Posted by: Ben Hutchins in technology selection, talent management, talent attraction, Talent Assessment, Talent, socialmedia, Social Recruitment, social recruiting, social networking, social media recruiting, ROI, recruitment technology, recruitment system, recruitment solutions, recruitment software, Recruitment Leadership, recruiting software, recruiting, outsourced recruitment services, online recruitment, on-line recruitment, Mobile Recruiting, human resources, hr, gradweb, Graduate Recruitment, Engagement, employment, Employer Brand, digital marketing, Creative, Communication, Candidates, Brand, Better Resourcing, awards, assessment, applicant tracking system, Advertising on
21 Feb 12
Leading entry-level recruitment outsourcing provider GradWeb, has been selected to provide branding and creative design plus recruitment services including recruitment advertising, online recruitment system, candidate management and application screening for the ‘Track and Train’ internship scheme.
The Track & Train scheme is designed to give up to 100 graduates employment experience and training to help further their careers. It’s a nationwide scheme funded by Network Rail and supported by 28 companies across the rail sector and aimed at people who have graduated from university in the last 2 years. The entire programme lasts for 18 months, and is structured to give graduates an insight into each of the main elements of the rail industry. Successful candidates will start their first placement in April 2012.
Effective Recruitment Advertising
The branding and recruitment advertising campaign designed to promote Track & Train and to attract candidates to enrol for the scheme has been devised and created by GradWeb’s Intelligent Attraction team. The first part of this process was to develop the Track & Train brand. As an entirely new entity that represents 27 companies across the rail sector, GradWeb developed the creative concept for the Track & Train name, logo, and branding for the campaign to be used across all marketing vehicles.
Even butchers are turning to the web for work according to online recruitment specialist, HR Connexions.
Reporting an increase in the number of requests for manual jobs to be promoted online, the company has placed campaigns to find a butcher, cleaner and security guard in the last month alone.
Farmer Copleys, the Pontefract based Farm Shop, used an online advert to find a qualified butcher and was pleasantly surprised with both the calibre of applicant and ease of the selection process.
Managing Director, Heather Copley said: "We had never considered putting an advert for a butcher online but with nothing to lose we thought that we may as well give it a go. I was so surprised with how simple the process was. The applicants were all suitably qualified and the hardest decision was choosing between them."
She added: "Working with HR Connexions was easy and they took all of the hard work out of the process, which is ideal when you're trying to run a business and find new, suitably qualified employees. We will certainly use the team from HR Connexions again when we need to find candidates for other roles."
So my second blog entry was going to be about Google Wave (don't worry folks - it's already written and you'll get it soon enough!) but I read a great post last week on Twitter and decided to change tack.
@grahamsalisbury wrote:
"I am beginning to regard online job boards with the same degree of suspicion that I normally reserve for Wikipedia"
I couldn't help but smile! I've been in the same job for nearly five years now, working as a recruiter, and I'd kind of forgotten what it was like to be a job seeker until recently. I shan't bore you with the gory details, but basically my employer has had to cut my hours due to the recession and so I've had to look for additional employment to supplement my income and keep Mr J in PlayStation 3 games (I know, I know...!) Anyway, the employment issue is resolved (temporarily at least) and I was lucky enough to not be looking too long, but this was my first time as a job seeker in some time and it was really quite humbling!
Last time I was job hunting, local papers were still reasonably en vogue and, while job boards were very much in the picture, there seemed to be just the one or two big names that were worth a visit. But how things have changed now! Now my local papers are all affiliated with (different) jobs boards, there are niche boards popping up all over the place and (maybe it's just me, but) there seem to be even more ‘big name' boards too! Now I've no problem really with the number of job boards in existence; as a recruiter I've advertised on plenty in the past (with mixed results!), but what I did find particularly annoying was the way the same jobs were duplicated over and over on all of them.
Some employers were guilty, but it was mostly the agencies with the multiple postings. And you can bet your bottom dollar half those posting were out of date too. Job hunting is a drain at the best of times, but I felt as though whole evenings were just vanishing into a black hole!
Other than spending half my life trawling the internet for vaguely relevant and still current job vacancies, my biggest quandary was which jobs to apply for. The current market means that most of the jobs I liked the look of didn't pay the kind of salary I was used to getting (and in my part of the world, salaries aren't really that great anyway). You work hard to get to where you are and no-one wants to take a step backwards, but at what point do you put your pride aside and say that some income is better than no income? I've always said (rather arrogantly) that there's no reason for me to ever be unemployed - there is always the counter at McDonalds or the checkout at Tesco. But that's really not true any more; even these entry level jobs have people queuing to apply because some income is better than no income. And there you have it! Who would employ me; a somewhat overqualified candidate with no recent retail experience, over someone who's been made redundant from Thresher or Woolworths who is far more relevant?! But how do you decide what's worth the effort? Do you apply for anything and everything and hope that something sticks, or do you do what you'd normally do (if jobs weren't so fiercely fought over) and stay targeted and focussed, even though there are less relevant positions to apply for? It's so difficult to decide. It's easy to judge people who apply for jobs they're totally over qualified for, but the reality is that many people are not in a situation where they can support themselves and their families with no income.
Though I didn't apply for that many positions in the end, I got not one reply saying thanks but no thanks. These were applications directly to employers rather than through agencies and the funny thing was that this neither surprised nor bothered me. And that made me feel a bit sad. When did such disrespectful behaviour start becoming so universally acceptable?!
Unfortunately I don't have the answers to these problems, but I did want to share my experiences. It's a tough market out there and, as recruiters, it's easy for us to get caught up in our work and forget that we're dealing with real people: They have feelings, families and responsibilities just like us, and they are trying to doing their best. We can all show a little more compassion. Put yourself in the jobseekers shoes for a few minutes and ask yourself how you'd feel.
Milch & Zucker conference, A Journey from Attraction to Selection
The first of the case studies on employer branding. Sabine Josch of the Otto Group, assisted by Milch & Zucker on the brand slides
Again in German, so my apologies for interpretation in advance.
Goal for 2012 to be top three trade employer.
Developing new HR campaigns, with Employer Value Proposition, as basis for external communication
This is good structured presentation, on the steps they have taken from Marketing to creative concepts, based on real stories and real experiences and using 'uncommon images', such as the wrinkles around eyes and belly button to hold the text messages.
Getting a good laugh - I like these two as presenters, very audience centric.
Next images showing the traveller sitting on suitcases - these are good marketing driven approach, not the common recruitment style images. Will be interested to get the presentation later.
So, after testing campaigns against the EVP, how do you make that concrete approach to advertising? Style, colours, Tag lines, and establish set campaign elements for implementation.
Key points to underpin the approach
Personalise: employee as ambassador
Be seen as authentic: use real stories which are believable
Consistency of brand and image across media and campaigns
Tangible Results are emerging
2007, first improvements in brand ranking in Trendence
Make the list of Tope Employers
Relaunched their own career site
Fall 2007, Reflect the new branding and add more Web 2.0 features
Moved up from 52nd in 2007 to 15th in 2009 in the Potential Park rankings
Similar improvements in other rankings
Other initiatives include co-operations with various university and business associations
Now showing video applications - for candidate interviews, need to talk with her about this later
Twitter page is up:
Receiving positive feedback from the pages. 895 followers today
Mobile recruiting, sees as necessary to embrace new technologies
Facebook
Have a profile page
Video campaigns on YouTube for the company, neat as shows a fun and different approach to overall company branding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo-_s6vClBI
Has had over 18,000 views leading to 40,000 his on the corporate site
I am in Bad Nauheim (Frankfurt) today for the Milch & Zucker HR/Recruitment conference, A Journey From Attraction to Selection .
Great lineup of speakers from around the world.
Leading off by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jager,HR-Marketing und recruiting in einer verntetzten Welt (HR and Recruiting in a Networked World)
Apolgies in advance, I will only pick out one or two highlights, as my German is not up to scratch for full translation. We will have links to the main presentations after the event.
Posted by: Alan Whitford in totaljobs.com, Recruitment, On-line job hunting, LinkedIn, Job board, Global recruitment, future, Facebook, erecruitment, Alan Whitford, Advertising on
01 Oct 09
Attending a breakfast seminar today in London, hosted by Totaljobs , featuring Totaljobs marketing research and International Labour market research by the Intelligence Group for The Network
Paul Smith, Group Marketing Director of Totaljobs Group , led off the presentations, after the introductions by John Salt. We will write about the Intelligence Group presentation (which is very impressive) later.
General economic challenges have impacted the job market
- Decline in jobs
- Increase in jobseeker activity
- Google - recruitment query searches up 55% year on year
Advertising spend drops from £1.2 billion to £600 million
- Offline decline 50%
- Online decrease 30%
Paul projects a modest increase end 2011, early 2012 and online recruitment ad spend will pass offline in 2012
Posted by: Alan Whitford in Recruitment, online recruitment, On-line job hunting, media, marketing, job sites, job boards, Job board, Global recruitment, global, erecruitment, Advertising on
16 Sep 09
The Network , which brings together career sites from 119 countries and generates traffic of more than 45 million unique monthly visitors, held its annual conferenence in Bulgaria this month. The conference, hosted by partner Jobs.bg, was covered in Bulgarian publication, Human Capital, including videos of presentations from the managers of the leading job sites in France, Russia, Germany, Poland and Britain such as Totaljobs.com , StepStone and A denclassifieds .
Leading international career sites reported a decline in the published positions between 35 and 40 percent as a result of the global economic crisis. The good news is that some Western countries noticed a slight increase in the published positions last month.
The coverage and presentations can be viewd on the Human Capital site in native Bulgarian or the tranlsated version.
Posted by: Alan Whitford in UKrecruiter, SEO, Recruitment, on-line recruitment, On-line job hunting, media, Louise Triance, erecruitment, blogs, Alan Whitford, Advertising on
22 Apr 09
What a great milestone today. Louise Triance has sent out issue no. 400 of the premier UK recruitment newsletter, ukrecruiter .
Starting small, she has built an amazing following and a stable of regular contributors. I did manage to contribute for about a year with a series of technology oriented articles, but then faded away :-)
Louise has grasped the blog world and continues to grow the business, having added new colleagues and services in the past year.
If you haven't subscribed, please do so here .
We can only hope that RCEURO will have the legs that ukrecruiter has.
Posted by: Alan Whitford in Twitter, tips, technology, social networking, Recruitment, online recruitment, On-line job hunting, LinkedIn, future, Facebook, erecruitment, Creative, An De Jonghe, Alan Whitford, Advertising on
20 Apr 09
Wow, interesting series of blogs/articles out there on this topic.
I would love to see our blogging and social network experts like An de Jonghe, Ricardo Risamasu, Peter Gold, Bas van de Haterd all leap into this fray.
Check out: Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watch , who started this off this week relative to a PR 'expert' who advised on the use of Twitter and Facebook.
Then Jason Gorham has picked it up and run with it as it relates to an 'expert' in digital recruitment advertising.
This topic stream could be related to any type of 'expert consulting' in our and other industries. How many of us who do have the expertise from actually using the products/services/strategies have been pushed aside by a client/prospect because we do not come from one of the 'big name' companies?
Posted by: Alan Whitford in technology, strategy, social networking, Recruitment, online recruitment, future, Facebook, erecruitment, Enhance Media, Bracknell Forest Coucil, Advertising on
29 Jan 09
Bracknell Forest council
Janet Berry
Bummer, just closed the browser window and lost the entire presentation blog
Will try and remember what I already wrote.
Council has Facebook pages and Twitter pages.
On Twitter: 55 following, 87 followers, 210 updates
Both link to the Council career pages
Council has intentionally moved to online, with both their career site and Jobsgopublic.com
Reduced their overall spend on recruitment advertising by moving to direct sourcing. Almost no local press jobs advertising, other than lineage for lower level jobs.
The real key for me of what Janet has done:
She has analysed and researched the existing staff, the potential marketplace for staff and the potential impact of trying to reach the GenY universe.
A great chart mapping:
GenY, GenX, Baby Boomers and Veterans/ mapped against national averages within the employment community.
They analysed what will attract GenY employees
Then analysed what are likely to be barriers to attracting GenY - including internal culture and processes.
Then develop the candidate attraction strategies to match the real requirements.
Challenges of promoting web 2.0 technology
Facebook advertising - only reaching those on Facebook
BFC employees cannot access Facebook at work
Add on ideas
Informal networking
20-30 % of hires by word of mout
Include the messages about Facebook to staff comms, and ask them to add BFC to their personal pages
Future - What will Janet do in 2009?
- Emphasise and enhance the initiatives already started for Geny
- Section and team branding
- Use SEM
- Influence the Baby Boomer managers
- Measure and monitor where the jobs are being initially seen
Posted by: Alan Whitford in Tip, technology, strategy, social networking, Recruitment, online recruitment, future, Facebook, erecruitment, Creative, Alan Whitford, Advertising on
29 Jan 09
Josh Smith of Facebook leads off the afternoon session. Lots of stats, so will only give you a few:
- 150 Million users globally
- 800 new registrations daily
- UK has 1 million new users per month
- 25% of audience is over 35
- 65% of UK internet population join Facebook
- 50% of members return daily
- 25 minutes per day on the site
- average 2 vists per day
- 55/45 split between male/female
OK, enough of those statistics :-)
How is Facebook evolving as a recruitment medium?
Targeted marketing is the key.
Jeremy Mason from Revenue Science delivered an excellent presentation on Behavioral Targeting, a term well discussed amongst online marketeers and more information on the topic can be found on the IAB site.
For many publishers this has become a key issue and one which they are investing in to give greater value to their advertiser BUT it is as important to understand who their audience is and what and where they have been and go after they touch your site.
Jeremy defines what behavioral targeting is; "targeting groups of users with ad and content based on anonymous previous activity and attributes".
Why is this becoming a "boom"business" ;
- We have a pyramid issue when it come to online content- at the bottom is the huge chunk of advertising led content BUT at the top is contextual search which has far more limited content.
Posted by: Alan Whitford in technology, strategy, Recruitment, future, erecruitment, Enhance Media, Creative, blogs, awards, Alan Whitford, Advertising on
29 Jan 09
Aggregation and Data Driven Marketing
Simon Appleton
They founded Planet Recruit and sold it to Hot Group in 2003. Set up Workcircle initially as an IT job board. Changed to Vertical Search Engine (Aggregator).
What does the aggregator really do?
For Candidate: can search across multiple platforms on one site.
Traffic source/driver for job advertisers – job boards, employers, agencies
What is Data Driven Marketing?
Attract the right candidates in high volume, and then direct them to the right destination site.
Tony Jewell
How have the new revenue generating and traffic generating models evolved?
Nice stuff on ‘cost per action’ if you run a web business
Evolution of their thinking on most cost effective way of gathering jobs and then reaching the candidates.
What they call: Workcircle 2.0
Evolved to the jobs aggregation model (like Indeed.com from the US)
Can help the smaller niche job boards get ‘cheap’ traffic
Challenge was how much traffic could the cost effectively buy.
Long tail thinking entered into the evolution of Workcircle
Sponsor all combinations of a job title (wrote a tool to generate the long tail list - over 1 million keywords)
Used the Google API (application programming interface) to create the giant Google Adword campaigns
Resulted in Massive Traffic Driving
Lots of great stats and ROI data for them (80% ROI for money spent on Google).
Lessons learned
Using both SEM (for paid for listings) and SEO (for organic listings) to ensure overall listing and traffic works at optimum for traffic driving
Long Tail generates overall cost is optimised
Ensure that paid for listings have the deep link directly to the job, not the job site
Ensure that you actually have job inventory to match the keywords you are actually advertising
Click through rate is not the best measure of ad success
First speaker today is Luisa Mauro from You Tube. So we are live blogging and will get the full presentations at the end of the event and may come back to some of the presentations with fuller coverage.
Some frightening statistics;
- 1.2 billion minutes of video watched every month.
- 15 hours of video uploaded every minute.
- Taking up 10% of global bandwidth.
Here we are at the annual Enhance Media conference to look at what might be happening in the future - interesting to see how this might compare with what we said 2-3 years ago when I spoke at the same event.
Tim and Alastair will be on Twitter, as will I. Interested to see if anyone else will be.
Keith and I will take turns writing some blog posts during the day.
Find us, make some comments and check it out.
This event has the 'who's who' of UK thought leaders in the audience - Luke McKend, Mike Taylor, Don Macintosh, David Hurst, Charles Hardy, Jonathan Mills, Mark Kieve, Jez Chance, John Salt, Louise Triance..... The list goes on and on.
Last Thurs I was sitting in a hotel in Lieden, Holland whilst my many friends in the UK recruitment industry were gathering at the Grosvenor House Hotel for the prestigious RADS. A great event.
The RADS was a "baby" that I launched with a great gentleman called Austyn Hallworth; he was at the Independent ( Classified Ad Mgr) and I was Sales Director at a new HR magazine called Personnel Today.
The idea was to have an awards event in the UK to refect the "best" in recruitment. The event, today branded the RADS and organised by Reed Business Information has grown into a wonderful celebration of what is best in recruitment communication. It has achieved what we set out to do.
The UK recruitment industry enjoys some of the finest creativity in the world of recruitment. The result of a highly competitive labour market, a rich source of print media and agencies and clients who are prepared to be brave and push the barriers of what is HR communications.
The industry has also "seen off" the threat of the web....there were those in '99-2000 who believed that "branding" was dead and that all jobseekers would do was go to huge job databases, search, get matched and apply...whoops sorry, I mean a job board.
