social recruiting strategies until they get things right. You'd be surprised to know that several brands with successful social media campaigns and social recruiting strategies could have tried different approaches and formats, before they start getting some ROI of intrinsic value.

A recent article on Techcrunch suggests some reasons on why social media projects fail (an European perspective). For me, quite a lot of these researches and surveys are another set of stats, numbers and percentages that may not be a perfect representation of the situation. However, we can surely relate to some of the reasons they presented. One of which being, just doing 'social' because of the sake of it, will not deliver any meaningful returns.

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Once someone has identified you, as the company they would like to work with, they are looking for constant reassurance that they are right! First impressions are created at the initial point of contact, but they are reinforced every time they experience an interaction with your team. Whether communicating by email, twitter, blog, website, letter, telephone or face to face, your company is sending a message to that individual about who you are and how you value them. If you hold someone in high regard and care how they feel and what they think about you - and   importantly what they will say about you -, then each and every interaction you have with them will be planned and delivered thoughtfully. When people are going through the recruitment  process, they are weighing up all the evidence ‘for and against’ coming on board with you - and the best talent will be doing this with several companies at the same time. They’ll be benchmarking all the companies  they are considering against their ideal and comparing you with your competitors. It doesn't matter how brilliant your induction process may be, if you lose people during this early part of the process, you’ll never get them there to experience it anyway!

Little things can become big gestures during the first impressions stage. Things like:

• Picking up the phone to talk to someone, as well as sending them an email. 
• Offering people as much information as you can about the role, your team, the company, your vision and the opportunity as readily as possible - and keeping it real! 
• Looking after the people who aren’t successful, who aren’t quite right for your team - they will be for someone else and they are out there right now, telling their network how you treated them and you can directly influence what they say by your actions.

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Here's a summary of a true story that happened to me this week

On Tuesday afternoon I was sent an email by a disgruntled jobseeker that, in light of recent job applications, was frustrated by the lack of response from the recruiters.  He liked the Only Marketing Jobs job board, he said (flattery gets you everywhere with me!) but mentioned he hadn't heard 'a dickie-bird' from the agencies in ages.  What was he doing wrong, he inquired?  Could I help?

Now, I'm no longer a recruiter and nor, for that matter, am I a commissioned career advisor but I decided I'd help this chap out.  So putting aside other tasks I sat down and suggested possible solutions to his challenges: Did he have a cover letter to support his CV?  Was his CV good enough?  Did he follow-up applications with a phone call?  Did he call the recruiter as he sent the application, to ensure the recruiter looked at his Inbox?  Was he applying for the right roles or simply scatter-bombing with fingers-crossed?  And more.

At 11.50pm I pushed the 'send' button and returned to my day job.

8 hours later I received an email from this chap, which said (and I'll surmise):

• He didn't use cover letters to support his application
• He couldn't get in touch with agencies because they didn't provide contact details
• His CV worked fine, thanks very much (could I appraise it, though?!)
• Thanks for the info, but I'm going to continue on as before...

Because of his dismissive attitude I decided not to waste my time helping with a CV appraisal; however, I did take a peek.  It is dreadful.  I doubt it's been updated since 1995.  Whilst there is no excuse for recruiters not to return phone calls or respond to emails, I can see why his CV would never be top of the pile.  But he didn't receive the benefit of my advice again because jobseekers need to treat recruiters (or the people they turn to for advice) with the same respect they want to receive back.  It's a back-scratchy type of thing.

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The inaugural Marketing & Advertising Recruitment Awards (MARAs) have been established to recognise recruitment agencies that have confronted recent challenges and shown outstanding achievements in their industry.

Only Marketing Jobs co-founder, Simon Lewis, commented: "For marketing & advertising recruiters the recent recession has presented many challenges, both for businesses and individuals.  These awards have been designed to reward excellence in our field.  Radical changes are afoot as recruiters are pressured to evolve and adopt new working practices.  idibu is an evolving business and, much like the requirement of today's recruitment businesses, malleable.  The link with idibu was obvious."

idibu account director, Martin Bramall, said of the company's involvement with the Awards: "As a fast growing business ourselves, we're always interested in growth areas and innovative ventures within the recruitment sector. In particular we are keen to endorse and work with enterprising initiatives such as the MARA Awards. Recent financial challenges have contributed to a tough recruitment landscape, where ‘adaptability' has become more and more important. It has long been a guiding principle behind everything we do at idibu and so the MARAs represent a great opportunity for us to integrate with like minded, adapting recruiters - a premise of these Awards."

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